Re: The Information Supernightmare (McCall, Scripps Howard)

[David Farber <farber () central cis upenn edu>]

Posted with permission. In case you might not know Paul, he, while at RAND,
wrote the seminal work on packet swicthing for which he won the Marconi
Award. He is founder of many companies and a great person.   DJF


Date: 19 Jun 94 13:39:18 EDT
From: Paul Baran <73507.2223 () CompuServe COM>
To: "INTERNET:farber () central cis upenn edu" <farber () central cis upenn edu>
Subject: Re: The Information Supernightmare (McCall, Scripps Howard)


Dave:


Congratulations on becoming a Fellow of the Annenberg Public Policy Institute.


I have a somewhat different view about access by the poor.  I believe that
access by all will likely be important because we are probably in part talking
about the primary education system of the future.


Just because the technology can support 500 channels of TV at a low price
doesn't mean that you will have to watch more of the same crap.
The new technology will have the power to limit what is being watched.  With the
two way technology we could, if we wished to do so, say who gets to watch what.




If you are a three year old whose mothore on welfare and the TV is being used as
a baby sitter (which it generally is) then there are certain programs that I
prefer you not watch, and msome that would be appropriate.  The others I suggest
would be beneficially electrically blocked. We have the capability to deliver
quality programming for the pre-schooler.  But,such programs can't begin to
compete against the violent shoot em up competition of commercial TV.


Given the number of TV's per house (even for the poor) it is time for us to
start thinking about customization.  Interactive TV means that you can measure
who is watching and what they are getting out of the program.  If the TV becomes
the basic technology for education for the future for all, then subsidizing
certain portions of the delivery system for the poor I believe would be in the
public interest.  Part of this social contract should be the requirement that if
you get it for free you don't use the free resource to watch anti-social crap in
lieu of the programming intended.


I'm not sure how this would sit with some of my freedom-above-all-and-the
Hell-with-responsibility ACLU type friends who get uptight with any move that
can be distorted into being censorship.


Time to reconsider some of our basic assumptions here.  Sooner or later we have
to face up to the reality that ignoring the responisbility that comes with
freedom has in part created our own cesspool and we have an obligation to do
something about it.  And, we shall have to face up to this issue, if we wish
society to fully benefit by the new technology.


Paul