Andy Reinhardt's July Commentary is an example of socialist dogma, which has no place in a world that is abandoning those unproductive concepts. The federal government is capable of massive projects, but it is incapable of setting technical specifications (e.g., it has only recently acknowledged TCP/IP--instead of OSI [Open Systems Interconnection]--as an approved networking protocol for federal projects).
Resources on the Internet should be accessible, not free. Reinhardt fears that the cost of accessing the data highway may be ``prohibitive for some'' and that you and I should bear this burden. He also states that using the data highway may become an ``essential aspect of citizenship'' and thus must be made available to everyone, regardless of their means. He offers no solution but speculation and conjecture. I, for one,
am tired of those who would reallocate my resources without first specifying with particularity any benefits.
Eric Seggebruch
Ho-Ho-Kus, NJ
My take on the government's involvement in the information superhighway is that it should follow the model of the interstate highway system. The government built the roads, and anybody with a truck, car, or motorcycle can use 'em. Free. When you stop off at the diner, you pay for the meal.
Terry Friedrichsen
Tucson, AZ
Reinhardt's call for ``social control'' of electronic communications would be nothing more than amusing drivel, if not for the fact that there are people in positions of power who would love to implement such a program. Reinhardt declares that ``by granting such a huge opportunity for power and profits to the private sector, we have a right as a society to demand, in return, conformance...'' But ``the private sector'' simply means individuals. And ``we'' do not exist ``as a society''; we exist only as individuals. In Reinhardt'
s statist utopia, those who have the means to access the Internet will be forced to subsidize those who don't. Why is anyone entitled to a modem at my expense? Because unproductive people have a ``right as a society to demand'' it of me? Such a demand has all the legitimacy of a mugger's ``right'' to my money.
Gary McGath
Hooksett, NH
I reject the notion that my Commentary was ``socialist dogma'' or called for a ``statist utopia.'' To the contrary, while I would prefer a data highway along the lines of what Friedrichsen proposes, I recognize the implausibility of a public resource in this era and support instead a private model. That we should aim for inexpensive basic service is by no means a radical notion: Cross-subsidies have been a fundamental tenet of telecommunications law since the 1930s.
I didn't propose free modems, just as today we don't have free phones or phone service. And I never proposed that the government regulate the content of data-highway traffic. Rather, I asked that
the government not abandon its historic responsibility to ensure equity and freedom of expression, as it does now for the phone and cable systems. The data highway could turn out to be an open resource that enhances the democratic process or a closed oligopoly that exploits consumers and codifies majority values at the expense of minority ideas and people. I'm hoping for the former. --A. Reinhardt
Not Socialist, Just Equitable
