Guess you haven't heard a lot about Netactivism in the Netherlands, so I'm going to tell you some tales from the Lowlands: The Breaking of the State Publishers' monopoly, How to fight the Church of Scientology on Internet, and the Launch of McSpotlight (performed with some Dutch assistance). These inspiring examples explore the boundaries of what is possible on Internet. Netactivism requires creative use of any prospect Internet offers. On the other hand more content on the Net can not be provided without the human factor of fantasy...
Let me introduce the players to you. First there is the agency I
work for, called bureau Jansen & Janssen, which stands for Thomson
& Thomson, the two stumbling detictives featured in the Tintin
comics. Jansen & Janssen is a spin off from the strong squatter
movement of Amsterdam in the eighties.
Activists had to deal with the police and secret services a lot,
and the bureau started collecting stragegies and contra-
expertise. Jansen & Janssen started in 1985 and soon grew into an
archive on police tactics with particular interest in
analysing how the force deals with critical powers that be. We
published our research on how the secret service tried to
infiltrate the activist movement, and on how they blackmailed
asylumseekers to work for them.
Jansen & Janssen kept up with the changes of times and in 1994
revealed how private detectives collect information about lobby
groups and sell it to the multinationals involved. Other areas
which we have been interested in for many years are the change in
police tactics in fighting organized crime, the influence of
foreign agencies on seizing drugs traffic and the shift towards
more intelligence gathering, by the police. But on this subject,
we were too early. (Or haunted by our radical roots, which we
never cut off and never will.) People took us serious, but to a
certain extent. With some stories, we just did not get access to
the media.
This was the situation up until some two years ago when a public
prosecuter in Amsterdam found out that a special squad team, the
Interregional Research Team (IRT), was de facto exploiting a drug
trafficking line. The police worked with an informant who was
allowed to grow into someone really important in order to
infiltrate a big gang. The police looked the other way when
containers full of soft drugs arrived from abroad. In the end, the
police were involved in organizing import and export of all kind
of drugs, including Ecstacy (XTC) and cocaine. The public
prosecuter ordered this very special criminal investigation method
to stop. Immediately. If only he had known what he had started on
that day in December 1993....
Fights between departments, between commissionairies, between
cities, between the police and the Public Prosecutor. Officials
refused to talk to each other, policemen involved claimed their
lives were in anger - and that of their informants' were too. The
first official investigation into this didn't really
elucidate what was going on, not only because a certain part of
the final report remained secret. Nevertheless the crisis was
taken seriously, the Minister of Internal Affairs and the
Minister of Justice both resigned. Because further investigation
seemed necessairy, an official parliamentairy inquiry commission
was set up: the Van Traa commission.
This is our second player. The Van Traa commission (named after
their chairman) was staffed with specialists from universities and
the field. They interviewed a lot of people involved, and the
public part of the hearings were broadcase live on television in
October 1995.
People were shocked to hear about what was going on, and how
little the higher reaches had known about it. It seemed as though
nobody would take responsibility for what had happened. The police
had been told to fight organized crime, and to go out and get some
big guys - and that's what they had been doing. The use of
undogmatic investigation methods was not really illegal. They
reasoned that because they were not mentioned in the law, the
methods were not forbidden.
The results of the Commission Van Traa were published in 13
volumes (more than 5000 pages) and sold together in a box, for
695,- guilders. A cd-rom with the same information (accessed using
an impressive search engine and hyperlinked keywords and notes)
was available for another f 650,- As the paper-version had no
index whatsoever, people where in fact forced to buy the package
deal for over 1000,- guilders. The publishers were the SDU - the
former State Publishing House who were recently
privatised. They are the third player in our game.
The price of the report caused much controversy as these documents are in fact Hansards of Parliament, which should be freely available to the public. After a plea on the opinion page of our most serious daily paper, NRC Handelsblad (bit like the Times), to put the Van Traa report on Internet, we decided it was time to act. We took the challenge and within a week, the job was done.
Some Perl-specialists hacked the cd-rom and managed to free the
stripped texts from the processed version. The only thing we lost
were the hyperlinks and the notes (a bloody shame!). But this was
the only way to do it if we were to avoid legal problems. The
Hansards of Parliament are free of copyright - the Law makes an
exception for the sake of democracy. The SDU has claims on the
edition work they do, but not on the texts as such. We saw the
hole and jumped right in to it!
The stripped texts were turned into html-pages, divided into neat
paragraphs made accessible by a search engine, and that was that.
'Monopoly of the SDU broken, Van Traa report on Internet.' We made
headlines on the frontpage of the same, very serious
newspaper. The managing director of the SDU admitted he had to
congratulate us with the job. The Secretairy of State for Home
Affairs wrote a letter to the paper which indicated he should have
wanted to do the same, but that he was too late. He stressed the
importance of accessibility of government information, and
anounced a pilot project of using teletext on the local cable -
because the masses don't have computers- for this (imagine, 5000
pages, each divided up in 4 quarters, to be handled with remote
control).
Who would have thought Jansen & Janssen would be praised for
helping Dutch Society!?! The funny side was that, within a week,
we had gone completely mainstream - accepted by Parliament and
known in every far out corner of the country. It was a strange
experience. Sure the timing was right. We interfered in a
discussion we had only heard of vaguely, but we happened to pull
the right string at the right time.
The monopoly of the SDU was a thorn in the flesh of many people at
all kind of levels. This tiny push was just the thing needed. Two
weeks after the launch of our Van Traa homepage, the SDU announced
they would put all Hansards of Parliament on line, starting the
first of May. For free. (but as a GIF-picture, without search
possiblities..)
But the story does not end there. One month later, the
Rijksrecherche, (a kind of Internal Affairs - the police of the
police) finished their research into the affairs of the criminal
investigation department where the two drugdealing officers
worked. Internal Affairs Reports usually are secret. But because
the results where handed out to the Parliament, the status
changed. Politicians were under great pressure to disclose this
report, and within a week they had to give in. But 'made public'
didn't mean open to everybody yet. The report - 500 pages of
completely shocking details - was availables to members of
Parliament; but not more then two copies for each party.
Journalists had it, but wanted to wring out every last drop before
giving it away.
Putting it on the Net was far more work this time. It had to be
scanned in by hand over the weekend, and corrected with
WordPerfect. As we didn't have a very intelligent version of a
scan-program, there were a lot of mistakes, I can asure you! But
we did it, and it was a success.
And, because we are trying to grow up, we decided we had to try
and make some money out of this big joke. Last week our Van Traa
cd-rom saw the light of day. A complete copy of our Van Traa-site,
the Internal Affairs report, and a selection of other works of
buro Jansen & Janssen. All this for the price of only f 49,50. The
sale of the cd-rom raises another question: will Netvertising
work, or not? The cd-rom is only available by order, and in some
selective bookshops. Will we go bankrupt, or do we get rich in the
end? It goes without saying that buro Jansen & Janssen is a no-
budget initiative, surviving on too little payment for jobs and
small subsidies, doing most of the work for free and for the good
case.
I really liked doing these things, even though it involved a lot of crap work, short nights and unexpected problems. It was so inspiring and yet so simple. This action was at the same time a natural continuation of Jansen & Janssen work, and an entirely new development. We have always loved disclosing secret reports on criminal investigation, but had never used Internet for this purpose before.
The action involved methods typical for the (Dutch) activist
movement we come from - like breaking in and publishing. But
nowadays hacking a cd-rom and putting it on your homepage is easy!
Once you have the right people together at the right time, you
take yourself seriously and it's done in no time.
And it felt so good to break to monopoly of a -privatised- state
organ, and to use Internet to make information public that is
supposed to be public anyway. By just doing something, making a
statement that didn't need any further introduction or
explanation.
Our site meant a big step forward in talks between authorities on
different levels and on organizing access for the public by means
of electronic media. And it was an event welcomed by MP's to get
the average couch potato more involved in politics. Our secret
agenda was really to deepen the discussion on
investigation methods. If more people had access to details about
the affairs of modern policing, this would eventually lead to a
debate on more essential points. But this hope was in vain, I'm
afraid.
Then again, it's hard to rate our influence on the discussion.
This is what Internet was meant for, people said, and I couldn't
agree more. In thinking about the meaning of this action, I guess
the value of it is in adding a dimension. The breaking of this
information monopoly could not have been done -at least not so
easily, or not without problems with the law- without Internet. On
the other hand, the action added something to the ideas of the use
of Internet and so was very inspiring.
Internet was involved from the very beginning. Since the start of the trial, in June 1994, extracts from the transcripts of the hearings were being published on the Net, and McDonald's didn't like it at all. The case was becoming the biggest public relation disaster in the corporate history. Just after the trial celebrated it's first birthday, McDonald's tried to reach a settlement with the defendants - the company had had enough and wanted out. When the parties couldn't get to any kind of agreement, McDonald's choose the strategy of obstruction. I find it extremely significant that their first target was the publishing of the protocols. McDonald's had made an agreement at the beginning of the trial, that they would pay 300 pounds a day to have the transcripts of each day in Court ready by seven in the evening. (To wait for the Courts Office to do this would take three weeks.) Until day 156, the court and the McLibel 2 each got a free copy. Then it stopped. McDonald's wanted the Defendants to promise that they would only use the transcripts themselves. 'What it would prevent, and this is what this is all about, is their disseminating it (any transcript extract) to journalists and the McLibel Suport Campaign and similar like-minded', said McDonald's QC Richard Rampton. Not to mention, putting them on the Net. The defendants started a fund-raising campaign in order to pay the 300 pounds to get each day's transcripts.
Before McSpotlight, there also was the McLibel mailing list.
Already a big success. Campaigners from anywhere keep each other
up-to-date with all of the activities in the world-wide Anti-
McDonald's campaign. The McLibel Trial became the virtual centre
of targeting the Hamburger King. Suburbians against McDrives,
loothers in Kopenhagen, Ghandi-inspired Fins discussing with their
local McDonald, India against the invasion of McDonalds -all
connected through Internet.
The mailing list is yet another excellent example of Internet
adding a certain value to a campaign. The list connects otherwise
relatively isolated protesters of all kinds. Internet helps to
create a movement on a global scale. People who act in their own
environment and with their own means, realize that their
activities are part of a larger context. (Do I sound holistic
here? please not!) Could the postman do the same? No, not really.
Time delays, and the lack of direct contact would be frustrating.
The advantages of being able to react immediately, and to support
& advise people all over the world for the price of a local phone
call, are immeasurable for campaigns such as this one.
There is no doubt that McDonald's underestimated their opponent.
The sueing of London Greenpeace backfired, but I'm sure they had
never expected anything like McSpotlight...
A WWW-site with all the information about the longest running
civil case in Britain ever, and more. Complete with an audio
Guided Tour narrated by the McLibel 2, taking visitors round the
key pages on the site - the case, the company, the circulum vitae
of all the people involved in the trial and the coverage in the
media. I particular like the cartoon section! The issues treated
in Court are being dug out to the bottom:
* Nutrition - Can a diet high in saturated fat and sugar lead to
heart disease and cancer?
* Advertising - Are children being manipulated by advertising?
* McDonald's International Expansion - Where will they invade next?
* Employment - Environment - Are McDonald's responsible for damage
to rainforests?
* Animals - Recycling & Waste - Multinationals and Global Trade,
* Freedom of Speech/Libel laws - Capitialism & the Alternatives.
There are so many links, and possibilities, and yet the site is so
well organized and accesable. And so very well designed....I still
get impressed, everytime I pay a visit.
The brand new 'Debating Room' is another Internet innovation to be
found on McSpotlight. It is essentially a moderated discussion
group within the website that means that any visitor can take part
in the discussion about the campaign against McDonald's. A very
good idea is the Campaign section which offers groups from all
over the world to present themselves and their material.
Translations of current Anti-McDonald's leaflet can be printed out in any desired language, what a service! This service is something of the categorie 'added value', you could call it an Internet speciality. In combination with all the information McSpotlight provides, it is the first worldwide activist manual. Facts and figures available, as well as a platform for publicity and support from all over the world. It makes campaigning against McDonald's not only pretty easy, but also very attractive. Not to mention the surplus of the site as an easy way to keep the public and the press informed about what's happening in Court. The media coverage of McSpotlight was overwelming, and is still going on. USA Today, Times of India, Chicago Tribune, Stern, Channel 4, BBC, the Guardian, Daily Mail etcetera. Only four weeks after its launch McSpotlight celebrated its millionth visitor - including 2000 from McDonalds.com in the first week. McDonald's decided against taking action to try to ban the site initially, but apparently had second thoughts. In April they filed a plaintiff (added to the running case), which was too funny to be taken seriously. The Defendants are being accused of taking part in a 'photo-opportunity' outside McDonald's Leicester Square store and a press conference at the Cyberia Cafe in London. McDonald's point is the fact that the Defendants took part in publishing further the challenged factsheet.
So this is how McDonald's defines the site: 'On Friday, February 16, 1996, the Defendants publicly launched the 'McSpotlight' World-Wide Internet Web Site having on it, among other material, a version of the leaflet complained of.' This is what I call the understatement of the year. I think this is the first case in court in which people are being accused of 'encouraging users of the Internet to access the Website where they are likely to read the same' (i.e. the leaflet).
The final straw for McDonald's could well be the latest feature on McSpotlight - and as far as I know, this is the first time anyone on Internet has done this - in which, they use the 'Frames' browsing system to hijack McDonald's own corporate website. On one side of your screen you have McDonald's shiny, expensive website, and on the other you have a detailed deconstruction and criticism from McSpotlight. McDonald's carefully-constructed PR nonsense is taken apart word by word, and as McSpotlight contains 25 Mb of detailed information about McDonald's, they simply add links to the scientific reports, or witness statments or whatever, that support their arguments. McSpotlight is the perfect example of how to combine safe & familiar activist methods of campaigning in the street - sneeking around in the dark hours at night - with using the new techniques of modern times in cyberspace.
Steven Fishman was one of them, he worked in the department of Scientology that had to deal with defectors. So he had some stories to tell when he left the sect. Scientology followed him around the world with slander, libel and lawsuits. But Fishman didn't give in. He even used the written material of the high- level courses, called OT's, as evidence in one of the cases in Court. This in fact made the so called secrets accessible for the public. They consist of complete nonsenses, stories about UFO's, immortallity and the bad things in your body you have to conquer, and kill, which is, of course, not possible without paid counseling from the Church. Now that the OT's were in the Court's library, the holy secret could have been a sell out. But not for Scientology. They set up teams to work in shifts and study the affidavits in the library, so nobody else could ask for them. After a year or so Scientology managed to get a court order to remove the papers from the library again.
And that is where Internet comes in.
People started putting the Fishman-affidavit on their homepage,
and Scientology came after them. Threatened providers, sued them,
just to cause a lot of problems and scare others off. But not the
Dutchies.
When Scientology found out about the first Dutch homepage, they
started a procedure against xs4all. Before anything was clear,
they got themselves a search warrant and barged into the xs4all
headquarters to seizure all property. There was a baillif, some
American officials, computer specialists and a lot of
Scientologists -twelve in total. They wanted to draw up an
inventory, to use to prove xs4all's credibility if the case ever
went to court - and they would win. (Silly thing is, they only
wrote down the pc's in the main office, and forgot to go and check
out the engine room with hundreds of modems and the big Unix
systems).
This was a bridge too far. People who heard about the raid were
stupefied, indignant, and extremely angry. Some of them started
putting the Fishman affidavit on their own home page. The writer
Karin Spaink took a lead in organizing the protests and within a
week one hundred people from all over the country had an
addition to their homepage. Karin Spaink started a mailinglist to
keep all those individuals informed, and that was more then
necessary.
All kind of people joined, forming an extraordinairy occasional
coalition. Journalists, a liberal MP, commercial broadcasting
stations, people at universities, catholics, christians,
activists, you name it. They all had accounts with different
providers, so they were kind of hard to get. I am sure this
coalition would not have survived a reallife meeting, let alone a
discussion on the strategy. Some of them would have detested
eachother at first sight, just because the way they looked, or
smelled or talked. But on the Net, everybody joined for their own
reason, for the freedom of speech, the freedom of religion, or
just to tease Scientology. And this was the strength of the
action. Karin Spaink was the spokeswoman in the press and
coordinated the legal steps. A newsgroup was founded to discuss
important matters, with sympathisers as well, but the list was
moderated and closed. This worked, and it really helped.
Scientology pulled out all the stops to reduce the damage. When
persuading didn't help, they started threatening providers, and
harrassing some of the participants. The liberal MP for instance,
got so many phonecalls from CoS, that he felt forced to remove the
Fishman papers temporarily because he couldn't get on with his
work. They even tried to frame Karin Spaink and some people from
xs4all in a setup so complicated it would take hours to explain.
(Someone -said to be-working for the American Embassy offered them
compromising information about Scientology in order to help them
fight the Church. But soon it came out he had been in touch with
Scientology before he talked to xs4all). They started to build
their mirror palace, to play people off against one another. But
it didn't really work here.
Scientology started a procedure for violating copyrights, against
several providers and Karin Spaink. As this would be the first
case on copyright & Internet, some people thought it a shame it
had to be a Scientology case. Because the principle of the matter
could easily be confused with their smoke screen of freedom of
religion. The occasional coalition hired a good laywer, still
remembered for his work for revolutionaires in the seventies. The
Fishman Affidavit was printed on old fashioned posters (pure text
layout, it's quite a lot of letters..) which were soon seen in the
centre of the city, specially around CoS-headquarters. They had
their people sneeking around with spray and lime to repaint the
posters. A date was set for the Court hearing, at the request of
Scientology months after the procedure started. Their biggest
problem was the secrecy of the challenged papers. In order to
claim the copyright, they would have to come forward with the
orginals. And thus, break their own secrecy.
They tried to solve this dilemma by hiring a public notary to
comparise the orginal documents and the Internet version. This
took him a long time.
Two days before the case was due in Court, the very night the
Fishman supportgroup held a solidarity night in the Milkyway (well
known to every smoking visitor of Amsterdam), Scientology
announced that they were withdrawing the case. The notary had not
been able to declare the two documents were exactly identical.
Goodbye copyright claim.
This support gathering was a big success. Celebrities read out
horrifying statements from ex members, and comical parts of the so
called secret wisdom of the Church. Star of the show was David
Fishman himself, flown in from the United States. He was
completely flabbergasted as he hardly knew about the Internet
struggle about his Affidavit before a friend introduced him to the
Net a short time before. It sure was inspiring for him to be in
Amsterdam. And he was not the only Yank present. Scientology had
brought the top of their public relation staff - easily identified
by their stiff, aloof faces.
Isn't it funny, the night in the Milkyway was the top of the campaign? The fight with Scientology originally was a pure Internet event. The challenge was, whether or not, something could be published, on the Net. Support came through newsgroups and connected people in the United States, and the campaign spread, around the world (to Hungary for instance). The primary attack was against a provider, which aroused the anger of Dutch users of the Net. The coalition they formed wouldn't have survived reallife meetings, but florished in Cyberspace. This was new. But then again, the campaign couldn't do without the Old Media. A case in Court, a laywer from the seventies, a blackbook by sect-watchers and paperprints postered in the street. A sole window smashed, a meeting in a hippyjoint and good coverage in the papers. And Scientology brought out another law suit, we won, and they brought out a new one. This is a neverending story.
We felt the need to structuralize this chaos.
As soon as we started collecting newspaper cuttings, articles,
books and brochures we also started using a computer to make the
files of cuttings accessible.
The history of buro Jansen & Janssen can be read as the history of
archiving with the help of computers.
Our first computer was an Apple-II, (followed by XT's and AT's)
with very simple software. The facts about each article: title,
date and source where connected with a few keywords, and the name
and code of the place it was going to be filed, and could be found
again. Later attempts to refine the software focussed on the
layout and on trying to make it seem more intelligent. As the
archive and the amount of people working there grew, the
collection of keywords expanded like a malignant tumor.
Alternative spelling, plural or not, use dots or don't, not to
mention the equivalents: using different meanings for the same
thing - or the other way around. All problems that may sound
familiar to those using search engines on Internet.
The ideal software should help make us more distinctive and rule
out the options not allowed. With this tool the search options
could be refined, and our computer program would be the best there
was. At least that is what our second programmer promised us. As
did the third, and the fourth.
Looking back, I think we were too early. The people that were
willing to help us in fact needed us as a project to improve their
own skills. Small modules were completed, but admitting the work
was way beyond their level appeared to be impossible.
This course of events had dramatic consequences for the work on
the archive. In the beginning we had a dream... of getting the
clipping archive up to date (One Day) and of adding modules to
include our brochure collection - not to mention the extending
library and all the unselected items mentioned earlier.
In reality we faced arrears that kept haunting us over the years.
Waiting for a new version of the software often meant the old one
could not be used for a while. No input into the
computer meant no impulse to continue cutting newspapers and
magazines. Of course there were enough reasons to ignore the
necessary paperwork - like exciting research or other outdoor
activities - and we have managed to work away arrears of six
months or more, several times...
The cutting of mainstream papers has become less important over
the years anyway. With the entry of digital versions of papers, on
line or on CDrom, the oldfashioned handicraft will be
superfluous in no time, meaning that we'd only have to
concentrate on the specialized press.
On the whole we've given up the ambition for completeness. It is
no longer a goal to have our archive ready for presentation at
some later date. Jansen & Janssen is archiving present time issues
- we are not a newsservice, or server. Lack of energy, personpower
and money made us more realistic in our priorities. The work will
never be finished or ready for presentation - it will be
permanently Under Construction. This goes for both the archive and
the software making it accessible.
It might be usefull to stress once more that this concerned only
a *part* of the collection of the Jansen & Janssen archive. Only
the newspaper clippings. So putting the archive on line, would
have meant presenting only a part of our collection.
If we get questions for information, we prefer to present the
results of a queste through the entire archive. In our case, the
computer has never been more than *one* of the ways to search our
archive. Going through the files by hand always proved to be a
rewarding: most parts of the library were not included in the
system, and through the years a shadow system of temporary files
and personal drawers made the quest even more complicated.
Finding sources is never enough, it is the combination of facts &
figures that makes the story. It is the extra input of research
that turns bare information into content.
Never underestimate the human factor!
It goes without saying that Jansen & Janssen has learned to value
resources like complete papers on CD-rom or the archive of
magazines put on line. Not to mention Internet as a resource as
such, as an extention of our archive, one more place to check out
in order to find answers. But content is not produced until you
combine found facts in a certain context.
The Jansen & Janssen archive is not secret, but only available for
those who know how to handle it.
This brings me to another important topic: the relation between
collecting information and what to do with it.
Making money was always a problem, but at the same time a non-
issue. Selling information was not within our power, we preferred
to remain marginal if that meant free to appoint the agenda of our
own activities.
Jansen & Janssen frequently discussed opening up our archives for
visitors, subscribers or scholars, but always decided against it
because it would mean an incredible amount of work to get the
archive up to date and to keep it that way. Most of our our
personpower would have been eaten up by this work and we prefered
to spent our time on research and writing.
Even the production of regular newsbulletins or investigative
bulletins never succeeded, which is something that I still
regret. Professionalising the management of information is a skill
we still not possess. We are forced to ask for money for research
from people who used to be fellow activists or friends now landed
in the mainstream media arena. We couldn't survive on the give-
one-take-one relationship - not financially at least. But in our
hearts, we would have rather kept things between us. This so-
called unprofessional attitude also turned against us when we
tried to get our stories published. The mainstream media scene is
unable to deal with us in a normal way - they just can't handle
the fact that we cannot be labeled into a specific corner. We
cannot be placed in the category of freelance
journalists, because our work is too much biased. On the other
hand we have proved to deliver reliable information, yet with a
tiny trace of activism. Not asking big sums - or 'fair amounts'-of
money seems to be unflattering as well these days.
Not everybody is taking us seriously all the time, but is that a
problem? The question is: do we want to be treated as grownups all
the time, or do we prefer to be the joker of the
neighbourhood every once in a while...
New media require the development of new strategies to create
public consent on important debates. The monopoly of mainstream
media is challenged by Internet. Manufactured consent,
orchestered by the traditional massmedia is fading away. On
Internet an endless amount of paradigms compete for the attention
of the electronic audience.
Growing public access to Internet has conflicting consequences.
The power of Internet is fragmented. Instead of the collective
global time of massmedia - CNN in the Gulfwar - there is the
personal time of groups and individuals. Massmedia will be
replaced by permanent archives and real-time channels for smaller
organisations or groups.
This trend offers opportunities for social and political
movements to organize themselves on a global scale - to create
real and virtual communities.
Internet offers new possibilities for groups without power,
extending their potential to influence society. Internet is
important for the distribution of information among all segments
and levels of society. It takes away physical limitations and
creates more possibilities for countries in the South.
There is a radical difference between Internet and other, older,
media. Michiel Bauwens, a philosopher from Belgium, explains
Internet can be seen as a meta-medium, a combination of massmedia
and personal media in one and the same environment. This
combination leads to completely new forms of mass
intercommunication, where television was nothing more than the
next broadcaster, only with images.
Most of the time we are not aware of the potential of these new
dimensions. We are so used to making a distinction between
internal communication, and messages coming to us through mass
media. Internet is generally seen as either (1) a means of
communication or (2) a mass medium. However Internet fulfills both
roles simultaneously. Maintaining a distinction between both roles
is crucial in underestimating the potential of Internet. This dual
role is being reflected in the seperation between the features
that have become the most important on Internet -email and the
WorldWideWeb. Most people are active users of email and passive
consumers of Web-sites. And that's all.
The intermediate world of mailinglist or newsgroups is restricted
to a more selective part of Netizens. Not to mention the
telnet-libraries, the ftp-archives trapped in dust; and
whatever happened to good old Gopher?
The reason why I keep on rambling about McSpotlight is because of
its innovative spirit: it has nothing of the boring static formats
of the average WWW-site. On the contrary, McSpotlight presents a
combination of virtually all available Internet
features in one integrated environment: I guess the spirit lies in
this combination. It shows how background information can be
presented in a creative way. An information monopoly has been
broken, by putting facts online within the correct context. The
McSpotlight site has shown a way forward for Internet. There is no
doubt that this is an example of the beauty of Internet, and that
is what we should be exploring and working on - not just dumping
endless megabytes of information into the depths of cyberspace.
The use of Internet can be extremely inspiring if it adds a
certain value to a discussion or supplies a special dimension to
a campaign. In developing ideas about political activism on the
Net it is so important to keep exploring the outer boundaries, the
borderies of the possible combinations that the system
offers.
It is the fantasy of the people who use Internet, that creates its
potential power. That's how the whole thing got started anyway,
remember?
Maybe it's time for a revaluation of the true merits of Usenet.
Back to the source!
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