Dry Under the Waterfall

[Duncan Frissell <frissell@panix.com>]

If I read *one* more bit of blather about the "information haves and have
nots" I am going to take my Streetsweeper down to my local McDonalds and
decrease the imbalance between these two groups by reducing the quantity of
the latter.  It would work just as well as any other solution.

The latest blather was in a parting shot in David Kline's last "Market
Forces" column in Hot Wired (www.wired.com).

"How can we assure that the tired, poor, huddled masses yearning to breathe
free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore, the homeless, and
tempest-tossed get onto the Net"? (My formulation -- not his.)

The answer is we can't.  I have been online every day since 1987 or so.
Since that time I have begged, pleaded, cajoled, and threatened friends,
relatives, casual acquaintances, and total strangers to get them on line.
(We are talking here about people who have the cash to easily get wired if
they care to.)  Sometimes it has worked.  Mostly it has not.  It has gotten
easier to dragoon people onto the net recently but it is still hard.  I have
taken to telling people who ask me for help setting up their computer
systems that I will only help them on the condition that they obtain an ISP
account and use it.

The usual reason for resistance (beyond a reluctance to spend money) is a
failure to appreciate the value of the online experience.  No matter how
much I plead, many people have not (in the past) been able to see what this
all was good for.  This was particularly true when online computing was a
text-only experience.  Non-readers have a problem with text.

Now, even though the net is more graphical, it still lacks appeal for 95% of
the population (or at least enough appeal to get them on to it).  Even
though we may know that many people could improve their lives and economic
standing by learning to compute and telecommunicate, they don't *know* it
and so they are not wired.  Par example -- an auto mechanic of my
acquaintance was assigned to the office where he worked to handle advanced
paper shuffling involving auto parts.  He started to use an XT to track
parts and got to like it.  He asked me for some advice and over the years
bought an XT and other machines until he now has two desktops and a laptop
networked at home.  He's on the net as well.  At work, he has become a
supervisor in part because he can use computers.  The original purchase of a
computer has been paid for many times over by increased income.

There is nothing new about this, of course.  Even without computers, it is
obvious that someone who can read and write can average more money in the
modern world than one who can't.  And yet many people refuse to learn to be
good readers.  Because they don't read, they also know less.  Sans books and
periodicals, you simply can't encounter a critical mass of ideas and
information sufficient to achieve a self-sustaining intellectual life and
the flexible abilities necessary to survive in the current economy.  For
readers, the modern economy is a piece of cake.  And reading is not a
"certification" it's a skill.  You can get it with minor help.  It takes no
money and it can't be denied to you by a racist society.  Without so much as
a high school diploma, a good reader can succeed easily in today's America
(credential-happy Europeans have to fend for themselves).

Do you doubt this.  Assume you are a good reader without credentials.  1)
Learn to type.  (Used manual portables cost $12 at the Sally Army.)  3)  Get
a temp job that requires typing.  (Lie about your high school diploma.
Since you are well dressed from the same Sally Army where you got your
typewriter and have excellent communication skills -- these things are under
your control -- it shouldn't be much trouble.)  2) Learn to word process.
(Commodore 64's and used b/w TV sets cost $25 or less at flea markets.
Running the tutorials at hourly PC rental places are pretty cheap as well.
If you are a good typist, temp agencies will cross train you on PCs so they
can rent your rear end out for more dough.) 4)  Become an experienced
(permanent) temp word processor on the night shift in the financial district
of NYC making $22.50-$27.00/hour.  ($18.00/hour -- days.)  5)  Then become a
(contract) tech writer and start to make more money.  

All that is necessary for the above is the ability to read and write
fluently which is open to all persons of normal intelligence.  But most
choose not to learn those skills (which is why they pay so much in today's
market).  Similarly, most people are not interested in learning to compute
and in getting wired. Instead they stand around an bitch about how their
incomes are flat and they can't find work when they get laid off at 50.
Hardly surprising.  They've already established that they're dead from the
neck up.  I wouldn't hire them, why should anyone else.

This is the phenomenon of the modern world.  So many people one meets are
pig ignorant.  They are sitting under a waterfall of knowledge cascading
over them in a volume unprecedented in human history and yet they contrive
not to get wet.

Meanwhile, we are told that the information have-nots are being denied
access to the wonders of the information age.  I'm very sorry but they have
already rejected the wonders of the last information age that started 541
years ago with the publication of the Mazarin Bible.  People who can't even
bother to read and write will not be helped by our cash and Al Gore's
preaching.  You can lead a horse to water but you can't make him think.

DCF

"So Louis Freeh wants expanded wiretap authority.  What's the matter?  Craig
Livingstone short of reading material"?