http://www.ntnu.no/universitetsavisa/nr6/ny7.html
Der finner du en avisartikkel; den er også vedlagt nedenfor i sin helhet.
Den er et intervju Janne Bromseth som også deltar her på KK-forum (hallo,
Janne!) og det handler om det hun har debattert bl.a. med Solveig Mikkelsen
og Bjarne Nærum her på forumet: Jentenes vegring mot å kaste seg ut i
nett-debatter.
Jeg er mye enig med Janne, men har likevel *en* innvending: Janne
fokuserer på mannfolk *generelt*. Jeg ville snevre inn siktet mye mer, til
den spesielle USA-inspirerte-kulturen til mannlige data-individualister.
Denne kulturen karakteriserte jeg slik i en polemikk mot Erling Fossen i
Klassekampen i april 1995:
>...nettet er fortsatt i sin pubertet,
>bokstavelig talt. Nett-kulturen inneholder i dag et sterkt innslag av
>amerikanske gutter/menn som er gode i data, men svært ofte dumme og
>uvitende når det gjelder politikk og samfunnsforhold. De tror at
>verden er USA, i den grad de overhodet interesserer seg for verden. De
>har et oppblåst ego og en umåtelig sjøltillit som ikke står i noe
>rimelig forhold til den kunnskap og innsikt de mangler. Politisk sokner
>de svært ofte til den såkalte libertarianer -retninga, en slags
>ultra-utgave av Fridemokratene, Fr.P.-utbryterne på Tinget.
Hele artikkelen finner du på
http://www.itk.ntnu.no/ansatte/Andresen_Trond/artikler/urban-kjekkas.html
Med fare for å være inhabil (feil kjønn, ivrig nett-deltaker, polemisk
debattstil) vil jeg si at det er for upresist å rette skytset mot mannskulturen
generelt når man forsker på nettets kjønns-skeivhet. Nettet har nemlig siden
sin barndom vært særskilt og sterkt preget av den nådeløse instillinga
"vi-er-alle-superkompetente-tøffinger-som-hverken-ber-om-nåde-eller-gir-det".
Denne kulturen har utspring i USA, og har vært et forbilde for unge
data-kompetente menn verden over, de som starta på nettet for mange år sida,
og som har oppfatta seg som Cyberspace-pionerene framfor noen. Politisk
sokner mange av disse tøffingene til libertarianer-retninga i USA, som bl.a.
har fått en viss internasjonal berømmelse gjennom den kjente, nå avdøde,
science-fiction-forfatteren Robert Heinlein.
"Du er din egen lykkes smed, og fikser du ikke livet ditt er det ditt *eget* ansvar.
Vi sterke og intelligente etc. tøffinger gir ikke sosial støtte,
men vi ber ikke om det heller" osv....
Denne retninga er beskrevet mye bedre enn jeg kan, av USA-skribenten Paulina
Borsook, som galgenhumorisk karakteriserer seg sjøl som det amerikanske
hacker & nerde-tidsskriftet WIRED sitt humanistiske alibi (hun skriver - som
enslig svale - kritisk om disse tingene der). Hun skriver også for
tidsskriftet MOTHER JONES, se
http://www.motherjones.com/mother_jones/JA96/borsook.html
> July/August
> 1996
> CYBERSELFISH
>
> by Paulina Borsook
Hvor hun blant annet sier
> ....So it came as a shock, when, 20 years later, I stumbled
> into the culture of Silicon Valley (my first job at a
> software company, 1981; first job at a computer
> magazine, 1983; attendance at the first commercial
> conference devoted to the Internet, 1987; token
> feminist/humanist/skeptic on the masthead of Wired
> magazine, 1993). Although the technologists I
> encountered there were the liberals on social issues I
> would have expected (pro-choice, as far as abortion;
> pro-diversity, as far as domestic partner benefits;
> inclined to sanction the occasional use of recreational
> drugs), they were violently lacking in compassion,
> ravingly anti-government, and tremendously opposed to
> regulation.
> ......
Hele greia til P.B. er vedlagt nederst, etter intervjuet med Janne.
Så min ærbødige påstand er at denne spesielle USA-inspirerte
ego/bølle/elite-mentaliteten - som har vært et forbilde og en
sosialiseringsfaktor for mange mannlige nettsurfere også i Norge - må
trekkes inn som en vesentlig del av forklaringa når det gjelder nettets
dårlige start m.h.p. kjønnsbalansen.
Sjøl de mest storkjefta av oss mænd på KK-forum er mjuke i forhold til
dette, hevder jeg (og er altså klar over at jeg kanskje er inhabil).
Hva sier du, Janne?
Trond Andresen
****************************
Her er intervjuet med Janne i sin helhet:
> Internett-debatt:
>
> På store menns krigsarena
>
> Det er en gruppe dominerende menn som setter premissene for debatten
> på Internett. Debatten blir en krigsarena hvor ordene er våpen og de
> andre debattantene er fienden.
>
> Så snart det blir mange nok kvinner som melder seg til debatt på
> Internett,
> trår mennenes angrepsteknikker i kraft, sier Janne Bromseth.
>
> Dette gjør det vanskelig for kvinner å nå fram med sine meninger,
> viser en undersøkelse hovedfagsstudent Janne Bromseth ved NTNU har
> gjort i forbindelse med en oppgave i anvendt språkvitenskap. -- Det er
> en langt større andel menn enn kvinner som har tilgang og gjør bruk av
> debatt forum via elektronisk post, sier Janne Bromseth, og viser til
> både egen undersøkelse og forskning gjort av den amerikanske forskeren
> Susan Herring. -- Det som er mer oppsiktsvekkende, fortsetter hun, -- er
> at den prosentvise andelen innlegg fra kvinner er enda mindre. Dette
> tyder på at mange kvinner i beste fall er passive tilskuere til
> debatten.
>
> De menn som legger premissene for meningsutvekslingen, er proffe
> debattanter med lang er faring i kunsten å skrive. Dette er spesielt
> viktig i en slik meningsutveksling hvor det ikke er rom for kroppspråk
> eller annen ikke-verbal kommunikasjon. Skriftspråket -- ordene -- har
> alt å si. Mennene har ikke noe ønske om å gi fra seg den makten det
> ligger i å kunne bestemme debattens formål og utføring. De benytter
> derfor ulike strategier som holder inntrengerne i sjakk. En slik
> strategi kan være å tie det hele i hjel ved ikke å svare på innlegg.
>
> -- Tallene viser at menn svarer oftest menn, så er det kvinner som
> svarer menn, menn som svarer kvinner, og sist er det kvinner som
> svarer kvinner. En annen metode for å holde på makten, er å avlede
> debatten ved hjelp av å sette temaet inn i en annen kontekst. Slik
> svarer man på en måte på innlegget, men tar selv over makten ved å
> styre temaet inn i "sin" bane. En tredje måte er rett og slett å
> avfeie eller latterliggjøre temaet. I tillegg til disse mekanismene
> tyr de dominerende ofte til en teknikk på fagspråket kalt ad hominem.
> I dagligdagse termer vil det bety at man tar mannen i stedet for
> ballen -- gjerne i indirekte form. -- Språkhandlingen bærer preg av
> debattinnstillingen, sier Bromseth, og mener med det at menns
> kampinnstilling kan føre til ganske brutale verbale angrep på
> inntrengerne.
>
> Kvinner svakere stilt
>
> Kvinner har vanskelig for å komme inn i debatten fordi de ikke er med
> i den premissettende gruppen. Problemet blir spesielt tydeliggjort når
> kvinnerelaterte temaer debatteres. Hvis kvinneandelen øker og spesielt
> hvis den når så høyt som tretti prosent, føler menn seg dominert, og
> motstandsmekanismene settes i verk. Det gjør ikke saken lettere at
> kvinner også har en langt mer samarbeidende stil og et høfligere
> språk, noe undersøkelser av reine kvinnefora viser. Dermed er kvinnene
> igjen dårligere stilt til å nå fram på mennenes kamparena. Så kan man
> spørre seg om kvinner burde bli tøffere.
>
> -- Selvfølgelig kan de det. Kvinner er som regel flinke til å tilpasse
> seg. Spørsmålet er om det er det vi ønsker, svarer Janne Bromseth.
> Problemet da er at man gir etter for den dominerende gruppen -- og går
> inn i debatten på deres premisser. Dette er ofte ikke til det beste
> for meningsutvekslingen i seg selv. -- Det burde ligge til rette for en
> mer samarbeidende måte å diskutere på, mener hovedfagsstudenten. --
> Slik får man flere med i debatten med alt det medfører av nye impulser
> og utvidede perspektiver. Det vil da være positivt?, spør hun.
>
> Ingen vidunderoppskrift
>
> Forskningen viser at det ikke nødvendigvis er kvinners dårlige
> selvtillit i data og debatt som er årsaken til deres lave deltakelse
> på internett-debatter. -- Når man blir offer for de dominerende
> gruppenes hersketeknikker -- og dermed føler at en ikke blir hørt -- er
> det et logisk resultat at man trekker seg ut og bruker tiden sin på
> andre ting. Dette gjelder både kvinner og svakere stilte menn, mener
> språkvitenskapsstudenten.
>
> Bromseth, som selv har god erfaring fra flere debattforum -- blant
> annet som tidligere leder av Studentersamfundet -- har ingen enkel
> oppskrift på hvordan kvinner skal få mer å si på internetts
> debattsider. -- Kanskje skulle vi samle mange kvinner -- og presse
> gjennom vår stil -- uavhengig av hva den dominante gruppen måtte si og
> mene, spør hun, men stiller samtidig spørsmål om det virkelig er den
> rette veien å gå. -- Problemet er at dette er noe som har gjennomsyret
> vårt patriarkalske samfunn i alle år. De forsvarsmekanismene som
> utløses, er ofte -- ja nesten alltid -- ubevisste, og dette lar seg ikke
> løse i en håndvending.
>
> Hun legger vekt på at det som er viktig nå, er å belyse hva som er
> problemet -- og hvordan de forskjellige mekanismene virker -- og
> bevisstgjøre seg dette. -- Dernest er det viktig å se på hvorfor det er
> som det er. Dette er noe det forøvrig blir gjort mye interessant
> forskning på i dag, sier Janne Bromseth, og ser med spenning fram til
> å følge utviklingen av kvinners bruk av data.
>
> av Ole-Henrik Larssen
****************************
> July/August
> 1996
> CYBERSELFISH
>
> by Paulina Borsook
> Silicon valley, one of the country's biggest recipients
> of government largesse, would like to bite the hand
> that feeds it. Paulina Borsook, a Wired magazine
> contributing writer, reports on the growth of
> cyberlibertarianism.
>
> I grew up in Pasadena, California, attending
> school with the sons and daughters of fathers
> (yup, in those days it was only dads) who worked at
> Caltech and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. These
> parents of my classmates were my first encounter with
> technologists, and they were, to a man, good liberals.
> These were the kind of folks who would have Pete Seeger
> do a benefit concert for our school. They voted New
> Deal Democratic; they were the grateful recipients of
> all the money the U.S. government had poured into
> science, post-Sputnik; they had a sense that the
> government could do and had done good things, from
> building Boulder Dam to pulling off the Manhattan
> Project to putting a man on the moon. And, as
> beneficiaries of government largesse in ways they were
> well aware of -- from the GI Bill to interest
> deductions for home mortgages to the vast expansion of
> government funding for R&D -- they felt society in
> general, as manifested in the actions of the
> government, had an obligation to help everyone in it.
>
> They were also fully aware of the positive value of
> government regulation, from the reliability of the
> FDA-mandated purity of pharmaceutical-grade chemicals
> they used in their research to the enforcement of
> voting rights for African-Americans in the South. And
> what with the very visible air quality problems in the
> Los Angeles basin (their government-funded studies had
> recorded the smog death of trees in the encircling San
> Gabriel Mountains by the 1960s), they were able to see
> the benefits of regulation in the local ban on trash
> incineration, the regulation of refinery effluents in
> the L.A. area, and the implementation of federally
> stipulated smog devices on automobiles.
>
> So it came as a shock, when, 20 years later, I stumbled
> into the culture of Silicon Valley (my first job at a
> software company, 1981; first job at a computer
> magazine, 1983; attendance at the first commercial
> conference devoted to the Internet, 1987; token
> feminist/humanist/skeptic on the masthead of Wired
> magazine, 1993). Although the technologists I
> encountered there were the liberals on social issues I
> would have expected (pro-choice, as far as abortion;
> pro-diversity, as far as domestic partner benefits;
> inclined to sanction the occasional use of recreational
> drugs), they were violently lacking in compassion,
> ravingly anti-government, and tremendously opposed to
> regulation.
>
> These are the inheritors of the greatest government
> subsidy of technology and expansion in technical
> education the planet has ever seen; and, like the
> ungrateful adolescent offspring of immigrants who have
> made it in the new country, they take for granted the
> richness of the environment in which they have
> flourished, and resent the hell out of the constraints
> that bind them. And, like privileged, spoiled teenagers
> everywhere, they haven't a clue what their existence
> would be like without the bounty showered on them.
> These high-tech libertarians believe the private sector
> can do everything -- but, of course, R&D is something
> that cannot by any short-term measurement meet the test
> of the marketplace, the libertarians' measure of all
> things. They decry regulation--except without it, there
> would be no mechanism to ensure profit from
> intellectual property, without which entrepreneurs
> would not get their payoffs, nor would there be
> equitable marketplaces in which to make their sales.
>
> When I was asked to participate in a survey on the politics of the
> Net, the questions presumed respondents were libertarian, but
> charitably gave space for outdated contrarian views. When Byte
> magazine's former West Coast bureau chief wrote an editorial mildly
> advocating government subsidy for basic Net access for elementary
> schools and public libraries, the only response he got was outraged
> flames from libertarians.
>
> And when Self magazine started an online gun control conference on The
> Well, an electronic bulletin board and Internet gateway smack in the
> middle of tree-hugging, bleeding-heart-liberal, secular-humanist
> Northern California, opinions ranged from mildly to rabidly anti-gun
> control. This passionate hatred of regulation, so out of whack with
> the opinions of the man and woman on the street in my own
> bioregion/demographic, showed me how different a place the online,
> high-tech world is from the terrestrial community to which it is
> nominally tethered -- even an online world with countercultural roots
> as strong as those of The Well.
>
> Mike Godwin, staff counsel for the online watchdog group Electronic
> Frontier Foundation, has written in Wired magazine, "Libertarianism
> (pro, con, and internal faction fights) is the primordial net.news
> discussion topic. Anytime the debate shifts somewhere else, it must
> eventually return to this fuel source." In a decentralized community
> where tolerance and diversity are the norm (no one questions online
> special-interest chat rooms devoted to consensual S&M or Wiccan nature
> mysticism or...), it is damned peculiar that there seems to be no
> place for political points of view other than the libertarian.
>
> ..... true stories .....
>
> I think this all very strange, because, of course, I know that without
> the government, there would be no Internet (majorly funded by the
> government until recently).
>
> Further, there would be no microprocessor industry, the fount of
> Silicon Valley's prosperity (early computers sprang out of
> government-funded electronics research). There would also be no major
> research universities cranking out qualified tech workers: Stanford,
> Berkeley, MIT, and Carnegie Mellon get access to incredibly cheap
> state-of-the-art equipment plus R&D, courtesy of tax-reduced
> academic-industrial consortia and taxpayer-funded grants and
> fellowships.
>
> But libertarianism thrives in high-tech, nonetheless. I spent a week
> at the plushy Lake Tahoe getaway of a Silicon Valley guy who's made
> it. We argued and butted heads with great civility -- but perhaps the
> most Found moment came when he complained about how the local Tahoe
> building code wouldn't let him alter the silhouette of his megachalet.
> I nodded sympathetically, yet pointed out that in Los Angeles, where
> there were no such planning guidelines until recently, plutocrats
> often tore down existing structures and rebuilt monstrosities that
> take up the entire lot, blocking their neighbors' views. He looked at
> me, puzzled; he hadn't considered that possibility. Obviously, he had
> never heard of the tragedy of the commons, where one sheep too many
> consuming more than its share of common resources destroys the whole;
> nor had he thought much about what participating in a community means.
>
> Of course, I was also thinking about the fine system of interstate
> highways that made his trip from Silicon Valley to the Sierra a
> breeze; the sewage and water-treatment facilities that allowed his
> toddlers to drink safely out of the tap in his kitchen; the fabric
> contents-and-care labels on the sheets and towels freshly laundered
> for each new houseguest; and the environmental regulations that keep
> Tahoe the uniquely blue, gorgeous, and safe refuge it is -- precisely
> the lateral, invisible, benign effects of the government he constantly
> railed against.
>
> ..... i got mine .....
>
> The nexus of libertarianism and high-tech in the Silicon Valley will
> come to matter more and more, because it involves lots and lots of
> money (companies with valuations rivaling General Motors'). And it's a
> wealth of tremendous self-insulation: I routinely attend parties
> peopled by digerati in their 20s and early 30s who, in addition to
> their desirable arrogance of youth, have a frightening invulnerability
> (their skills in demand, the likelihood of cashing out high).
>
> One of these, a friend newly venture-funded to capitalize on Net
> advertising, commented that the economy was basically in good shape
> (after all, no one she knew was struggling) -- and then wondered why,
> when she ran a help wanted ad for an office manager in the San
> Francisco Chronicle, she got so many applicants, so many of whom had
> advanced degrees and employment histories of authority and
> responsibility.
>
> Never mind people like my sister, who, with her biology degree from
> Stanford and master's in public health, has rarely found a steady job
> with benefits in the last 10 years, and has at times resorted to
> desperation moves such as selling flowers at subway stations to
> prevent foreclosure on her house (wrong gender; wrong skill set:
> teaching, public health, environmental concerns -- just the kind of
> "middle manager/government bureaucrat" so despised by
> technolibertarians).
>
> Or my ex-boyfriend, the English professor (B.A. honors, University of
> Chicago; Ph.D., Cornell), who was lucky to find a job where he earned
> about what I made at my first technical writing gig 15 years ago
> (wrong skill set: all that subjective liberal-arts-flake crap no one
> cares about. After all, anyone can publish on the Web, and, as MIT
> Media Lab's Archduke Nicholas Negroponte points out, what's the future
> of books anyway?).
>
> And what would the technolibertarians make of the New York Times
> front-page series on the chronic, structural unemployment of masses of
> skilled middle-class workers, folks theoretically immune to being
> rendered redundant in the '90s? Or the heartbreaking stories I read
> about blue-collar workers (haven't they had the good taste to become
> extinct by now?) in the house organ of the United Auto Workers (the
> National Writers Union is part of the UAW). I imagine the
> technolibertarians thinking, "Well, the blue-collar miscreants, it's
> their own damned inertial Second Wave thinking that's got them
> unemployed." But what would they say about the white-collar jobless,
> who, no doubt, were working with computers?
>
> ..... the true revenge of the nerds .....
>
> As surely as power follows wealth, those who make money decide that
> society, having rewarded their random combination of brains and luck
> in one sphere, should pay attention to them in another. And so,
> high-technocrats are beginning to try to influence the world beyond
> VDTs.
>
> But what will result if the people who want to shape public policy
> know nothing about history or political science or, most importantly,
> how to interact with other humans? Programmers, and those who know how
> to make money off them, mostly find it easier to interact in e-mail
> than IRL (in real life), and are often not good at picking up the
> cues, commonplaces, and patterns of being that civilians use to
> communicate, connect, and operate in groups.
>
> The convergence between libertarianism and high-tech has created the
> true revenge of the nerds: Those whose greatest strengths have not
> been the comprehension of social systems, appreciation of the
> humanities, or acquaintance with history, politics, and economics have
> started shaping public policy. Armed with new money and new celebrity
> -- juice -- they can wreak vengeance on those by whom they have felt
> diminished.
>
> Implicit is their assumption that those who excel by working with the
> tangible and not the virtual (e.g., manufacturing and servicing actual
> stuff) are to be considered societally superfluous. Technolibertarians
> applaud the massive industrial dislocations taking place in affluent
> North America, comparable to the miseries of the Scottish enclosures
> or the Industrial Revolution.
>
> Compare my father's generation: My father succeeded through his era's
> version of the arriviste drive so celebrated by technolibertarian
> theorists such as George Gilder, Silicon Valley's John Knox. One of
> eight children in an immigrant family, second in his class in medical
> school when there were still quotas on Jews (the usual story), my
> father, like the majority of his age-cohorts, never had contempt for
> those who couldn't find a way to work the system as he had. He
> believed in social safety nets and as much government regulation (for
> consumer health and safety, for example) as possible to aid ordinary
> people. It would have made no sense to him to adopt the stance of
> today's technolibertarian nouveau riche (or even more scarily, wannabe
> nouveau riche). And in this he was not exceptional.
>
> ..... the ultimate escape .....
>
> It's not clear how all this evolved: a combination, no doubt, of the
> money to be made by developing technology in the private sector, the
> general worldwide resurgence of libertarianism, maybe some previously
> undocumented deleterious effect of the toxic byproducts of
> semiconductor manufacturing that have leached into the aquifers below
> Sunnyvale. But there are some worrisome consequences to consider as
> technology touches more and more people's lives -- and those who rule
> are increasingly the ones who understand it, own it, create it, and
> profit by it.
>
> * Protecting privacy. Technolibertarians rightfully worry about Big
> Bad Government, yet think commerce unfettered can create all
> things bright and beautiful -- and so they disregard the real
> invader of privacy: Corporate America seeking ever-better ways to
> exploit the Net, to sell databases of consumer purchases and
> preferences, to track potential customers however it can.
>
> * Skimping on philanthropy. In Silicon Valley and its regional
> outposts (Seattle, Austin), it's not even a joke, not even an
> embarrassment, that there's so little corporate philanthropy,
> except where enlightened self-interest can come to bear (donating
> computers to schools, contributing to a local computer museum).
> High-tech employees rank among the lowest of any industry sector
> for giving to charity -- especially dismaying given their
> education, job security, lifetime earnings potential, and annual
> income.
>
> It's an issue of culture: Unlike other educated professionals,
> who see good works and support of the arts as symbols of having
> arrived or as payback to the society that has treated them well,
> the average geek espouses a world where the only art would be
> that which has withstood the test of the marketplace (Dong
> Kingman museums? Leroy Nieman traveling exhibitions?), and where
> there is no value to be derived in experiencing a painting in
> person (that is, in a museum) as opposed to on CD-ROM.
>
> And since these guys honestly can't perceive the difference
> between a Lichtenstein and some soi-disant computer art exercise
> in primary-colored fractals, courtesy of Kai's Power Tools --
> they don't see anything out there worth subsidizing. A total
> sweetheart of my acquaintance, the smart and aesthetically
> sensitive creative director of a hot hot hot Web design studio,
> not only hadn't read The Magic Mountain, he hadn't heard of it.
> Nor of its author, Thomas Mann, a Nobel laureate and one of the
> great novelists of the century, an early multivoiced
> postmodernist if ever there were one. And perish the thought that
> anyone should need the services of an AIDS hospice, without the
> benefit of a few thousand shares of founders' stock in Intel or
> Cisco to cash in.
>
> * Gutting the environment. High-tech also has tremendously negative
> environmental impacts: Manufacturing its plastics and
> semiconductors is a remarkably toxic and resource-depleting
> affair. No surprise, then, that high-tech companies increasingly
> manufacture them in countries without environmental and worker
> safety regulations, or in U.S. locales where these regulations
> are more lax. This way, the guys in area codes 415 and 408 who
> like to go telemarking in the Shasta Trinity Alps or bouldering
> in the Desolation Wilderness don't have to confront the
> opportunity cost of their wealth: the poisoning of the world due
> to the ever-expanding reach of industrialization. And they never
> consider that one of the reasons the whole world (including the
> immigrant engineers working in Silicon Valley) wants to be here
> is that environmental regulation and a culture of
> government-mandated conservation (however imperfectly executed)
> have made the United States probably the safest, healthiest, and,
> in some ways, most pristine place on earth.
>
> * Ignoring cities. The anti-communitarian outlook is an outcropping
> of how suburban an industry high-tech is. The quintessential
> edge-city business, high-tech celebrates people operating as
> monads, free agents who work in industrial parks and aspire, when
> they cash out in an initial public offering, to telecommute from
> horse country, puma country, or even from within the
> spare-bedroom-cum-home-office located in a half- million-dollar
> Eichler ranch house on a street close to El Camino Real. Never
> mind that most start-up/self-employed/telecommuting Internet
> entrepreneurs are concentrated in New York, San Francisco, and
> Los Angeles, thriving on the grit/density/frisson/charge of urban
> areas.
>
> ..... new robber barons .....
>
> All this matters desperately: With the libertarian agenda at work, the
> very things that fed the boom economy in intellectual property -- the
> last great thing the United States has done -- will disappear without
> more investment in infrastructure and health and safety and education
> and every other good legacy of the New Deal and the Great Society. In
> 20 or 30 years, the United States may well cease creating the one
> commodity that produces a trade surplus and new jobs.
>
> And the sorrow for the bottom 90 percent of society -- what Apple
> Computer once disingenuously called "the rest of us" -- will be that
> once again we may deceive ourselves. We make goo-goo eyes over the
> megabucks high-tech generates, but we ignore the price. Just as
> 19th-century timber and cattle and mining robber barons made their
> fortunes from public resources, so are technolibertarians creaming the
> profits from public resources -- from the orderly society that has
> resulted from the wise use of regulation and public spending. And they
> have neither the wisdom nor the manners nor the mindset to give
> anything that's not electronic back.
> -----
> San Francisco writer Paulina Borsook has published essays in Suck, MIT
> Press' Leonardo and the Seal Press anthology Wired Women.
> http://www.motherjones.com/mother_jones/JA96/borsook.html