Net: Bringing New Sensibility to Some and Living the Others Out. Way Out?

[Drazen Pantic <drazen@opennet.org>]

Net: Bringing New Sensibility to Some and Living the Others Out.
Way Out?

In the previous decades the carriers of massive communications
were public, accessible to all and one way directed. So, any
geek having radio, TV set or willing to spend some time reading
a book could, and still can, dig a huge amount of information. 
Also, info consumer of that kind is independent of any other
info consumer, without server/client type relationship. On the
other side, any individual who could make his way to the top 
of massive communications could, and still can, transmit, within
various sets of limitations, his/her angle of looking at the way
the birds are singing and make others believe that this is the
only thruth. So, that framework created unhealthy
situation, we all know all about. Tons of people could
freely pick common sensibility created by a relatively small
club of influential people. But, regardless of the possible
narrowness of basic axioms of that approach, 
the essence  is still accessible to huge majority of people around the
globe, creating more or less unified  world wide sensibility, 
(I'll always remember a documentary film from the deepest
despair of Africa in which a kid wears a T shirt with a sign
"Why don't we do it in the road?") So, every bit of info,
colored by a minory, is  offered to majority who could make use
or disuse of it. In that way, kids from within iron curtain, for example,
could incorporate themselves in a glance into urban life of any
modern metal polis.

And then the new carrier of information took its place. Step by
step Internet and its Net relatives made its way towards the
major informational playground. The global channel of
information  is passing thorough its replica of French
revolution. Anybody connected to the Net can post a message of
any kind in a variety of formats, from plain text to complicated
multimedia html. That message can be aimed to arbitrary wide
audience, from just one person to whole net. The pyramid of
information is shifted upside down, so (theoretically speaking)
no one can direct the flow and the character of news. The new
sensibility of immediate, direct communications is spreading
very fast, and this will certanly design the way our lives will
look like tomorrow. 

Everything looks so ideal and smooth, that there must be
something wrong in it. What I see as a possible danger is that
new virtual world we are creating will be closed for those who
are not connected to it, and that a lot of people all around the
planet do not have any chance to be involved at all. The new
sensibility that is spreading will infect only inside people and
dominate over others. We will have informational proletariat,
but without any notion about its own poverty and inadequate 
sensibility.

For a country like mine, where Internet is either un unreachable
dream, or a privilege of tiny minority, or just possible way of
making a lot of money, or danger for lazy minds we would see a
generations of kids that will grow up, never touching the fruit
from the Net Paradise. They will pick every possible info
accessible by the public informational channels but in most stay
apart from the most important source. 

Our Internet organization living in the nest of radio B92 will
hardly change anything in the generally sadly situation. We'll
save some souls, but a vast majority is even unaware of our bare
existence or not having possibility to get in touch, either due
to own low material status or to our infrastructural inability
to host every Net needing people around. So, some people here
got the idea to try to use radio as a mean of massive
communictions and to broadcast as much as we can from untrivial
Internet related material. For a start, we will try to make
(voice) interviews with some prominent individuals from the Net,
which we meet every day at this nettime list. Then we'll
broadcast those contributions over the radio and open
discussions with audience. (If those discussions turn out to be
interesting, I'll post some here on the list.) I hope that
interaction will be fruitfull and that would at least open some
questions and motivate people to get involved.

Regards to All
Drazen