New Deity
Wicklein, John
New Deity ELECTRONIC NIGHTMARE by John Wicklein The Viking Press. 282 pp. $14.95. The title of his book notwithstanding, John Wicklein is not a pessimist about the onslaught of technology....
...In addition to "accessing" your favorite novel (displayed on a screen or run off in "hard copy" by your own printer), your Home Communications Set will perform a host of other functions and services...
...After the game, summon up a catalog, order what you want, then follow through with the appropriate transfer of funds to consummate the sale— all electronically...
...It also allowed them to communicate directly with the remote sites where services originated: city hall, the local Social Security office, the county court house, and the like...
...they are, instead, to be jealously protected from the predatory intentions of the multinationals...
...Each thumbnail-sized chip can store as much information as a 1960-model computer the size of a classroom...
...The uses of these integrated communications systems tend to follow the political and economic contours of a given society...
...Public broadcasting, on the other hand, now generally reduced to servicing an elite audience with cultural programming, will almost certainly disappear...
...Through a Brazilian case study, we are shown how the technological innovations now before us are perverted by a totalitarian state, a la 1984...
...Means of public communications are regarded as the property of all, like the rails and other utilities, and not something to be left to the manipulations of the private sector...
...It will soon be possible to store unthinkable amounts of information—whole libraries, for example—with the aid of optical scanners and increased memory capacities within networks of computers linking virtually every home and business in the country...
...The engaged populist ought to demand public access to the production side of all the new media, whatever form they take...
...He instead constructs several futurist scenarios himself...
...Even if we hold with Wicklein that technology is a neutral force, even if we can stomach the image of millions (billions...
...Burns and his colleagues put together a two-way cable system to improve the delivery of social services...
...The commercial interests already involved run the gamut of corporations in the information flow and communications bus-inessess—IBM, RCA, AT&T, and numerous lesser deities...
...What we wanted to do," Burns told Wicklein, "was set up a system of users who would use the technology in ways that would meet their needs...
...Any process vulnerable to centralization can also undergo decentralization...
...You will vote on it, say yea or nay to positions argued on public affairs shows, join in the debate during live transmissions of community meetings, and even command your HCS to tailor a news summary to your personal needs and tastes, and have it on-call when you wake up in the morning...
...The triumph of the "Information Society" has become possible with the creation and development of such gadgets as optical fibers, communications satellites, and the silicon chip...
...Technology by itself is an idiot," says Red Burns of NYU's Alternate Media Center, which designed an experimental program for the elderly in Reading, Pennsylvania...
...Just punch in the code for the third game of the 1932 World Series and decide for yourself if Babe Ruth pointed to the grandstands before hitting his legendary home run...
...The system will be fully "interactive," or two-way...
...in perpetual intercourse with their video screens, the threats to privacy and individual freedoms are staggering...
...Swedish practices are cited to illustrate how sensible planning and legislation can ensure the protection of individual rights in this new age...
...Electronic Nightmare is the reasoned warning of an intelligent journalist about a communications breakthrough with far-reaching ramifications...
...At stake is ultimate control of the new communications once broadcast, print, and telephone systems are consolidated into a single, integrated hardware...
...For the United States, Wicklein predicts that AT&T will emerge as the dominant monopolist, primarily as a carrier but with an increasing capacity for content design, too.The phone conglomerate will draw on its experience as a provider of dial services for weather, sports results, and even personal guidance from Dr...
...And so it is that Wicklein argues for the neutrality of technology...
...And while generous sums of public money have long been available for corporate research and development of the new communications order, guardianship of the public interest threatens to be even more firmly entrenched in the world of business...
...A national Data Inspection Board licenses and regulates computerized record keepers and has the power to redress a misuse or abuse of access to personal data...
...It will house, in digital form, a record of past events, films, news, and entertainment of almost unlimited variety...
...The centralizing tendency encouraged by the technology itself will make it possible to cater profitably to the most idiosyncratic tastes...
...The system, linking three neighborhood centers, permitted the elderly to swap ideas and information of general value...
...We are also reminded that HCS's revolutionary technology is already on-line...
...One of the many strengths of the Electronic Nightmare is that Wicklein does not allow much room for our imaginations to run wild with worst-case scenarios...
...In the Electronic Nightmare, technology is examined in relief against this larger background, where its potential to benefit or harm can be monitored, if only, as John Wicklein might say, we choose to do so...
...Michael Uhl (Michael Uhl is a free-lance writer and coauthor, with Todd Ensign, of "GI Guinea Pigs...
...In Europe, the trend is in the opposite direction...
...Joyce Brothers...
...One may react with horror or joy when contemplating life in such a world, but, as Wicklein makes clear, the crucial issue may be who will control this technology, both as carriers and providers of information...
...There is a useful fantasy on the "electronic newspaper," which is actually more revealing of contemporary news-gathering habits than it is of the printless newspapers Wicklein foresees...
...If you let the computer in on how much money you have in the bank, who got your vote, and what erotic movies you like to watch, who in turn, Wicklein asks, might the computer tell...
...The backstage details of today's television news and city rooms are the yield of Wicklein's own experience...
Vol. 46 • March 1982 • No. 3
