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T h e r e  i s  n o   f r e e  m e a l   o n   t h e   I n t e r n e t

Prof. Ziauddin Sardar questions the propaganda of cyberspace
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Gateway to the future, the Information Super-hypeway, or the World
Wide Wedge? What role is this new technology really going to play?

But is cyberspace really steering us to some really worthy
destination? (`Cybernetics' is after the Greek word for `steering'
or `control'.)

Ziauddin Sardar, visiting Professor of Science Policy at Middlesex
University, is one of the few prominent voices to strongly question
the "propaganda" about cyberspace. He challenges the view that the
Internet is a tool which brings freedom and empowerment. He strongly
feels cyberspace's gain is humanity's loss.

Sardar, who hails from Pakistan, is an internationally-known
scholar, information scientist and futurist. He has worked for
British science journals like <<Nature and <<New Scientist, and
was Consulting Editor of <<Inquiry. The book he co-edited,
<<Cyberfutures: Culture and Politics on the Information
Superhighway, has been just released by Pluto Press.

Sardar spent a relaxed hour, explaining his viewpoint, to FREDERICK
NORONHA <fred@goanews.ilbom.ernet.in. He was on holiday in Goa. The
nearest Internet node was a long distance away.


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Q: You don't share the global enthusiasm about the Internet. Why do
you see the Information Superhighway a threat to the future of the
human race?

There is this belief that the Internet gives us total freedom to
communicate with everyone. This total freedom only exists provided
you are reasonably rich. With the money needed to enter the Internet
world, you could feed a family in Bangladesh for a year.
Then, on the Internet, it's not a total anarchy situation, which
gives you freedom over what you say, as is made out to be. It's a
very controlled anarchy.

Big players control everything. Even the software, for example.
There's lot of software which comes along with the capability of
passing on information to various interested parties -- what other
software you're using, for what purpose, whom you are communicating
with.

Then, the Internet is supposed to be the idea form of communicating.
But if you look at a news-group, nobody is actually speaking to each
other. Everybody is screaming and shouting at each other. Flame-wars.
Even in supposedly-respectable research groups.

Q: We are now communicating, working, shopping, learning and
entertaining ourselves with computers. Don't you think the Net is
making life easier for some?

The Net generates illusions. Illusion of control, illusions of power,
illusions of community and neighbourhood. Illusion of free
information. Illusion of unlimited knowledge and wisdom. Illusion of
instant access.

But, actually, you're paying a heavy price -- the loss of your own
humanity. Because you simply become an extension of a computer. eNew
films like <The Net and <Hackers show how obsessed the
individual has become with a computer. These are anxieties projected
onto the screen. But these are real anxieties in many senses.

Q: You have argued that the Internet is not about education. It's
about boredom. Why?

One can log-on to the Web and cruise for hours, jumping from page to
page, subject to subject, country to country, computer to computer --
`surfing the Net' in a frenzied journey to nowhere. You never stay on
any particular site long enough to gain something specific out of it.
Moving from site to site makes you more bored; and the more bored you
get, the faster you move.

One can't learn simply by perusing information. One learns by
digesting it, reflecting on it, critically assimilating it.

Q: There is no such thing as a free meal. In your view, the Internet
is not really "free", or even "cheap". Why?

To think of the Internet as a vast network of information, offering
it all free, is absolutely ridiculous.
Any information which is worth anything on the Internet is not free.
Even now. As time goes by, more and more information will come to you
only if you pay for it.

Much information on the Net -- really useful stuff from the Pentagon
to research on commercial technologies -- is encoded.
Not all the information in the world is on the Net. Thank God for
that. And unless all the world's cultures are willing to be
digitised, it will never be so.

Q: In your view, the Internet is either commercial, or a giant and
filthy toilet wall. Is this not too pessimistic a view?

People will deny it, but there is lot of pornography on the net. Just
look at the 60 odd Internet newsgroups whose titles begin with
`alt.sex' and literally thousands of privately run bulletin boards
which pander to sexual perversion, all in the name of freedom of
expression.

It's becoming impossible to log on anywhere and not be invited to buy
something you don't want. And the more the Internet develops, the
more it will become basically a commercial place.

Q: Your latest book warns that cyberspace kills history and even real
people. What do you mean?

Cyberspace kills real people, let's come to that first. Virtual
Reality (VR) first emerged as a safe and inexpensive way of training
pilots to fly advanced military planes. Virtual Reality has now moved
on to the `entertainment' arena largely because the US defense
industry wants returns by finding other uses for the technology it
originally developed.

Dress rehearsals for the smart-bombs, which so consistently missed
their targets in the Gulf War, was carried out in cyberspace.
Cyberspace, like so much of modern advanced technology, has its
origins in the military. The Internet was developed as a foolproof
mode of communication in case of a nuclear war during the Cold War.
It grew as a computer network that linked university research centres
with military departments.

Q: But how does it `kill history'?

Cyberspace is particularly geared towards the erasure of all non-
Western histories. Lots of historic information is being put onto
cyberspace. In a very, very antiseptic form.

Q: Do you subscribe to the view that `dirty money' can get out of
control in cyberspace?

It's happening more and more. Many recent banking scandals we've seen
recently -- like Bearings -- were scandals of
cyberspace.

Cybercrime is going to be THE crime of the future. Organised crime is
a $750-billion-a-year enterprise, the drug trafficking generates
revenue of $400 to $500 billion. In cyberspace, this money is totally
out of governments' control.

It can lose itself in split-second deals. It is also legitimised by
the global movement of more than $1 trillion a day.
In ten years, it will become near impossible to trace ill-gotten
revenues, giving organised crime an unparalleled boost.

Q: This issue of seeing the Internet as modern-day colonialism, the
equivalent of Columbus or Vasco da Gama. How would you explain the
link?

Once a new territory has been colonised, it is handed over to
business interests to loot. And the worst elements of the West are
posted there to administer and `civilise' the
natives.

In cyberspace, the first persons coming -- and getting big -- are
pornographers, the paedophiles, the ultra-Right, the religious
fanatic.

Q: Someone called it the Information Super-Hype-way, given all the
hype. You see cyberspace as a tool to distract Western society from
its meaninglessness of daily life. What potential, if any, does it
have for the Third World. For countries like India and Pakistan?

Frankly, the way Internet is developing at the moment, I don't see
any. Only, our Third World elites will be on-line, talking to their
counterparts in the First World. Thus making them even more alienated
from society.

At this moment there's hardly any input from the Indian side on the
Internet. Even the news-groups of India and Pakistan and South East
Asia, are ones actually based in the US. In India too few
institutions are on-line. Supposing in 10 to 15 years all of India
gets on-line, by that time it will not be possible to have any
significant impact on the whole Internet world.
So the system is designed to treat us exactly the way that
colonialism treated the Third World.

Communities which are rich will become powerful; but the vast
majority will be worse marginalised. I think the Internet will be a
weapon of economic power and knowledge.

But if we decided that we will have a network designed by Indians,
for Indians, in India, that will be something different. We will be
in a position to influence change, rather than be influenced all the
time. India has the capability.

Now, you have people in one Indian university department not knowing
what research the next department is doing. We have certain needs,
which are quite different. Let us fulfill them.

Q: But where does this leave us? Should the developing world strive
for a better presence on the Internet? Or, is it too hopeless? What
is your prescription?

My first prescription -- as you call it -- is that we must be aware.
Know what the Internet is capable of, and what it is not. Also, what
illusions it has created.

Secondly, concentrate on basic stuff first. Third World countries
need decent telephone networks. Currently, pockets are on-line,
heavily computerised, while you can't even make a telephone call to
the next village.