Spring 2006 Volume 14 No. 1

Back to Our Roots

In this issue, the Amateur Computerist returns a

bit to its roots. This newsletter grew out of the com-

puter programming classes at the Ford Motor Com-

pany Rouge plant in Dearborn, Michigan. These

classes were part of a benefit won by the UAW during

negotiations with Ford in the 1980s. The UAW

members agreed not to oppose the introduction of

modern technology in exchange for Ford contributing

a nickel for every regular hour of work by UAW

represented workers. The fairly large pool of money

from the ‘Nickel an Hour Fund’ was earmarked for

training and educational development, hence the

computer programming classes.

However, without opposition from the UAW, by

1986, Ford began to eliminate the classes even though

the classes were a benefit agreed to at the bargaining

table. Inspired by the spirit of the Flint Sit-Down

strike 50 years earlier, the students and computer

instructor put up a fight to maintain the classes. When

they lost that fight, some of the workers and their

instructor founded this newsletter to continue their

interest in computing.

Now, twenty years later, autoworkers, employed

by the Delphi auto parts corporation, are fighting

Table of Contents

Back to Our Roots.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 1

Voice of the UAW Worker.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 2

Constitutional Death of the UAW.. . . . . . . . . Page 5

GM Buyouts No ‘Christmas’. . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 8

French Youth Up in Arms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 10

NYC Transit Strike . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 12

Origin of the Net, Emergence of Netizen. . . Page 14

Michael Hauben: Columbia 250

Bday. . . . Page 19

Misunderstanding about ‘Netizen’ .. . . . . . . Page 19

Advancing “News guerrillas”. . . . . . . . . . . . Page 20

Impact of Net on Chinese Press Politics. . . . Page 23

against threatened plant closures and cuts, this time

of pension and healthcare benefits. They too are

looking back to the spirit of the sit down strikers.

The first three articles in this issue tell some of the

story of Delphi’s attempted cutbacks. That story

includes the cooperation between Delphi and the

UAW leadership to make the cuts. But also there is

the fight back of the workers and the role of the

mainstream U.S. press. The press is distorting the

nature of what Delphi and GM are doing, suggesting

somehow that these cut backs are a good thing. But

as our headline says, there was “No Christmas in

March”.

On an encouraging notes, the article, “French

Youth Up in Arms” tells of the first student and

worker demonstrations on March 7, 2006 which

eventually forced the government of France to

rescind a new labor law. That law, if left in place,

would have curtailed the labor rights of young

workers and pitted young new hires against older

workers. Also, the article, “First NYC Transit Strike

in 25 Years,” tells of the beginning of a fight that

prevented the imposition of a two tiered working

situation where younger NYC transit workers would

have had lower benefits.

This issue also continues the story carried by the

Amateur Computerist since the 1990s of the develop-

ment of the Internet and the emergence of the

netizens. In the article on the international and

scientific origin of the Internet, some of the myths of

the origin of the Internet are refuted. A connection is

made between the vision of J. C. R. Licklider that

inspired Internet development and the social compo-

nent which particularly supported netizen activity.

The particular effect of the netizen movement on

South Korean society is tied into the visions of

Licklider and of Michael Hauben who first docu-

mented the netizen identity in the early 1990s.

We are timing this issue for early May not only

because May 1 is International Workers Day, but

Page 1

also because it was the date when our late editor

Michael Hauben was born in 1973. To remember his

contribution and honor his birthday, we include the

brief sketch of Michael that appeared as part of the

250th anniversary celebration of Columbia Univer-

sity. It was at Columbia as an undergraduate that

Michael did some of his early research and important

work.

Michael’s concept of netizen is having active

confirmation in South Korea. We include a brief blog

entry and an article describing Ohmynews, an online

citizen journalist newspaper as two examples of the

netizen phenomenon in Korea.

We end this issue with an article on the impact of

the Internet in China. Online and netizen activity have

caused a great change in the press in China. The Party

or bureaucratic press is no longer the single source for

news. Instead there is a contest between the old news

form and what is made possible by the rapid spread of

the Internet to now over 115 million people in China.

Li Xiguang from Tsinghau University wrote about

this effect a while ago. We reprint this summary here

to share his story with a wider audience.

These are hard times, but we hope this issue will

show that there is motion and resistance and even

progress.

Automakers and the Voice of

the UAW Worker

by Ronda Hauben

Delphi Corporation, the world’s second largest

auto parts manufacturer, filed for bankruptcy for its

North American operations on Oct. 19, 2005. Delphi

employs 185,000 workers world-wide and 33,650

hourly workers in its U.S. operations.

The company has threatened that if it doesn’t get

significant cuts in auto worker wages and benefits via

its negotiations with the United Auto Worker (UAW)

union leadership, that on March 30, 2006, it will ask

the bankruptcy court to impose substantial cuts in

wages and benefits on its unionized workforce in the

U.S. This threat was made by the CEO of Delphi,

Steve Miller. What is the significance of such a threat

being made to workers of the union which helped to

provide the benefits and wages that have set a stan-

dard for other workers in the U.S. and elsewhere

around the world?

In 1999, the General Motors Corporation spun

off its auto parts division, setting it up as the Delphi

Corporation. The new company had certain obliga-

tions to supply General Motors with parts, but the

workforce, which had previously worked for General

Motors under their GM/UAW contract, was now

working for a new company. The Delphi Corporation

at the time of its creation did not have any debt.

Six years later, in October 2005, Delphi claimed

that its North American operations are heavily in

debt. The relief it wants from the bankruptcy court,

is help to drastically slash the wages and cut back on

the benefits of its unionized workforce.

Many workers at Delphi denounce the corpora-

tion’s claims and actions. Some are organizing and

meeting with other workers from different Delphi

factories to discuss strategy to fight against what

they believe is a fraudulent effort to drastically cut

their wages and make draconian changes in their

working conditions. They say that Delphi and Gen-

eral Motors would be hurt if they go on strike.

Delphi claims that it cannot function in the

competitive world market if it has to pay union

wages and benefits to its workforce. Wages for long

time General Motors workers who were transferred

to Delphi when the corporation was created are $27

an hour, or about $56,000 a year before taxes. But

Delphi claims that it costs the company $140,000 a

year for each of these union workers, when benefits

like pension and health care costs are factored into

the wage costs.

Workers explain the $27 per hour wage is barely

enough for them to have a minimum standard of

living, consisting of a place to live, food and some

other expenses such as occasionally eating at a

restaurant. With taxes taken out of their salaries,

workers end up with substantially less than $50,000

a year. Given the high prices of housing and food in

the U.S., this leaves little left over for other ex-

penses. Only by working overtime, up to 12 hours a

day and up to 7 days a week, do union workers at

Delphi say they manage to have enough money for

a vacation and education for their children.

In December 2005, several U.S. Congressmen

sponsored an online Congressional hearing, “The

American Automobile Industry in Crisis.”

They

invited Delphi workers and retirees to submit de-

scriptions of the conditions of their lives and what

would happen to them if they lost the retiree benefits

and union wages that Delphi said it was going to ask

Page 2

the Court to help it slash.

Over a thousand Delphi workers and retirees

responded in writing. Their submissions are posted on

a Congressional Web site maintained by the Educa-

tion and the Workforce Committee of the U.S. Con-

gress. Many of the workers responding describe the

dangerous conditions they endured at their work-

places over a number of years which left them injured

or sick.

Other responses from workers describe how they

worked for General Motors and its parts division for

20 to 30 years with the commitment that they could

retire with a certain minimum level of pension and

health care benefits. Now they are told that Delphi

will use a bankruptcy court to reduce the company’s

obligation to pay wages, pensions and health care

benefits.

While Delphi has claimed its North American

operations are losing money, some workers propose

that this is the result of accounting practices that

misrepresent what Delphi has actually spent.

For example, Randall Musielak of Frankenmuth,

Michigan writes

“The large corporations such as Delphi,

GM, Ford, and Chrysler which lost money

according to budget and have never made

profit, still hide millions in black accounts

due to creative bookkeeping. For example, I

worked in a trades area where we would be

issued a twenty hour job that takes only two

hours to complete. When finished I would

be issued another job. The assembly line

would be charged the full estimated twenty

hours of service into hidden black accounts

and would also be written off in taxes as

maintenance...

Delphi can show any loss it chooses and

executive’s bonuses surely do not justify a

bankruptcy. To plan, implement, execute,

and deliberately use bankruptcy as a tool in

business for greater profit should be reason

for investigation. The sticker price on an

automobile clearly shows wages, benefits

and bonuses for GM and Delphi. The bank-

ruptcy should be thrown out of court and any

company owned by another should not be

allowed to use bankruptcy as a business tool;

but instead have to settle thru collective

bargaining.

Testimony from another worker, describes the

questions the Delphi tactics are raising among

workers

“My name is Patrick Mitchell and I have

been employed with GM/Delphi for almost

29 years... The question that begs to be

answered is: How can a corporation that

was spun off from GM in 1999 with a fully

funded pension, pockets full of lucrative

contracts with General Motors Corp, Toy-

ota, Nissan, Ford, and Daimler Chrysler

end up going bankrupt in 6 short years and

wreck so many lives? They cooked their

books, took advantage of shareholders and

investors and have Chief Corporate execu-

tives under investigation and they have the

chutzpah to point their fingers at the hourly

worker using the media to their advantage

while trying to reward themselves with

millions of dollars they actually stole from

all who believed in them. Something is

wrong in corporate America if the leader-

ship in Washington allows this to happen...

Thank you for these hearings.”

Just as workers present a different view of why

Delphi is declaring bankruptcy in its North American

operations from what is being presented in the

mainstream press in the U.S., workers also remember

the hard fight it took to get GM to recognize their

right to be represented by the UAW. As Lars

Christensen, of Clio, Michigan writes

“I am a third generation autoworker, and

am damn proud of it. My father and grand-

father were both sitdowners. My grandfa-

ther used to walk from his car to the house

with a baseball bat, fearful of the beating he

would take had the company found him to

be a part of the union.”

Some militant workers are organizing at Delphi

to protest the company’s efforts to “break the con-

tract,” as they explain. They have begun what they

call a “work to rule” (WTR) campaign. As one of the

workers explains

“We should Work to Rule. We need to stay

inside to preserve income, save jobs, and

fight back. If we follow every rule in the

book, production will slow to a crawl. We

can control the flow of parts by ensuring

quality and following rules. It’s perfectly

legitimate.”

Page 3

This group of dissidents call themselves “Sol-

diers of Solidarity.” They want to recapture of the

Spirit of ‘37, the militant spirit of the auto workers

which resulted in sit down strikes and culminated in

the victory of the Great Flint Sit Down Strike in

1937.

These rank and file workers describe how Gen-

eral Motors and then Delphi had taken the profits

from the work they and other workers did and in-

vested it in other parts of the world like Mexico and

China.

Essentially, the dissident workers raise the

question of whether the spin off of the General

Motors Parts Operations was mainly intended as a

plan to force drastic cutbacks in unionized parts

workers’ wages and benefits. These dissident workers

not only criticize General Motors and Delphi. They

also are critical of the leadership of the United Auto

Workers union, which includes the President of the

UAW, Ronald Gettelfinger, and other union officials.

The dissident workers believe that previous

concessions given by the UAW union leadership in

exchange for setting up “Joint UAW-General Motors”

activities and structures, were contrary to the obliga-

tion of the union to fight for the well being of the

worker. The Joint UAW-GM structures and activities

are aimed at making GM more competitive, rather

than protecting the workers’ wages and working

conditions.

While a number of non union auto factories have

been set up in the U.S. in the last few decades, the

dissident Delphi workers point to how these compa-

nies often have higher levels of injuries and a greater

attrition rate among the workers. A smaller percent-

age of workers actually get to retire from those

factories when compared to the percentage that are

able to retire from the unionized auto factories. Also

the dissident workers point to the fact that if the

unionized auto workers in the U.S. get lower wages,

this will also result in lowering the wages of workers

in the non union auto factories.

The dissident workers criticize the mainstream

press in the U.S. for repeating General Motors or

Delphi claims about the cost of employing union

workers, without doing their own investigation into

the reality of such claims. For example, some in the

auto industry claim that it costs Delphi $140,000 a

year to employ a union worker. Dissident workers ask

where these figures come from. They point to the fact

that this is a figure created by inaccurate accounting

practices. The cost of the current union workforce is

being said to include the amount of money the

corporation has to pay to retirees. But retirees had

pension contributions put into tax exempt funds that

General Motors used for purposes other than paying

for pensions.

Also dissident workers point out that there are

many fewer workers currently producing the same

volume of parts or even more which in the past

required a larger workforce. Paying workers who

have high productivity a higher wage in return for

that productivity is not inappropriate, they argue.

One of the most well known of the dissident

workers is Gregg Shotwell. He writes and distributes

a publication called “Live Bait and Ammo.” He

explains that workers at Delphi have nothing to lose

by fighting against union officials and management

when they are trying to cut back the wages and

pensions of rank and file workers. Shotwell writes

“Concessions don’t save jobs, improve

products, or sell vehicles. If UAW mem-

bers agreed to pay for their own medical

insurance, GM would not reduce the price

of its cars. The Board of Directors would

simply reward themselves. The only legiti-

mate solution is Universal Health Care. The

UAW should take the lead and reject all

concessions until All Americans have

health care.”

His newsletter documents an ongoing effort to

expose what he believes is the fraud and lies that are

being used to cut wages and benefits that rank and

file auto workers have earned through many years of

hard work and struggle.

If Delphi succeeds in imposing the draconian

wage cuts and cutbacks in union benefits via a

bankruptcy court as it is trying to do, he believes that

this will send a message to other U.S. corporations

that they can use the same strategy to void their

collective bargaining union agreements. He writes

“Delphi is a test case. If the court allows

Delphi to bankrupt U.S. operations while

sheltering assets overseas, other multina-

tional will follow suit. When the smoke

clears, they will return under another

name.”

The result will be that instead of U.S. workers

helping to set a standard for a living wage, less

dangerous working conditions and better benefits

that workers elsewhere can strive for, the U.S.

Page 4

unionized workers will be helping to lower wages, set

the basis for worsening conditions for workers in

other countries.

How this drama will unfold is yet to be decided.

Remarkably, there is a spirited opposition movement

within the UAW, at the shop floor level. Those in

opposition believe that it is important that the actual

conditions of the shop floor worker be known and that

the workers themselves be an active part of the

ongoing struggle to protect the gains won by auto

workers during the past 70 years.

In his book, “The Wealth of Nations,” the econo-

mist Adam Smith, describes the importance to society

of good conditions for its workers. Smith writes

“No society can surely be flourishing and

happy, of which the far greater part of the

members are poor and miserable.”

Notes

1. For background about the history of the UAW and the role it

has played in the American Labor Movement, see Ronda

Hauben, “Lest We Forget: In Tribute To the Pioneers of the

Great Flint Sit Down Strike.” http://www.ais.org/~jrh/search-

light/lest.we.forget.txt

2. http://edworkforce.house.gov/democrats/autointroduction.html

3. http://edworkforce.house.gov/democrats/autoworkers

testimony2.html

4. http://edworkforce.house.gov/democrats/autoworkers

testimony2.html

5. http://edworkforce.house.gov/democrats/autoworkers

testimony2.html

6. Live Bait and Ammo # 54 http://www.soldiersofsolidarity

.com/id260.html

7. Michael Hauben, “In Celebration: A Past to Remember, A

Future to Mold. The 50th Anniversary of the Flint Sit-Down

Strike.” Originally published in The Searchlight, the newspaper

of UAW Local 659, Flint, Michigan, February 11, 1987. http://

www.ais.org/~ronda/new.papers/michael/flint.txt

8. Live Bait and Ammo #50 http://www.soldiersofsolidarity

.com/id267.html

9. Gregg Shotwell, “The Answering Machine,” 01/28/06, MR

Zine. http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/shotwell280106.html

10. Quoted in Michael Hauben, “The Real Voice of Adam

Smith” http://www.columbia.edu/~hauben/CS/adamsmith.txt

The Constitutional Death

of the UAW

by William D. Hanline and friend

Skiphanline@AOL.com

During the recent rounds of negotiations be-

tween the UAW and General Motors Corporation

over healthcare and legacy cost, the UAW, Interna-

tional Union officers committed a betrayal of trust of

their members and betrayed their oath of office to

uphold the UAW Constitution. This took place all

for the sake of preserving their “Cooperation

Partnership” with General Motors Corporation.

This betrayal of trust and confidence encompasses

both active and retired members. This action hap-

pened when the misleaders, with forethought and

collusion, agreed to reopen the 2003 UAW-GM

National Agreement. Consequentially, their act

resulted in a contract that is morally and with out

conscience, contrary to the stated purpose in the

UAW Constitution.

This newly proposed deal between the UAW

and General Motors Corporation shows without

question, beginning with the 2003 contract and

ending with the 2005 negotiations, the extent the

UAW and their cooperative partner GM will go to

maximize the automaker’s competitive position.

How their cooperative efforts to divide, whipsaw and

pit the workers and retirees against one another

(Young against the Old) for the sole purpose of

transferring wealth from those who can least afford

it, the retirees, to the Stakeholders of the company.

As a matter of historical fact, Corporate Indus-

trial Relation’s fundamental initiative, whether a

work force is unionized or not, is to pit the young

against the old, men against the women and races

against each other. The distasteful reality of this

labor management relationship between the UAW

and GM fully manifest itself in this latest example of

cooperation.

The UAW-GM highlights recently rolled out to

the active workers in GM for their vote, clearly

demonstrates the main strategy of the “Cooperation

Partners.” In the highlights, they unashamedly sent

a message to the active workers voting that says,

“there is no cost to the active worker.” While at

the same time, they remained silent on the fact that

real dollars will be taken (ROBBED) from the

Page 5

retirees who are helpless to defend themselves from

this pillaging by being denied a right to vote on this

matter.

Though it sounds in this letter that the retirees

have no VOICE, that is not absolutely true. The UAW

has selected two political sycophants, outside any

political process, to be the voice of the 380,000 GM

retirees during the law suite the “Cooperation Part-

ners” (the UAW and GM) filed. Furthermore, they

kept the names of those two retirees out of the press

until after the law suite was filed in Federal Court.

This was supposedly done to protect all retirees but in

reality, it was done to give General Motors Corpora-

tion Safe Harbor from future law suites. While at the

same time binding the retirees to an illegal negotia-

tion (read NLRA) as the UAW negotiated the new

retirement package for retirees. That act can only be

described as a cowardly act in itself.

Finally yet importantly, it has to be said that the

evil brilliance of the UAW and GM “Cooperation

Partners” to divide and conquer now creates a two

tier social structure among the retirees! By negotiat-

ing terms that say the retirees whose monthly pen-

sions are less than 33 dollars a month for each year of

service will not have to pay any of the premiums

imposed in the new agreement is simply pitting

retiree against retiree! This is evil genius, for the

“Cooperation Partners” have pitted every one in the

UAW against themselves, seniority members against

new hires, skilled members against production, active

workers against retirees and now retirees against

retirees.

So what is this really all about? We have a pretty

good idea! We know General Motors needs cash.

Therefore, GM’s “Cooperation Partner” (the UAW)

pursuant a partnership contract with GM better known

as the Articles of Incorporation of the “Center for

Human Resources” Article II, makes the UAW

obligated to help GM get cash so the company will

remain competitive.

Now the question becomes, where can GM get

cash? The answer lies in a term and program little

known by most people; it is the “VEBA” or Volun-

tary Employees’ Beneficiary Association. VEBAs

are IRS, CODE 501(c) None Profit trusts that are

designed to allow corporations to invest money for

the purpose of providing benefits to their employees.

The money for various benefits plans is raised by the

tax exempt interest earned from different investments

(Stocks, Bonds ETC). The Employee Benefits Secu-

rity Administration of the DOL (Department of

Labor) has oversight of VEBAs. They are recorded

annually and are made available to the public by

simply calling the EBSA of the DOL in Washington,

D.C. and requesting that information.

The old General Motors VEBA that was provid-

ing benefits to GM-UAW employees also covered

members represented by the “IUE-CWA” “USWA”

and the other three unions. Salary employees and

none union hourly employees benefits are also

covered by the same VEBA. When a company

combines more than one benefits fund under the

umbrella of one great big Master trust (or VEBA)

this is known as a commingled trust. What is more,

there is nothing in the law that prevents a company

from using the money in the VEBA for capital

expenditures. GM reported doing exactly that in the

companies Proxy statement of 2001. During the year

2000, General Motors raided the VEBA for over 1

billion dollars 1) for a 500 million dollar equity

purchase in Suzuki (to build a plant) and 2) for a 500

million dollar equity injection into GMAC to show

a profit that year. In other words, they looted the

health care trust to build a plant over seas and trans-

fer money from our healthcare VEBA to the stock-

holders. All while the “Cooperation Partner”

looked the other way!

In the beginning of year 2005, General Motors

was telling Wall Street and the world they had 21

billion dollars in cash. Where was that money? You

guessed it, “in the VEBA.” In the beginning of the

year General Motors decided to take 6 Billion dollars

out of the VEBA to cover three consecutive quarters

of one billion dollar losses. Loses that grew from

poor sales, rebates, the employee discounts made

available to the public and massive recalls. However,

during that time nobody, neither in General Motors

or their “Cooperation Partner” (the UAW) spoke

of the VEBA.

Consequentially, General Motors and their

“Cooperation Partner” had to come up with some

kind of scheme to free up that VEBA money. Natu-

rally, the plot was propagated in the media, newspa-

pers across the country and in GM and Delphi plants

as “Excessive Healthcare & Legacy Cost.”

In the media, the centerpiece of the negotiations

was to find a way to HELP UAW members, most of

who never ever heard of a VEBA or knew one

existed. Who on the shop floor associates Healthcare

with a VEBA?

Page 6

The cleverly designed scheme provides General

Motors with the right to absolve its existing VEBA

and replace it with a new VEBA. Clearly, new trust-

ees, chosen from a consortium of five industrial

unions that represent GM workers, will manage the

new VEBA. The member’s benefits of those five

unions were and are covered in the old and new

VEBA respectively. Interestingly enough, by transfer-

ring control of the new VEBA over to the unions,

General Motors will only have to maintain enough

money in the old VEBA to cover white-collar employ-

ees’ benefits. Why, because all the union represented

workers have been thrown out of the old VEBA and

placed into the new one.

Now consider this, the old VEBA has 15 billion

dollars in it while the new VEBA will only have 1

billion dollars. Secondly, GM reported in the news

that it cost $200 millions a year to administer the old

VEBA. Common sense and logic makes it difficult to

understand how workers healthcare and legacy cost

are better secured by 1 billion dollars, than they are

by 15 billion dollars. Nevertheless, the “Cooperation

Partners” have decided that this is what is best for

the workers.

In the mean time General Motors can let the

GOOD TIMES ROLL because they have found

another source of income. Obviously, it is not from

selling cars, but then again we know they do not make

their primary income from selling cars because every

year they continue loosing market share. Therefore,

since there is nothing else to sell off in GM except

GMAC, which they are trying to do now, they get

their hands on at least 10 billion dollars in the old

VEBA and they look forward to the time they sell off

GMAC and maybe get another 25 billion.

Much like the automaker, the union is fast

arriving at the point where the institution, the UAW

International Union, can survive maybe with out any

dues paying members at all. The latter is possible

because the UAW has alternative sources of income

as well. At present day, only one third of the UAW’s

annual flat line income is generated from union dues.

The other sources of income are from interest earned

off the strike fund, retirement trust, joint funds charge

backs and service charges on those joint funds charge-

backs.

General Motors on the other hand is probably

walking into a $10 billion win fall they can do what

they want. More importantly, GM has absolved the

company of a 25 billion dollar legacy cost. It is a

great deal for the “Cooperation Partners” but a

terrible deal for the helpless masses of retirees who

have been denied any democratic input, democratic

voice, or democratic due process. Equally, it is a

tragedy yet to happen to active workers who have

been duped into believing that this negotiations is

going to be NO COST to them, of course, not until

such time when workers themselves become helpless

retirees.

The real tragedy is the betrayal of trust of both

our members and retirees and the very instrument

that was written and designed to protect members

from this type of tyranny, “The UAW Constitution.”

If you do not feel like reading the entire book may

we encourage you to read the preamble? Moreover,

if you have never read it before, you need to NOW!

Then again we believe the actions taken during

these negotiations by the UAW International Union

delivered the final blow to the Union by driving a

dividing rod through its heart and sole of the union

“THE UAW CONSTITUTION.”

Next year members will be selecting delegates

who will attend the UAW Constitutional Conven-

tion. WHY we ask? Why even hold a Constitutional

Convention? The officers of the international union

have proven they have no regard and have aban-

doned the principles set forth in the constitution and

lest we forget they made a solemn pledge to uphold

when they took office. Instead, the “Cooperation

Partners” choose to do as they damn well please in

spite of those beautiful words and the intent of that

book.

A lawyer and friend recently asked the follow-

ing question. “Will the UAW as we have known it be

around in the next five years?” We concurred that it

would NOT! Ironically, we did not have any idea at

that moment that the end was so close at hand.

Keep in mind the “Cooperation Partners” will

survive, but the UAW as a Trade Union is already

constitutionally dead.

“I never did give anybody hell, I just told the

truth and they thought it was hell.” Harry S. Truman

Page 7

GM Buyouts No ‘Christmas

in March’

Media coverage and Internet dia-

logue key to empowering workers

by Ronda Hauben

If one were to look at some of the headlines in

the U.S. press on March 23, the day after General

Motors made an announcement to offer buyouts and

early retirement to its hourly workforce, it might have

seemed as if U.S. auto workers had a reason to

celebrate Christmas in March. Headlines like “Gener-

ous GM,” “In the Giving Spirit,” “Take the Money

and Run” appeared in the pages of newspapers around

the country.

Other articles, like one in The Washington Post,

raised the spectra of the previous “good years.” The

article explained, “The surprise here is not that the

golden era for autoworkers has come to an end but

that it lasted as long as it did.”

“A Gleam of Hope for GM” was the headline in

the Business Week article announcing the recent GM

moves. “The automaker has cut a deal – a very

generous one – with the UAW that could put it on the

road for lower costs.”

The writer explained how GM

announced an early retirement plan for its hourly

workers that would let them retire, with a certain

incentive payment, depending on years of service, or

just take a lay off, and be paid a lump sum payment.

This the article tells us, will allow GM, and the parts

company, Delphi, which GM spun off as a separate

company, to substantially cut their hourly work force.

An online Web site noted that Google recorded

1,325 news stories about the GM/Delphi early retire-

ment and buyout program.

Despite the large number

of news organizations covering this announcement,

however, there has been little serious analysis in the

mainstream media of the importance of what is

happening or of its implications.

While most of the mainstream press carried

articles expressing relief that the GM and Delphi

corporations had found a way to lower the wages they

pay to workers, there is another view of what is

happening that has gotten little attention in the U.S.

press.

In one of the rare articles raising a different

viewpoint, Robert Kuttner writes in the Boston Globe:

“Who would make the cars? A new gener-

ation of lower-paid workers. It is a mark of

GM’s fragility that the UAW considers this

about the best deal the union can get.”

Kuttner notes that, “labor costs are actually

about $10 an hour higher in Germany” than in the

U.S., and yet the problem that GM is having doesn’t

seem to be a problem for the German auto makers.

He proposes that the problem isn’t workers’ wages,

but something else. What is wrong, he writes, is

“management thinking and...the official free-market

ideology.”

Irrespective of the buyout and early retirement

plan, Delphi has set March 30 as the deadline when

it must have an agreement with the UAW or it

threatens that it will file a motion on March 31 to

void its contract with the UAW. A press release at

the Delphi Web site announced:

“Delphi will continue talks in an effort to

achieve a comprehensive agreement no

later than March 30, 2006. Absent agree-

ment with all parties, Delphi will file no

later than March 31, 2006 its motion under

Sections 1113 and 1114 of the U.S. Bank-

ruptcy Code to initiate the process of seek-

ing court authorization to reject the collec-

tive bargaining agreements and terminate

hourly post-retirement health plans and life

insurance.”

Delphi is the largest auto parts company in the

world. It employs 185,000 worldwide. In the U.S. it

employs 50,000, with 33,650 of these employees are

hourly workers.

In Mexico, Delphi employs over

70,000 workers.

In 1998, GM was encouraged by Wall Street

analysts to take its parts operation and spin it off into

a separate company.

Given the size and the international scope of

Delphi, there are serious questions raised about why

it is declaring bankruptcy in its North American

operations, but is allowed to continue its operations

outside of North America without any effect of the

bankruptcy declaration.

Among the workers who are affected by the

Delphi bankruptcy, there is the suspicion that the

bankruptcy is but a ploy to rid itself of a unionized

workforce.

The response to the proposed buy out among

many of the workers is confusion about whether it

will benefit them to take it. Among the dissident

workers, however, the issue raised is how the buyout

Page 8

will affect the future of labor in the U.S. and the

living standard of the workers who follow them into

the factories and other large corporations.

The dissident workers don’t attribute the gains

made by workers at companies like GM or Delphi to

the generosity of the companies. Instead, as one

worker explains, “The only thing we’ve ever been

‘given’ by the corporation is what they gave up when

we had one hand twisted in their collar and the other

hand ready to slap them down.”

The fact that there are negotiations going on even

though there has not been a membership decision to

reopen the union contract, strikes some workers as an

ominous sign. If they take early retirement, what is to

guarantee them that they will get the retirement

benefits they are promised. “No amount of conces-

sions will ever appease them,” is a view that is voiced

about why it is a dead end for workers to go along

with the early retirement proposed packages or the

contract the UAW is negotiating with Delphi. A

strategy of giving concessions, some workers claim,

will only lead to more and more demands by the

company. “No one should be negotiating in the

middle of a contract,” is a feeling that is expressed.

The fact that the early retirement offer is being

agreed to by the UAW without consulting the mem-

bership and having a vote by the UAW membership,

is seen as a confirmation of the loss of membership

control over what the union officials do. This leaves

out any role for the rank and file and their concerns.

Workers at Delphi or who are supporting the

dissidents in UAW to oppose the anti-democratic

means that the UAW is using, are looking back at the

1936-37 sit down strike and the militant tradition of

the UAW.

Another important aspect of UAW history

which is less well known, however, is the tradition of

recognizing the need for a press which allows for

debate among the rank and file on the issues that

affect them. One auto worker, Carl Johnson, often

explained the importance of such a press in a column

he wrote in his local union newspaper, “The Search-

light,” which was the official union newspaper of the

Chevrolet Engine Plant in Flint, Michigan. Sit down

strikers like Carl Johnson, and his son Kermit John-

son, who was one of the leaders of the Plant 4 sit

down, had been part of the actions of 1936-1937

which made it possible to win the UAW.

In the years following the victory of the Flint Sit

Down Strike, Carl Johnson advocated the need for an

uncensored press for workers, a press that would

make it possible to debate the issues important to the

rank and file.

Johnson explained the need to welcome all from

the ranks of labor to be part of the discussion. He

wrote:

“But who, from the ranks of Labor? Let

them all speak -- that’s what Free Speech

was intended for! Let them all present their

view in a forum. From that the reader will

have a fair chance to decide.” (October 29,

1949, “The Searchlight”)

Johnson felt that most of the institutions in

society during this period were controlled by the

large corporations and so a press that could be

independent was needed. He writes:

“We must bare in mind the obvious fact

that our education institutions, the schools,

the Daily press, the radio, etc. are all con-

trolled by Big Business – by that small

section of the population which suffers

little from the hardships of depression and

war.” (March 1, 1945, The Searchlight)

He was not proposing a press that would be

dominated by officials of the international union.

Instead, the involvement and participation of the

rank and file were critical to the vision Johnson had

for such a press if it were to help to set a basis for

democratic decision-making and actions. He writes:

“The rank and file...have nothing to lose

by advancing ideas and opinions which

may, for the time being, be at variance with

popular concepts. Moreover, a rank and

filer with ideas of change which promise

greatly improved conditions for him as well

as for his fellow workers has therein the

necessary incentive to express those ideas.

It is important to understand, therefore, that

the future welfare of the rank and file de-

pends largely upon the part the ranks play

in shaping that future....” (January 11, 1951,

The Searchlight, These are excerpts are

from “The Searchlight: the Voice of the

Chevy Worker.”)

The importance that Carl Johnson and other

UAW pioneers attached to discussion and debate

among the rank and file became embodied in the

way they structured their local union newspapers.

One such newspaper, The Searchlight, the local

union newspaper of UAW Local 659, in Flint,

Michigan, was censored by the International Union

Page 9

in 1949/1950 and took up a fight against that censor-

ship at the 1951 UAW convention. Losing their fight

against the censorship, however, made it more diffi-

cult for them to carry on their program of continuing

their fight for gains for labor.

Today, with the Internet, there is a new form of

media making it possible to discuss and debate how

to respond to the actions of corporations like Delphi

and GM. The discussion on some online forums,

newsgroups, and web sites recognizes that the effort

to understand the problem that the Delphi bankruptcy

poses is not one that can be solved quickly. Its not

like “instant coffee” but more like understanding the

need to plant “seeds” and “nurture the fruit.”

NOTES

1. “Laying to Rest a ‘Generous’ Way of Life” The Washington

Post http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/arti-

cle/2006/03/25/AR2006032500097.html

2. News & Features, By David Welch, BusinessWeek March 24,

2006 http://www.businessweek.com/autos/content/mar2006

/bw20060323_907896.htm?chan=autos_autos+index+page_

autos+lede

3. From the Archives, Auto News, Thursday, March 23, 2006

h t t p : / / w w w . c l e v e l a n d . c o m / w e b l o g s / a u t o n e w s /

index.ssf?/mtlogs/advance_autonews/archives/ 2006_03.html

4. Robert Kuttner, “Making U.S. Manufacturing Work” Boston

Globe, March 25, 2006 http://www.boston.com/business/articles

/2006/03/25/making_us_manufacturing_work/

5.Delphi Docket (PDF) http://delphidocket.com/documents

/0544481/0544481060217000000000001.pdf

6. Critical Moment, January 26, 2006, “The Worker’s Docket: A

Summary of Facts and Ideas from the Delphi closings by Fred

David” http://criticalmoment.org/node/91/

7. Detroit Free Press, “Time Line of GM and Delphi’s Travails,”

March 23, 2006. http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll

/article?AID=2006603230498

8. Michael Hauben, “In Celebration: A Past To Remember, A

Future To Mold: The 50th Anniversary Of The Flint Sit-Down

Strike” http://www.ais.org/~ronda/new.papers/michael/flint.txt

9. Ronda Hauben, “The Story of the Searchlight”

http://www.ais.org/~jrh/searchlight/sl.1.txt

10. Some online forums and Web sites include: UAWforum

Delphi Bankruptcy Discussion

http://www.uawforum.com/forumdisplay.php?f=3

http://futureoftheunion.com/

Newsgroups on Usenet:

alt.society.labor-unions

soldiersofsolidarity

[Editor’s note: The following article tells the story of

the first protests in France which led one month later

to the withdrawal of the new labor law against which

the students and workers were protesting.]

French Youth Up in Arms

Over New Labor Law

‘First Employment Contract’ Gives

Employer Right

to Fire Indiscriminately

By Ronda Hauben

The demonstrations in Paris in May 1968 have

become a symbol of the protest movement that swept

the globe in the 1960s. The massive demonstrations

on March 7, 2006 in 160 towns and cities in France,

and the subsequent student strikes and university

occupations and demonstrations, planned or in

process, have raised the question as to whether these

recent protests will lead to a similar social unrest as

occurred in the 1960s.

On March 7, up to a million people in France

demonstrated in opposition to the French govern-

ment’s plan to pass a new law that was then in the

French Senate. The law has come to be known as

CPE, the “Contrat Premiere Embauche”; in English,

the “First Employment Contract.” Despite the

protest, the government passed the bill the next day

so that it is now a law. The law was passed in a way

that sidestepped the debate and discussion that is a

traditional part of the legislative process in France.

This law applies to those under 26 years of age

who find a new job. It gives the employer the right to

terminate the new hire’s employment within two

years without having to give any reason. Under

French law, the employer has only a month to

terminate the employment of a new employee who is

26 or older without having to provide a reason. After

that, French labor law provides protection for the

employee so that employment isn’t ended without

objective cause.

Does Electoral Politics Fit Democracy?

The unemployment rate in France is an esti-

mated 10 percent of the French workforce. This

includes an estimated 20 percent of young people

who do not have jobs. There have been various

proposals offered for how to lower this high rate of

Page 10

unemployment. One such proposal is to make it

possible for those in the current workforce to retire

earlier than presently possible in order to open jobs

for those who are currently unemployed.

The new law, however, takes a very different

approach to the high rate of youth unemployment. It

is based on an initiative introduced by the French

Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin. It provides

that those under 26 who work for companies with

more than 20 employees can be dismissed from their

employment in the first two years without any reason

given for their termination. Students and others who

oppose the law say that this treats them in a discrimi-

natory way. Not only is it normally difficult to get a

job, but under this new law, an employer will have an

incentive to end a young worker’s employment before

the two years are up and hire another employee who

is under 26. For those seeking jobs who are 26 or

over, this new law provides an incentive for employ-

ers to give preference to younger workers who can be

hired and then fired as a new form of temporary

employment.

Last August a similar French law was put into

effect by Executive Mandate that applied only to

employers with fewer than 20 paid employees. Under

this law, known as the CNE, (in French “Contrat

Nouvelle Embauche”) a small employer can hire and

dismiss people before they have worked for the

employer for two years without having to provide a

reason for the dismissal. There are many instances of

workers protesting that they lost their jobs unfairly

under this law. The very competitive pressures that

leads employers to desire such flexibility to fire at

will, also is a pressure on the employer to terminate a

new worker before the two years are up and to hire

someone else who is not covered by the labor laws.

The new labor law, the CPE, is modeled on the CNE,

but applies to larger employers.

The French Senate passed the CPE in a hurried

way and at night, on March 8 and 9, cutting short

debate using a special procedure known as Article

49.3 of the French Constitution. Students, student

organizations, and other young people across France

were dismayed by the prospects of having to work

under the conditions provided by the new law. French

labor unions also oppose the new law, along with the

Socialist Party and other parties, including the Green

Party.

In response to the French government passing the

law after the large protest demonstrations, there were

student strikes and sit-ins at universities around

France, including at the Sorbonne University in

Paris. An estimated 600 students were part of the

occupation of the Sorbonne on Friday, March 10.

Other students demonstrated in the streets surround-

ing the Sorbonne to support the sit-in. Early Saturday

morning, about 4 a.m., however, the police forcibly

ejected those who were still occupying the univer-

sity.

Dismay has been expressed by those who

oppose the CPE that the police forcibly broke up a

peaceful protest and entered a university. Students

vow to continue the struggle to get the law changed.

Continuing demonstrations and student strikes are

planned, including a demonstration for March 16,

and another one on March 18.

Press reports about the demonstrations describe

how students are not only frustrated by the law, but

even more so by the lack of response from the

government to their protests. One student com-

plained, “We feel we have the support of the people

in the street but that the government just doesn’t

care.”

Others explain that they escalated their

protest to a sit-in because they were enraged that the

government passed the new law disregarding the

massive demonstrations against it.

Students describe how they feel they have no

means to influence the decisions made by the gov-

ernment. At the heart of the discontent is dissatisfac-

tion with the lack of democratic processes that made

it possible for the French government to impose such

an unpopular law on French citizens.

This problem of a disconnect between the

citizens and their government is being expressed in

other European countries, not only in France. In the

recent German election, many were unhappy with

the Hartz IV labor laws that the German government

is instituting to take away the social benefits that

German workers have felt important to maintain.

Since both of the main political parties supported the

Hartz IV laws, it was difficult for those opposed to

them to express their dissatisfaction in the election

and to find a way through the election to make a

change in government policy regarding the new

labor laws.

Similarly, in Great Britain, there is widespread

discontent about various aspects of the British govern-

ment’s programs and policies. Elections there also do

not provide a means for expressing this dissatisfac-

tion, as a recent research study published in Great

Page 11

Britain demonstrates.

The report, “Power: An Independent Inquiry into

Britain’s Democracy,” (http://www.powerinquiry

.org/report/index.php) was published at the end of

February, 2006. It is the result of research funded by

the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust and the Joseph

Rowntree Reform Trust, Ltd., which supports re-

search “promoting democratic reform, constitutional

change and social justice.” The researchers explain

that, “The POWER Inquiry was set up in 2004 to

explore how political participation and involvement

can be increased and deepened in Britain.” The

product of their research is a harsh critique of the

failure in Great Britain of any means for citizens to

participate in the decisions that affect their lives. The

report suggests that elections are not playing this role.

This problem is not peculiar to Great Britain, but the

“majority of the established democracies are facing

similar problems despite the differences in their

recent political and economic histories and the varia-

tions in their constitutional arrangements,” the report

explains.

What the report documents is that there is wide-

spread recognition among the citizenry that their

views and desires are not part of the political pro-

cesses, nor are they of interest to the politicians who

make the decisions. Citizens, especially those who are

better informed via the Internet, feel the need more

than ever to have their views taken into consideration

by the government officials who make decisions.

However, these decisions are being made in ways that

exclude citizens more than ever before. Essentially,

citizens are being “evicted” from the political pro-

cesses.

The report includes a set of recommendations

about what is needed to change the situation. The

researchers plan to hold a conference to discuss the

report, its implications and recommendations it

contains. But the significance of the report is that it

documents how the discontent being expressed in the

streets, and on university campuses in France in

response to the new labor law, is part of a widespread

failure of governments to provide for the democratic

needs and desires of their citizens. The same was seen

in 2003 when millions of people in the U.S. and

elsewhere expressed opposition to any invasion of

Iraq. The Bush regime went ahead anyway.

The government processes ongoing in France are

an example of the broader problem, that the Power

Commission identified, a problem that demonstrates

that there is a fundamental flaw in how countries like

France, Great Britain, Germany and the U.S. claim

to practice democracy. The problem is decreasing

means for citizens to influence the decisions that

effect their lives.

In 1968, a similar problem resulted in wide-

spread unrest and mass movements to try to correct

the injustices and the lack of democratic processes

available to citizens. The events unfolding in France

today, reinforced by the problems described in the

report published in Great Britain, demonstrate that

there is a need for change in the democratic decision

making practices of the countries with some of the

most praised traditions of democracy. The problem

of extending the democratic processes practiced by

governments is a problem still to be solved. The

French students and the French labor movement are

actively protesting the actions of the French govern-

ment and fighting for more democratic political

processes.

1. Angelique Chrisafis, French students revive spirit

of 68, The Guardian, March 10, 2006.

First NYC Transit Strike in

25 Years

Workers Object to Lower Pension

Benefits for New Hires,

Despite $1 Billion Surplus

by Ronda Hauben

At 3:05 a.m. on Dec. 20, 2005 Roger Toussaint,

the President of the New York Transit Workers

Union (TWU) announced that the transit workers

who operate the New York City buses and subways,

were on strike. This is the first transit strike in New

York City in the past 25 years. The last strike lasted

11 days and was in 1980.

Toussaint said that the Metropolitan Transit

Authority (MTA), which is in charge of the transit

system, has a $1 billion surplus.

Yet the contract

offer the MTA made provides little of a wage in-

crease and is a contractual cutback in health and

pension benefits, as new hires would be required to

Page 12

pay more for their benefits.

An important issue that caused the strike is that

the MTA contract offer would pay new hires lower

pension benefits. This is a strategy to divide the union

and weaken it by creating a two-tier system, with one

set of workers having better benefits than another set.

Also such a system provides a material incentive for

management to harass older workers and to try to get

rid of them, so as to replace them with lower-paid

employees. A serious grievance of transit workers is

that they are already subjected to unjust disciplinary

actions by management. Against the more then

33,000 transit workers there are perhaps 15,000

outstanding disciplinary actions being contested by

the union.

“This is a fight over whether hard work will

be rewarded with a decent retirement – over

the erosion or eventual elimination of health

benefit coverage for working people,” said

Toussaint.

The President of the Transport Workers Union of

American, the parent union of the TWU, is reported

to have said he wasn’t in support of the strike and that

the union should return to the bargaining table instead

of striking. Without a strike, though, workers felt

there was not much of a reason for the MTA to

change the hardball tactics they were using against the

workers. Toussaint explained:

“The MTA knew that reducing health and

pension standards at the authority would be

unacceptable to our union. They knew there

was no good economic reason for their hard

line on this issue - not with a billion dollar

surplus. They went ahead anyway.”

The Mayor of New York City and the Governor

of New York State have encouraged the hardline

tactics of the MTA rather than supporting a serious

effort to settle the contract dispute.

The Union initially asked for an 8 percent wage

increase each year, but reduced that to 6%. But they

were committed to maintaining the same pension

benefits for new hires as for older workers.

A small wage increase of 3 percent, 4 percent and

3-1/2 percent in the three years of the contract was

offered but as the new hires would have to pay more

for their pensions, this would effectively give them an

even lower wage than other union workers.

A rally was held on Monday in support of the

transit workers. Some of the issues raised by transit

workers as problems they have been faced with

include the closing of toll booths and the reassign-

ment of workers to cleaning and other chores, the

large number of disciplinary actions against workers,

and the proposal to eliminate the conductor on trains

who is there to monitor what is happening with the

train and the passengers.

The sentiment among union members in the city

is that they are fed up with management insisting on

“givebacks” and continually cutting workers’ wages

and benefits. Other unions said they would do what

they could to support the transit workers.

There is a law called the Taylor Law which

prohibits public employees in New York State from

striking. The MTA has gotten a preliminary injunc-

tion from the New York State Supreme Court that

will allow it to impose large fines on the union, and

fine each worker two days pay for each day they

strike. Also, New York City Mayor Bloomberg has

filed a lawsuit asking that the workers be fined

$25,000 each day they strike.

The transit workers feel that if they don’t stand

up for better working conditions when there is a

surplus in the budget, that they will only be agreeing

to ever worsening working conditions. The transit

workers are in a stronger position than other workers

in the city in terms of their ability to fight for better

conditions not only because of the MTA surplus but

also because of the crucial role transportation plays

in the life as such a big city.

If they win the strike, that is a support for other

workers in their fight for higher wages and better

working conditions. If the transit workers agree to

accept cutbacks in their benefits and even poorer

working conditions, that encourages other employers

to lower wages and benefits.

The transit workers did not want to strike. They

had let the deadline for the strike on Thursday pass,

and continued to try to negotiate. The response of the

MTA, however, was to continue to demand cutbacks

from the union. The transit workers have called on

all in the city to recognize their importance of the

strike and “to rally in solidarity to show that the

TWU doesn’t stand alone.”

Notes:

1. The MTA has a history of hiding their surpluses and keeping

different sets of books. See for example: http://www.osc.

state.ny.us/press/releases/apr03/042303.htm

2 . h t t p : / / t w u l o c a l 1 0 0 . b l o g s p o t . c o m / 2 0 0 5 / 1 2 /

Page 13

toussaint-twu-local-100-on-strike.html

3. See http://nyc.indymedia.org/en/2005/12/62121 .html

4. The web site for the union is: http://www.twulocal 100.org

The web site for the MTA is: http:// www.mta.info/

This article appears in Telepolis and is reprinted with their

permission.

[Editor’s note: The following talk was presented at

the XXII International Congress of History of Science

in Beijing China on July 26, 2005. The symposium it

was part of was the first international symposium

focusing on netizens that we have heard of.]

The International and

Scientific Origins of the

Internet and the Emergence

of the Netizens

by Ronda Hauben

[email protected]

“Netizens are Net Citizens who utilize

the Net from their home, workplace, school,

library, etc. These people are among those

who populate the Net, and make it a re-

source of human beings. These netizens

participate to help make the Net both an

intellectual and a social resource.”

from “Further Thoughts about Netizens”

http://www.columbia.edu/~hauben/netizens/tunis-

ppf/RHauben.txt

I am happy to be here today and to be the first

paper in this symposium. The symposium is titled

“Computer Networks, the Internet and Netizens:

Their Impact on Science and Society”

It is an honor to have this symposium in Asia, in

Beijing, as new and important developments regard-

ing the Internet are being explored by netizens in

Korea, China and other countries in East Asia. Also

this is a period when the future of the Internet and its

development is being contested. There is a struggle

ongoing between the U.S. government and a number

of countries around the world who are meeting under

the sponsorship of the UN’s World Summit on

Information Society (WSIS) to try to determine the

management model that is needed for the interna-

tional administration of the Internet’s infrastructure.

But to solve a problem like this it is useful to have

some idea of how the Internet was developed and

what are the salient aspects of that development.

In my talk today, I want to explore these aspects

and in turn try to unravel some of the myths about

the Internet and its origins that hide its actual charac-

ter. I have a draft paper I have prepared where I

explore the issues in greater detail that I will speak

about today. http://www.columbia.edu/~hauben/

netizens/tunis-ppf/RHauben.txt

First, a common view of the Internet is that it

was created within the U.S. by the U.S. Department

of Defense as a way to have a communication

system that would survive a nuclear war. This is a

fallacious view of the origin of the Internet. It is

inaccurate in many aspects.

Notably:

1) The Internet was created as a scientific research

project by an open and international research pro-

cess, not as a secret Department of Defense product-

oriented development.

2) The Internet is an international and not an Ameri-

can creation. Though many American researchers

did critical work to develop the Internet, the research

was part of the activity of an international research

community.

3) The goal of Internet research was to create a

means to make communication possible across the

boundaries of different networks. During the period

of the birth of the Internet (1973-1983), countries

like Great Britain, France, Canada and others were

either actually creating their own national or specific

computer networks, or were developing plans to do

so. These networks would all be different technically

and would be owned and operated by different

political and administrative entities. How to provide

for communication across the boundaries of these

diverse networks was the problem to be solved.

In my paper I go into greater detail about the

process of creating the protocol TCP/IP to make it

possible to communicate across the boundaries of

dissimilar networks. I show a graphic of the research

collaboration by Norwegian researchers connected

with NORSA (NORwegian Seismic ARray). Actu-

ally the research organization was the Norwegian

Defence Research Establishment (NDRE,

“Forsvarets Forskningsinstitutt”), British researchers

Page 14

connected with University College London, and

American researchers working as part of the Informa-

tion Processing Techniques Office (IPTO) at ARPA.

But for my talk today I want to focus on what I

propose are some of the scientific origins of the

research that have made the Internet possible. And I

want to argue that it is these scientific origins, which

are poorly understood and not often recognized, but

that are at the essence of the nature of the Internet.

To understand these scientific origins of the

Internet’s development, I want to step back to the

early post World War II period. During this period

there was a scientific ferment to understand the

science of communication. A community of scientists,

mathematicians, engineers and social scientists were

interested in exploring the processes of communica-

tion. One means they adopted was to participate in an

interdisciplinary community of researchers who met

bi-yearly or yearly. Essentially the researchers pur-

sued different disciplines and spoke different scien-

tific languages.

Their effort was to try to bridge the boundaries

that separated their disciplines. The meetings of the

group were known by different names, but during one

period they were called the Josiah Macy Jr Founda-

tion conferences on Cybernetics(also known as

“feedback” or “self organizing systems”).

J. C. R. Licklider (or Lick as he asked people to

call him) was a research scientist who had made

certain scientific advances in communication re-

search. His PhD thesis broke new ground by mapping

where in the brain of the cat, different pitches of

sound were received and how this led to the percep-

tion of different frequencies of sound.

Also Licklider had made an engineering break-

through which is referred to as “clipped speech.” He

was able to identify what small part of the place on

the sound wave was critical for the sound to be

perceived. (This was helpful to the U.S. military

during WWII in identifying how pilots could get help

hearing vital sounds despite lots of background

noise.)

Licklider was deeply interested in the study of

communication. Though he only attended one of the

10 Macy Foundation meetings on Cybernetics, he,

along with other scientists, received support from the

National Science Foundation(NSF) in the U.S. to

have a meeting in 1954 at MIT similar to the Macy

Foundation meetings on Cybernetics that ended in

1953. The title of the conference was “Problems in

Human Communication and Control.” The notes of

the meeting were then transcribed. Licklider edited

the notes. The proceedings was published, much in

the same way the Macy Conference proceedings

were published.

An important interest of Licklider’s was in the

workings of the brain and how more advanced

computer development could help the research

collaboration of scientists and engineers. Of particu-

lar interest was a form of modeling. In a paper

written with Robert Taylor in 1968, Licklider and

Taylor wrote:

“By far the most numerous, most sophisti-

cated and most important models are those

that reside in men’s minds.”

An example of how the computer could help

represent models for Licklider was the program

Sketchpad created by Ivan Sutherland. Describing a

demonstration he had seen of Sutherland’s modeling

program, Warren Teitelman, then a graduate student

at MIT, writes:

“Sutherland sketched the girder of a

bridge and indicated the points at which

members were connected together by riv-

ets. He drew a support at each end of the

girder and a load at the center. The model

showed the girder sagging under the load

and a number appeared on each member

showing the tensions there.”

Sutherland was able to add the support needed

using the modeling program. Then the bridge was,

according to the computer simulation program, able

to maintain its weight. This is an example of the

encouraging potential that Licklider envisioned if the

scientific research community could acquire the

technology they needed for their modeling.

Licklider not only felt that modeling was critical

for scientific research, but for society as well. De-

scribing the modeling that Licklider believed charac-

terized the functioning of the brain, he and Taylor

write:

“In richness, plasticity, facility and

economy, the mental model has no peer,

but in other respects it has shortcomings.”

The primary shortcomings of such a model is

that is that it is stored in the brain of only a single

individual. Hence:

“It can be observed and manipulated

only by one person”

In order for such models to serve a social func-

Page 15

tion, there is a need, as Licklider and Taylor explain,

for the models in the head of individuals to become

part of a collaborative process. They explain:

“Society rightly distrusts the modeling

done by a single mind.”

More specifically:

“Society demands (...) [what -ed]

amounts to the requirement that individual

models be compared and brought into some

degree of accord. The requirement for com-

municating which we now define concisely

[as -ed] ‘cooperative’ modeling – [is -ed]

cooperation in the construction, maintenance

and use of a model”

Licklider and Taylor then explain that like the

process they believe is ongoing in the brain, what is

needed for such cooperative modeling is:

“a plastic or moldable medium that can

be modeled, a dynamic medium in which

processes will flow into consequences.”

Most important for such a medium is that it

supports collaborative contributions and processes -

that it be:

“a common medium that can be contrib-

uted to and experimented with by all.”

Licklider and Taylor envisioned that the develop-

ing online community would find the capability for

such collaborative modeling as the Internet developed

and that having access to this plastic collaborative

environment would be a boon to the advancement of

society and of science.

Along with the need for such a moldable medium

for scientific collaborative development, Licklider

also maintained that there would be a need for a

collaborative community with the capability to

support continuing network development and to

intervene to help with the problems that would

develop when government officials who didn’t

understand the nature of computer technology, would

be charged with making the decisions needed for its

development.

Licklider was part of a community of scientists

who had seen poor technical and political decisions

made by governments. (For example the bombing of

civilians during WWII by the Allies). At a series of

talks held to celebrate the 100

anniversary of MIT,

the British scientist, civil servant, and writer, C. P.

Snow, was invited to give a talk on “Scientists and

Decision Making.”

During his talk, Snow described the gap that

would exist between understanding the nature of the

new computer technology that was being developed

and the understanding of government officials who

would have the responsibility for the decisions about

how to support the development of computer tech-

nology. Snow explained how such a problem re-

quired a situation similar to a phenomenon that in

physics is called Brownian Motion. Referring to

what happened in Great Britain after World War II

when the whole society began discussing the need

for national health care, Snow outlines this phenome-

non:

“I believe that the healthiest decisions

of society occur by something more like

Brownian movement. All kinds of people

all over the place suddenly get smitten with

the same sort of desire, with the same sort

of interest at the same time. This forms a

concentration of pressure and of direction.

These concentrations of pressure gradually

filter their way through to the people whose

nominal responsibility it is to put the legis-

lation into a written form.”

You may notice, perhaps, that this description

by C. P. Snow of a form of Brownian Motion for

society, sounds similar in some ways to the concept

of the ‘public sphere’ that the German philosopher

Jurgen Habermas explores in his writing.

Shortly after the talks for the MIT centennial,

Licklider was invited to join the Advanced Research

Projects Agency (ARPA) to set up an office for

research in computer science and an office for

research in behavioral science. The office for re-

search in computer science he called the Information

Processing Techniques Office (IPTO). (1962-1986).

Licklider was its first director and he was followed

by Ivan Sutherland. There were several subsequent

directors, and then in 1974, Licklider was invited to

return as director.

In his writing and talks after he left the IPTO in

1975, Licklider describes the problems he encoun-

tered to get support for basic research in computer

science within the U.S. Department of Defense and

the need for citizens who will actively take up the

effort to deal with the problems when they develop.

Licklider is not asking for citizens to vote on

every issue. Instead he outlines how voting is insuffi-

cient as a way to work to promote the public interest.

He writes:

“(V)oting in the absence of understand-

Page 16

ing defines only the public attitude, not the

public interest. It means that many public

spirited individuals must study, model,

analyze, argue, write, criticize, and work out

each issue and each problem until they reach

consensus or determine that none can be

reached – at which point there may be occa-

sion for voting.”

(Licklider, 1979, p. 126)

Licklider describes the need for citizen involve-

ment in government decisions to help determine how

to support the continuing development of computer

technology. More significantly, Licklider proposes

that people will not be interested in government

processes until they have a means to participate in

those processes. He foresees how computer develop-

ments will provide that means. He writes:

“Computer power to the people is es-

sential to the realization of a future in which

most citizens are informed about, and inter-

ested in, the process of government.”

(Licklider, 1979, p. 126)

The process for citizen involvement in the

development of computer technology that Licklider

outlines is a process that characterizes the kind of

discussion that I found on some of the earliest mailing

lists and Usenet newsgroups that developed in the

early 1980s. This process functioned for needed

technical discussion, such as with the ARPANET

TCP/IP Digest when the cutover to TCP/IP was

carried out. (See Ronda Hauben, “A Study of the

ARPANET TCP/IP Digest and of the Role of Online

Communication in the Transition from the

ARPANET to the Internet,”

http://umcc.ais.org/~ronda/new.papers/tcpdraft.txt)

Such discussion also helped to develop and

spread the vision for ubiquitous computer networking

that was discussed on the Human Nets mailing list

and other mailing lists and Usenet newsgroups during

the early 1980s. But more fundamentally, the emer-

gence of a public spirited online citizenry that

Licklider believed so important to the continued

support and development of computer and networking

technology was identified through the research done

by a college student in the early 1990s.

In 1992-3, as part of research done for a college

assignment, the student, Michael Hauben, posted a

series of questions and some preliminary research

about the developing network on Usenet newsgroups.

(Usenet is a worldwide discussion forum.) He also

posted his questions on a few Internet mailing lists.

Michael was surprised as replies to his questions

began to arrive in his mailbox. Through subsequent

posts, and analyzing the replies he received, he

recognized that a new form of consciousness, a new

identity was being acquired by many of those who

wrote to him. In my paper, I describe how a number

of the replies Michael received indicated how people

online were not only interested in how the develop-

ing Net was contributing to their own lives, but also

many were seeking to spread access to the Internet to

others.

Michael had seen the word ‘net.citizen’ referred

to online. Thinking about the social concern and

consciousness he had found among those who wrote

to him, and about the non-geographical character of

a net based form of citizenship, he contracted

‘net.citizen’ into the word ‘netizen’. Netizen has

come to reflect the online social identity Michael

discovered doing his research.

Michael wrote a paper he titled, “The Net and

Netizens: The Impact the Net has on People’s Lives”

describing the research he had done and the contribu-

tions he received from many parts of the world.

Michael’s research was done in 1992-1993 just at the

time that the Internet was spreading to countries and

networks around the world which were becoming

connected to the Internet. He posted his paper on

Usenet and several Internet mailing lists on July 6,

1993 in 4 parts under the title “Common Sense: The

Net and Netizens: the Impact the Net is having on

people’s lives.” People around the world wrote

Michael that they found his paper of interest and the

term netizen quickly spread, not only in the online

world, but soon began appearing in newspapers and

other publications offline.

Michael continued to do research into the

history and impact of the Internet, and to post his

articles online. During this period I collaborated with

Michael, also doing research and writing that was

posted online. People who found our writing of

interest suggested we gather them into a book. We

collected our papers into an online book title

“Netizens and the Wonderful World of the Net”

which was put online in January 1994.

Netizens, as Michael wrote, are those who

embodied the social conscious and public purpose

similar to that which Lickldier had considered

important for the continued development of com-

puter technology and of the public policy to support

Page 17

that development.

Michael was invited to speak at a conference in

Beppu Bay in Japan in November 1995. In his speech

he explained why he felt it was important to distin-

guish between the more general usage the media has

promoted, that anyone online is a netizen, and the

usage that the he had introduced, reserving the title

‘netizen’ for the online user who actively participates

to make the net and the world it is part of a better

place. He explained:

“Netizens...are people who understand

it takes effort and action on each and every-

one’s part to make the Net a regenerative

and vibrant community and resource.

Netizens are people who decide to devote

time and effort into making the Net, this new

part of our world, a better place.”

Michael Hauben, talk given on November

24, 1995 at the Hypernetwork ‘95, Beppu

Bay Conference in Beppu, Japan. The theme

of the conference was “The Netizen Revolu-

tion and the Regional Information Infrastruc-

ture.”

Individuals from around the world adopted and

helped to spread the consciousness and identity of the

netizen. A specially interesting development at the

present time are the netizens of South Korea.

South Korea is one of the most wired nations in

the world. Over 70% of the population has access to

high speed Internet. Along with the spread of high

speed Internet access in Korea is the development of

netizenship among the Korean population. I document

some of the significant aspects of this development in

my conference paper.

In a way that is similar to how Michael described

the interactive, collaborative online processes that he

and those who wrote him in the early 1990s, research-

ers in South Korea are documenting similar processes

and the impact of netizens on Korean society. One

particularly interesting aspect of these developments

is that online processes are being adopted by formerly

offline institutions and that online clubs have devel-

oped offline organizational forms as well.

Also these researchers document how online

collaborative discussion processes among Korean

netizens are creating the kinds of collaborative social

models that Licklider believed were needed for

scientific and social advancement.

Implications and Research Questions

Raised

The online plastic collaborion which makes

possible interactive modeling that Licklider and

Taylor describe in their 1968 paper is a helpful

analogy through which to view the online world that

has evolved as the Internet has developed and spread

around the world. The social consciousness of users

as online citizens, as netizens has also evolved and

spread.

In this symposium today we will hear other talks

which will explore or differ with the framework I am

proposing.

I want to argue for the need for specific studies,

whether historical or contemporaneous, of how the

interactive collaborative modeling that licklider

proposed as essential to further social and scientific

development of technology is being explored via the

Internet. Also I want to propose the need to bring

this area of study into the public policy activities of

those who are trying to contribute to the continued

development of the Internet and the management of

its infrastructure. For example, the WSIS meetings

being held in conjunction with the UN demonstrate

the need for an appropriate model for the manage-

ment of the Internet’s infrastructure. But outdated

models that developed prior to the Internet are

dominating the discourse among those involved in

the WSIS process.

There are a number of other research questions

that arise from my paper and study. I hope those

interested in these issues will find a way to continue

the discussion begun in this symposium after the

Congress as well.

Page 18

[Editor’s note: The following biography by Simon

Butler appeared as part of the 250

birthday celebra-

tion for Columbia University.]

Michael Hauben: Sketch for

250th Birthday of

Columbia University

“I like to think of you as a netizen.”

While the prevalence and universality of the

Internet today may lead some to take it for granted,

Michael Hauben did not. A pioneer in the study of the

Internet’s impact on society, Hauben helped identify

the collaborative nature of the Internet and its effects

on the global community. Credited with coining and

popularizing the term netizen (net + citizen), Hauben,

with his mother, Ronda, cowrote the seminal

Netizens: On the History and Impact of Usenet and

the Internet (IEEE Computer Society Press, 1997),

which outlined the growth and role of the medium in

the world and was published in both English and

Japanese.

Born on May 1, 1973, in Boston, Michael

Hauben was an early participant in electronic bulletin

boards. He graduated from Columbia University in

1995 with a bachelor’s degree in computer science;

following that, he entered the program Communica-

tion, Computing and Technology at Teacher’s Col-

lege and received a master’s degree in 1997. Of

particular interest to Hauben was understanding the

democratization of the Internet and the participation

of netizens in the global community to build the Net.

He viewed the Internet as a reflection of democracy

at work. An editor of the online newsletter “The

Amateur Computerist,” Hauben gave talks on the

Internet in locales ranging from Beppu, Japan, to

Corfu, Greece, to Montreal, Canada, to the Catskills

region in New York. After sustaining injuries result-

ing from an accident in December 1999, when he was

hit by a cab, Hauben died in June 2001. A champion

of the Internet, he truly was a netizen.

http://www.columbia.edu/~hauben/netbook/

http://www.edu-cyberpg.com/IEC/pioneers.html

Submitted by Simon Butler, Columbia College 1995,

who is solely responsible for the content.

[Editor’s note: The following comment appeared on

the weblog of Hee Won Kim on August 5, 2005.

http://hypercortex.net/ver2/index.php?pl=4#]

Misunderstanding about

‘Netizen’ 05/08/10 00:02

The concept ‘netizen’ is very frequently used

especially in Korea. Most people, however, use the

word just based on their common idea rather than

quote the concept accurately. I think people misun-

derstand this important concept. The Korean word

‘nurikun(????),’ which is an equivalent for the

‘netizen,’ proves that people don’t understand the

meaning of netizen and don’t use the concept prop-

erly. Because the word ‘nurikun’ means ‘general

internet users’ or ‘general users on the web.’

Does it have something to do with the original

meaning of netizen? Absolutely not.

Mrs. and Mr. Hauben had visited Seoul, and

they flied back to the U.S. yesterday. I met and

talked with them at a coffee shop near Yonsei Uni-

versity on August 5. Their son, Michael Hauben

coined the word netizen. (His work was already

quoted several times by Korean researchers, as you

know.) Nowadays Mrs. and Mr. Hauben is doing the

netizen research after their son. They told me that

almost all Korean people identified themselves as the

netizens. “Yes, I’m a netizen...!” I agree with them.

Netizens are everywhere here in Korea! (How could

it be!)

Netizen is not the word that point any casual

internet users. “They are people who understand it

takes effort and action on each and everyone’s part

to make the Net a regenerative and vibrant commu-

nity and resource. Netizens are people who decide to

devote time and effort into making the Net, this new

part of our world, a better place.” (by Michael

Hauben, 1995) This is a sophisticated concept. If you

Michael F. Hauben (1973-2001)

Internet Pioneer, Author

Columbia College 1995,

Teachers College 199

Page 19

have the consciousness of social/political participa-

tion and take action, you can be a netizen. If you just

enjoy web surfing, it’s very hard to say that you are a

netizen although you spend great time for the internet.

Still many people including journalists use the

word netizen carelessly. Also, ‘nurikun’ cannot show

the original meaning, it’s not the equivalent but just a

new word. There are interesting cases that actualize

the power of netizens in Korea, but because of this,

the concept seems to be used excessively. You can

find more about the netizen in the book: [Netizens :

On the History and Impact of Usenet and the Internet]

<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/08

18677066/qid=1123592989/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/104-

2090333-9880743?v=glance&s=books>.

You can read the full text here: Netizens: On the

H i s t o r y a n d I m p a c t o f t h e N e t

<http://www.columbia.edu/~hauben/netbook/>.

Advancing “News

Guerrillas”

OhmyNews and 21st Century

Journalism

by Ronda Hauben

In his autobiography, Oh Yeon Ho, the founder

and chief executive of the Korean newspaper

OhmyNews, describes how an Internet craze gripped

South Korea in 1999 when he was launching [extern]

OhmyNews. “We were late to industrialization, but

let’s lead in digitalization” was one of the slogans of

the government and media at the time. “We shall lead

Korea to become an information superpower,” was

another phrase repeated during this period. This

translated into web editions of the major Korean print

newspapers. “So the closed and elitist journalistic

culture was transferred intact to the Internet,” Oh

observes.

With regard to his Internet background, Oh was

then “a country bumkin.” At the time, “I wasn’t very

used to technology,” he admits. He had spent the

previous 10 years, since 1989, as a journalist for the

Korean publication, the monthly Mahl, owned by the

civic group, the Citizens’ Coalition for Democratic

Media. As a journalist, he gave lectures to university

students about how to become a reporter. Oh titled his

lecture, “Every citizen is a reporter.”

He was particularly concerned with the imbal-

ance of power in the media environment in South

Korea. There were eight conservative media organi-

zations and only two that were progressive, the

monthly Mahl and the Hankyoreh. He noticed how

the conservative media companies in South Korea

would determine what was considered news. If a

story was published in the monthly Mahl it would

get little attention by other media. If one was pub-

lished by one of the conservative media organiza-

tions, however, it would be considered news.

OhmyNews and the ‘386'

Hoping to make the South Korean media land-

scape more progressively balanced, he put some of

the money he obtained from selling his home into

capital to support the creation of the first South

Korean Internet newspaper which he decided to call

“OhmyNews.” Five ‘386’ generation businessmen

who sympathized with the aims of OhmyNews also

invested seed money. (The ‘386’ generation is a term

used to describe the generation that participated in

the student movement of the 1980s that helped to

topple the military dictatorship in South Korea).

These five and Oh were the first stockholders of

OhmyNews. Oh asked web designers he knew to

write a program. By the end of 1999, he was beta

testing a new online form of newspaper. The first

edition of OhmyNews was December 21, 1999. At

the time OhmyNews had a staff of four and received

twenty articles from citizen reporters. By the official

launch date, February 22, 2002 at 2:22 p.m., when

the incorporation papers were signed, there were 727

citizen reporters.

His goal, Oh explains, was to create a media

culture where “the quality of news determined

whether it won or lost” not the power and prestige of

the media organization that printed the article.

Fortunately, Oh was embarking on an undertaking

that would depend upon the nature of the Internet,

which provides an online environment created to be

plastic, malleable, interactive, general purpose, and

which supports collaborative efforts (see “Dawn of

the Internet and Netizen”). http://english.ohmynews

.com/ArticleView/article_view.asp?menu=A11100

&no=242311&rel_no=1&back_url=

Page 20

Every citizen is a reporter

These qualities of the Internet would help him to

create an online publication which three years later, in

October 2003, would be ranked 6th in a survey of

Korea’s Most Influential Media by Sisa Journal and

Media Research. OhmyNews turned a profit for the

first time three years after its birth, in 2003. Jean Min,

the Director of the International Division of

OhmyNews, explains that today 70% of the funding

for OhmyNews comes from advertisements, and 30%

comes from news content sales and other sources.

OhmyNews hopes this will change to a 50-50 mix to

provide more stability.

The current personnel structure of OhmyNews is

made up of full time staff. There are also columnists,

international correspondents, and citizen reporters,

who are not part of the paid full time staff. According

to Oh, there are currently 75 paid staff, which in-

cludes 45 reporters. Among the reporters, 12 are

editors for the submissions received from citizen

reporters. Min estimates that there are currently

39,000 citizen reporters. Describing the thinking

which led him to the concept of the citizen reporter,

Oh writes:

Every citizen is a reporter. Journalists

aren’t some exotic species, they’re everyone

who seeks to take new developments, put

them into writing, and share them with

others. This common truth has been tram-

pled on in a culture where being a reporter is

seen as something of a privilege to be en-

joyed. Privileged reporters who come to-

gether to form massive news media wielded

power over the whole process of news pro-

duction, distribution, and consumption. The

seriousness of the problem is that the mas-

sive media power is the final gutter of Ko-

rean capitalist society. There is a lot about

those media that is dirty, and yet they have

packaged themselves as clean and acted

self-righteously towards the rest of society.

We therefore stand up to them raising high

the flag of guerrilla warfare. Our weapon is

the proposition that ‘Every citizen is a re-

porter.’ We intend to achieve a’News alli-

ance of the news guerrillas’.

“The Revolt of 727 News Guerrillas: A Revolution in

News Production and Consumption”.

Explaining what he means by guerrilla warfare,

Oh elaborates:

“The dictionary definition of guerrilla is ‘a

member of small non-regular armed forces

who disrupt the rear positions of the en-

emy.’ Citizen reporters can be called guer-

rillas because they are not professional and

regulars and they post news from perspec-

tives uniquely their own, not those of the

conservative establishment.”

Some citizen reporters write only occasionally,

but others submit articles regularly. Each day be-

tween 200 and 250 articles are submitted to the

newspaper. Oh explains that about 70% of these will

be published. The website is changed daily, and

sometimes several times a day. The staff decides on

the placement of the articles, whether they are to

appear on the front page, or in one of the sections.

Articles that appear on the main page of the website,

or that are listed in the index of new articles on the

front page, are likely to get more public attention

than articles that are in the sections. Also a list of the

most frequently read articles from the previous week

appears each week. These articles continue to get

attention for an additional week. A print edition is

published once a week containing some of the

articles that appeared online during the week.

Creating a better world

If a citizen reporter’s article is used, the citizen

reporter earns W2000 (W1000 = approx .80 euro),

W10,000, or W20,000. Articles that appear on the

main page earn W20,000, those that appear at the top

of one of the sections, earn W10,000, and those that

appear somewhere else in the online publication earn

W2,000. OhmyNews reports that when citizen

reporters are asked why they submit their articles to

OhmyNews even though they are paid so little, they

respond that they want to contribute to creating a

better world.

Explaining the criteria used by the editors to

choose which of the articles submitted by citizen

reporters will appear in OhmyNews, Oh writes,

“Beginning with current events, how much sympathy

the articles will arouse, how lively they are and how

much social impact they will have.” A graduate

student studying blogs reports that bloggers feel that

blogs are less influential in South Korea because

many potential bloggers prefer to be citizen reporters

for OhmyNews.

OhmyNews celebrated its 5

birthday on Febru-

ary 22, 2005. Oh describes the first 5 years of

Page 21

OhmyNews as the first stage of the young newspa-

per’s development. An objective during this stage was

to gain a standing as a serious newspaper in South

Korea. This was achieved by critiquing the activities

of the big conglomerates and the big media. Coverage

was given to important Korean progressive events

like the campaign to win the Presidency of South

Korea for Roh Moo-Hyun, or the campaign to turn

back his impeachment. Oh also describes how articles

about those with little power were written and pub-

lished in OhmyNews. Another goal during the first

stage of OhmyNews’s development was to spread the

OhmyNews model to the world.

English Edition of Ohmy News

The newspaper has been written up in major

newspapers around the world. This has brought

inquiries from people in a number of countries asking

for advice about how to create a similar newspaper.

To respond to these requests, an English edition of

OhmyNews was created on May 27, 2004, and pub-

lishes regularly. Articles are from citizen reporters

around the world, from columnists or from the staff

who work on the OhmyNews International (OMNI)

edition.

Oh explains that OhmyNews has now entered its

second stage. The objective of this stage is to “go

beyond criticism of the existing social establishment

to propose alternatives for a new society.” To achieve

this goal, OhmyNews will rely on staff reporters.

Recognizing the influence a newspaper can have, Oh

stresses the need for such influence to be used in a

responsible way. Another objective in this second

stage is to develop multimedia further, to aim to set

up an Internet TV program, for example. This, how-

ever, takes money to fund, so it may not be a goal

achieved very soon. With respect to the international

edition, Oh doesn’t foresee developing it as a compet-

itor to current international newspapers like the New

York Times or the Washington Post.

Instead, he hopes to spread the model, concept

and vision of OhmyNews in order to help interested

people in other countries to create their own national

versions of OhmyNews. “In each country there are

many specific, unique conditions to succeed,” he

explains, “If there are enough OhmyNews models in

other countries, we can make an alliance to exchange

articles and to help each other.”

There are online users who are working to extend

democracy in South Korea and who consider them-

selves ‘netizens’. Many ‘netizens’ have contributed

to OhmyNews and it, in turn, has helped them to

achieve important accomplishments in the current

democratization of South Korea. For example, within

two months of the birth of OhmyNews, four reporters

were sent to cover the Blacklist campaign to prevent

corrupt or incompetent politicians from being re-

elected in the April 2000 election.

Even more significant was the campaign waged

by ‘netizens’ to help Roh Moo-Hyun, a politician not

in the mainstream of Korean politics, win the Presi-

dency of South Korea in December 2002.

OhmyNews also played an important role in this

campaign. In the Spring of 2004, ‘netizens’ and

OhmyNews challenged the impeachment of Roh by

organizing and reporting on the massive candlelight

demonstrations in which many thousands of people

participated.

More than a mere dream

Among the problems facing OhmyNews is the

frustration of some citizen reporters with the diffi-

culty of communication they have with the staff. Oh

has a plan to try to improve such communication. In

addition, some international citizen reporters have

complained about the difficulty of getting the pay-

ments they are due for their articles.

On a recent visit to Seoul, I asked people I met

whether they knew of and read OhmyNews. Many

responded that they knew of OhmyNews, while

several said they read it. In talking with people in

South Korea about OhmyNews, some felt it was

biased toward the current President, Roh Moo-Hyun,

who it had helped to put into office. Others praised

it as one of the few progressive publications in South

Korea.

Just this past June, OhmyNews had an interna-

tional forum in Seoul, inviting citizen reporters from

around the world, and from all parts of South Korea

to take part. The event was a significant gathering to

sponsor and to fund for a young media organization

that is but five years old. The daily Korean online

publication and the English edition are a continuing

demonstration that Oh’s commitment to contributing

to the creation of a 21st century journalism as an

interactive and participatory journalism is more than

a mere dream.

How the development and spread of the Internet

will affect the future of journalism is still to be

determined. In South Korea, OhmyNews and netizens

Page 22

have demonstrated that there is a different form of

journalism vying to become the journalism of the

future. Also they are demonstrating that the impact

this new form of journalism will have on politics is

not to be underestimated.

[Editor’s note: The following is a paper read at the

‘Computer Networks, the Internet and Netizens: Their

Impact of Science and Society’ symposium on July

26, 2005 as part of the XXII International Congress of

History of Science in Beijing. It was followed by an

interesting discussion. A slightly different version of

this paper was previously presented in November,

2001 at the Asia-Pacific Journalist Meeting in Tokyo,

Japan by Li Xiguang. The numbers are 4 years old but

the general picture it paints helps understand some of

the press situation in China today.]

The Impact of

New Communication

Technologies on Chinese

Press Politics

by Li Xiguang*, Guo Xiaoke, and Xu Yong

Abstract: The function and role of the Chinese

press have changed dramatically from the days when

it functioned strictly as an ideological Party mouth-

piece and government cheerleader. Foremost among

the drivers of change for China’s media is the Internet

which has weakened the government control of press

and information.

The Internet means different things to different

people in different societies. To some, it provides an

opportunity to make money, to others, it means

freedom from press controls. For still others, the

Internet is a public forum in which citizens of a closed

society can discuss politics. In the past six years the

Internet has developed rapidly in China, as it has in

the rest of the world. This poses new challenges to the

country’s press system and media policy.

With the flourishing of satellite TV, cable TV,

and the Internet, a new media environment has taken

shape in China. Official news outlets are being

outnumbered by their nongovernmental, commercial,

and overseas counterparts. The Internet is becoming

a public medium for people with different ideas and

viewpoints.

For decades Chinese media consisted of news-

papers, magazines, publishing houses, broadcasting

stations, and TV stations under the control of propa-

ganda authorities at all levels. Today, besides more

than 2,000 daily newspapers, 900 TV stations, and

over 90 million cable TV users, there are now

probably more than 300,000 websites. These include

news websites, professional information sites,

corporate sites, institutional sites, and personal

homepages. The recent figure could be more than 30

million Chinese Internet users, operating about 11

million computers, spending at least one hour a day

at web pages. Nearly 64% use the Internet to read

news. Some 24% of adult users and 40% of young

users visit overseas websites, including those based

in Taiwan and the United States. These news outlets

do not need to be approved by the Communist

Party’s propaganda departments.

In the past the government easily controlled and

even manipulated popular opinion by limiting the

public to only official information source. Watching

the 7 p.m. evening news (“Xinwen Lianbo”) on

state-run CCTV, the China Central Television, had

been a national ritual at the family dinner table.

Besides daily news coverage, the party and govern-

ment depended on the program to put across their

major propaganda campaigns and political mobiliza-

tions. But today the program is losing audience share

dramatically, particularly among young viewers who

spend most of their time on the Web, watching

VCDs and cable TV.

In the days of the single-source news, people

had no way to verify the information they received.

For a long time the propaganda authorities effec-

tively controlled the flow of information, news

sources, and information outlets. But in the age of

the Internet, this media system is facing the chal-

lenge of news from multiple sources. Members of

the public no longer rely on official information

sources to form their opinions. Instead, when a big

news event happens, people compare, analyze, and

balance the information they get from different

sources. They form their own viewpoints after

discounting what they consider biased information.

The Internet is developing with unprecedented

speed. Its advance in China can be compared with

Page 23

the invention of paper by the Chinese 1,000 years

ago. The Internet has brought the country into the age

of global communications as well as the global

village. Until a few years ago Chinese authorities

controlled the flow of news and information by

jamming shortwave radio broadcasts and banning any

individual from installing a satellite TV antenna.

Anyone who wanted to own a fax machine had to

Today the rule about registering fax machines with a

local government office is still there. But with the

advent of the Internet, the Telecommunications

Ministry has found its fax machine controls outdated.

The government strictly controls the radio broadcast

through a frequency licensing system. But today

people can start a website station or directly listen to

webcasts via the Internet instead of on air frequencies.

The Internet has technically eliminated the last

obstruction to a free flow of information. To stop the

circulation of information on the Net is as futile as a

child trying to block bursting Yangtze River dam with

his fingers. The great wall that has blocked the free

flow of news and information is now collapsing as

more and more Chinese families get access to the

Internet. In today’s China the most effective way to

staunch information flow would be to assign a police-

man to every computer in the country.

Newspapers, radio, and TV are converging in the

Internet world. How will this convergence and the

growing number of Internet users affect traditional

Chinese media concepts and official media policy?

Propaganda officials and media policy-makers in

China could hardly imagine that mass media would

develop at such a fast pace. Only two years ago, when

a journalism school graduate chose an occupation, the

options were simple: newspaper, magazine, radio, or

TV. But today newspapers, radio, and TV have

become one on the Internet and multimedia platforms.

The demarcation lines have disappeared. Readers of

the Internet edition of the People’s Daily can down-

load audiovisual material. So in this sense, newspa-

pers have entered the broadcast market. If you visit

the homepage of CCTV, you will find that it provides

detailed text news and material for readers. So TV

stations have also entered the newspaper market.

Under current policies, Chinese newspapers, TV

stations, radio, and news agencies must operate

separately and under the control of various party and

government organizations. The People’s Daily, for

example, cannot own a radio station, while a news

agency like Xinhua is not allowed to own a TV

station. Under this policy, the country has only one

wire service-Xinhua. But tens of thousands of news

websites are operating like mini-Xinhuas. They post

a wide variety of stories, either gathered by their own

Internet reporters or based on clippings from Chinese

and foreign media (even though the government bans

the use of Western wire stories on the Web). Popular

portals such sina.com, yahoo.com, eastday.com, and

so on are functioning like quasi news agencies.

Traditional media (newspapers, magazines,

radio, and television) in China are characterized by

the following features:

* They are restricted by geographic region;

* Restricted by audience numbers;

* Restricted by licensing system;

* Restricted by the high costs of entering the

market;

* Restricted by high delivery costs as well as the

unreliability of newspaper and magazine mailing;

* Restricted to one-way communication in which

audiences are completely passive.

But the World Wide Web has brought to China

sharply contrasting conditions:

* Unlimited audience numbers;

* No need for licenses to launch electronic

publications;

* Low costs to enter the Internet: a computer, a

modem and a phone line;

* Not restricted to a single region or country, news

and information on the Internet travel to all users

worldwide at the same speed;

* The Internet has opened a system of two-way

communication – in stark contrast with China’s

long-standing, indoctrination-oriented

propaganda system.

For decades, both for political and technological

reasons, the Chinese media have never been a forum

for public discussion and debate. But the advent of

chatrooms via Internet technology has provided the

Chinese people with a channel for the free flow of

information. Its chief characteristics:

1) People can provide information anonymously;

2) An equal opportunity for participants to speak

their minds;

3) Topics for discussion are unlimited and cannot

be preset;

4) Internet users are both readers and publishers;

Page 24

5) An ability to give readers what they want instead

of what the government thinks they want;

6) The airing of information that traditional media

dare not publish;

7) Censors’ inability to keep pace with the online

media.

As a result,

* Chatrooms in China have aired ideas and debates

that simply aren’t accessible through traditional

media;

* The reader-interest-based content makes the

agenda-setting function more consumer-driven

than government-driven;

* People’s attitudes are being shaped by information

from chatrooms rather than from the official

media.

For Chinese, the Internet has opened the door to

a free flow of information. Internet chatrooms have

provided Chinese with an unlimited space to ex-

change information freely and anonymously. They

have been described as electronic versions of the

big-character posters that were the most efficient

means of mobilizing public opinion during the Cul-

tural Revolution.

As a popular part of Chinese online media, chat-

rooms are posing a big threat to the government-

controlled press by revising and reconstructing its

agenda. Agenda-setting theory holds that the mass

media determine what is important by leading news-

casts with a particular story or printing it on page one.

When news gatekeepers no longer consider an item of

importance, they allow it to slip off the public agenda.

For decades, China’s mass media effectively set

agendas for propaganda purposes. But with so many

news outlets in the age of globalization, people’s

media behavior is influenced by the so-called selec-

tive processes. People have developed many ways of

revising and reconstructing the agenda set by the

official press.

For example, the People’s Daily launched the

“Strong Nation Forum” chatroom to give its readers

a chance to react to the news and vent their emotions.

But most Chinese have used this system not only to

discuss the news but also to post news stories unre-

ported in the official media. Such media behavior has

made audiences pay attention to issues ignored by the

official press, making hidden agendas transparent.

As a result, the list of issues for discussion and

debate in cyberspace are reconstructed topics se-

lected from both the Chinese and the Western media.

During the recent U.S.-China plane-collision

incident, our research found how Chinese public

opinion is shaped in the Internet Age. Our study

analyzed all related news reports, editorials and other

articles that appeared in the People’s Daily between

April 2 and April 30.

Chatrooms have changed the fundamental

movement of news in China. The official press has

always wanted the Chinese people to have the

“right” information and perspective. But the authori-

ties are losing the battle to control information and

free expression on the Internet. Chinese websites

have displayed a liveliness not found in the tradi-

tional media. The Internet is changing China, throw-

ing the country open to ideas and debates that simply

are not accessible through traditional media. But in

their eagerness to develop the Net, China’s top

leaders appear willing to tolerate a certain amount of

frankness that would otherwise be stamped out. The

Internet has become a powerful and popular channel

for both the government and ordinary Chinese to

hear and to be heard.

If the people of one country do not trust their

own national media, they will turn to the interna-

tional press, including that of the country which is in

conflict with theirs. Setting the agenda for another

nation through media and the Internet has become a

“soft power” in international politics. The global

media and foreign media could influence any coun-

try’s agenda-setting. The more trust the press gains

with users, the more effectively it will set agendas.

China’s official press cannot expect that its chosen

topics will become the chief public concerns. In the

age of globalization, if the Chinese do not start press

reform soon, the Western media will eventually set

the public agenda for China.

The people and public opinion are important

elements in a society and in a political system. For

decades popular opinion in China has been under the

strict control of the party and the government. But

today agendas are being set through the Internet. The

Net is transferring the national concerns of the

Chinese to a global level. That makes China part of

a globalized community, whose agenda has been

under the control and manipulation of the global

media.

Page 25

*Professor/Director, Center for International Commu-

nications Studies, Tsinghua University, Beijing,

China. 100084, www.media.tsinghua.edu.cn,

xiguang@tsinghua.edu.cn

EDITORIAL STAFF

Ronda Hauben

William Rohler

Norman O. Thompson

Michael Hauben

(1973-2001)

Jay Hauben

The Amateur Computerist invites submissions. Articles

can be submitted via e-mail: [email protected]

A two issue surface mail subscription costs $10.00

(U.S.). Send e-mail to [email protected] for details.

Permission is given to reprint articles from this issue in

a non profit publication provided credit is given, with

name of author and source of article cited.

The opinions expressed in articles are those of their

authors and not necessarily the opinions of the

Amateur Computerist newsletter. We welcome sub-

missions from a spectrum of viewpoints.

ELECTRONIC EDITION

All issues of the Amateur Computerist are on-line and

available via e-mail. To obtain a free copy of any issue

or a free e-mail subscription, send a request to:

[email protected] or [email protected]

Back issues of the Amateur Computerist are

available on the World Wide Web:

http://www.ais.org/~jrh/acn/Back_Issues/

Page 26