The Amateur

Computerist

February 2023 Toward 25 Years of the Netizen Book (Part 5) Volume 35 No. 5

Table of Contents

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Page 1

Expanding Commonwealth of Learning . . . . . . . . . Page 2

The Computer as a Democratizer . . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 9

Proposed Declaration of Rights of Netizens . . . . Page 12

Participatory Democracy From 1960s and SDS . Page 13

Introduction

The year 2022 marked the 25

Anniversary of

the May 1, 1997 publication of the print edition of

Netizens: On the History and Impact of Usenet and the

Internet by Michael Hauben and Ronda Hauben. This

issue is again part of the celebration of that Anniver-

sary. All four articles are by Michael Hauben. The first

three are Chapters 16 and 18 and the “Proposed

Declaration of the Rights and Netizens” from the book.

The last article, “Participatory Democracy From the

1960s and SDS into the Future On-line” was written in

1995. In these articles, Hauben examined the bigger

context and significance of the Net, in particular its

political and social dimensions.

The first article, “The Expanding Commonwealth

of Learning: Printing and the Net,” compares the emer-

gence of the printing press to the emergence of the

global computer network and demonstrates how the

Net emerging in the 20

Century is continuing the

important communication and social revolution that

the printing press began in the 15

Century. Just as the

printing press essentially replaced the hand-copying of

books in the Renaissance, people using computers and

computer networks in the last 30 years have been

essentially creating a new method of production and

distribution of creative and intellectual works. Both

printing and computer networking foster an increase of

enlightenment and intellectual ferment. Also, print

shops and printing houses became social gathering

places and social networks of scholars developed.

Similarly, the Net facilitates the formation of netizen

social networks. The article traces many parallels be-

tween the printing and the computer networking devel-

opments five centuries apart. Those parallels should

help us “understand why the printing press should be

seen as the forefather of the currently developing

computer networks.”

The second article, “The Computer as a Democ-

ratizer” projects that computers and the Net may lead

to more democracy. It does that by examining what

James Mill phrased as freedom of the press, or liberty

of the press. This “freedom of the press” or uncensored

press makes possible the free flow and exchange of

different ideas so all people can size up the issue and

decide their own positions. Mill argues, as does

Thomas Paine, that active participation by the popu-

lace is a necessary principle of democracy. The per-

sonal computer and the Net make possible more

uncensored speech and more participation. The article

concludes that, “this is an exciting time to see the

democratic ideas of some great political thinkers be-

ginning to be practiced.” But it adds, hard work by

many people aspiring for more democracy is still

needed because there still must be the hard fight

against tyranny.

The next article, “Proposed Declaration of the

Rights of Netizens,” was written by Michael Hauben

as a New Year’s message on January 2, 1994. It was a

draft declaration and a request for other netizen contri-

butions, ideas, and suggestions of what rights should

be included. Netizens are due these rights, according to

the author “in recognition that the net represents a

revolution in human communications that was built by

a cooperative noncommercial process” and as netizens

are those who take responsibility and care for the Net.

Inspiration for the Declaration was historic and current

expressions of rights and “the current cry for democ-

racy worldwide.”

The last article, “Participatory Democracy From

the 1960s and SDS into the Future On-line,” connects

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

Page 1

the 1960s student movement in the U.S. for more

democracy led by SDS (Students for a Democratic

Society) with the computer and network advances that

developed in the 1970s and beyond. SDS analyzed the

problem it was addressing in the Port Huron Statement

as the lack of any real democracy in the U.S. They felt

that the United States society is called a democracy,

but had ceased being democratic after the early begin-

nings of American society. The SDS program included

the understanding of the need for a medium to make it

possible for a community of active citizens to discuss

and debate the issues affecting their lives. While many

people made their voices heard and produced a real

effect on the world in the 1960s, lasting structural

changes were not established. However, the computer

movement of the 1970s made an important achieve-

ment. It created the personal computer and forced the

corporations to produce computers that were afford-

able by many people. The author argues that the com-

puter and network advances coupled with the availabil-

ity of personal computers transformed the SDS goal of

the 1960s of a direct or participatory democracy into

an achievable goal for our times. “These new technolo-

gies present the chance to overcome the obstacles

preventing the implementation of direct democracy.”

[Editor’s Note: The following article was posted on

Usenet in fall 1963. A later version appeared as

Chapter 16 of Netizens: On the History and Impact of

Usenet and the Internet by Michael Hauben and Ronda

Hauben published in 1997 by the IEEE Computer

Society, on pages 291-304.]

The Expanding

Commonwealth of Learning:

Printing and the Net

by Michael Hauben

A revolution in human communications is

happening. People around the world are connecting to

each other via the new computer telecommunication

networks now known as the Net. The Net, in a signifi-

cant way, is a continuation of the important tech-

nological development of the printing press. The print-

ing press might seem to be an unlikely choice for such

a comparison considering the similarity that might be

seen between the Net and, for example, television, the

telephone, radio, or the news media. That is why it is

important to compare the current networking develop-

ments with the history of printing to understand why

the printing press should be seen as the forefather of

the currently developing computer networks.

With the invention of the printing press in the

second half of the fifteenth century, there arose print

shops and printing trades. Printing and the distribution

of printed works grew rapidly. In the last quarter of the

twentieth century, a global computer network has

emerged which gives users the ability to post and dis-

tribute their views and news broadly and inexpen-

sively. Comparing the emergence of the printing press

to the emergence of the global computer network will

reveal some of the fascinating parallels which demon-

strate how the Net is continuing the important social

revolution that the printing press had begun.

The printing press developed out of a scribal

culture surrounding the hand-copying of texts. This

scribal culture could only go so far in furthering the

distribution of information and ideas. Texts existed,

but were largely unavailable for use by the common

people. There were very few copies of books as each

copy of a book had to be laboriously hand-copied from

a previous copy. Relying on scribal culture for access

to and distribution of knowledge caused many prob-

lems. Texts were often inaccurate as scribes made

mistakes while copying them. Since a single scribe

usually had access to only one copy of the text he was

copying, he had no way to know if he was duplicating

mistakes other scribes had made before him. The effect

of copying mistakes, or non-exact copies, led to num-

erous “versions” of the same text. Also, scholars who

wanted to use various texts had to travel in order to

have a good variety of material to study. The majority

of people could not afford, nor did they have the time

to pursue scholarly pursuits. In her book, The Printing

Revolution in Early Modern Europe, Elizabeth

Eisenstein writes: “[one] needs to recall the conditions

before texts could be set to type. No manuscript, how-

ever useful as a reference guide, could be preserved for

long without undergoing corruption by copyists, and

even this sort of ‘preservation’ rested precariously on

the shifting demands of local elites and a fluctuating

incidence of trained scribal labor … wear and tear …

moisture, vermin, theft or threat.”

Under such condi-

tions, scribal efforts did not preserve many valuable

texts. Plenty did not survive.

Just as the printing press essentially replaced the

Page 2

hand-copying of books in the Renaissance, people

using computer networks are essentially creating a new

method of production and distribution of creative and

intellectual written works today.

Around the same time that computer communica-

tions networks started to emerge from computer com-

munications research communities in the early 1970s,

the personal computer (PC) was developed by stu-

dents, hobbyists, and proponents of the free-speech

movement on the West Coast of the United States. The

personal computer became widely available at prices

many people could afford. The PC made the power of

the multipurpose computer available to a wider cross

section of people who otherwise would not have had

access to time on a larger minicomputer or mainframe

computer which were then owned by universities,

businesses and the government. The personal computer

movement made computers available to the mass of

people in the United States. As computers are multi-

purpose, they can be used to accomplish many things.

A PC can be made to duplicate the functions of a print-

ing press, with the user having little or no professional

printing experience. In the past, a skilled printer com-

bined movable type and engravings (woodcut, or

otherwise) to mass produce copies of a page com-

bining varied images (text, graphics, etc). The personal

computer brings this power from the master printer to

the average individual – both in price and availability.

The personal computer (e.g., Apple II family, Commo-

dore, Atari, TRS-80, etc. leading to the IBM PC

family, the Apple Macintosh family, Amiga, etc.)

linked to an electronic printer (first dot-matrix and

daisy-wheel, later laser printers) and even more

recently to scanners which convert images into usable

data – make the production and reproduction of infor-

mation a common task available to all. Even if one

does not own a PC, one can rent time on one in a store.

Copy shops (in themselves part of the continual

process that made publishing ubiquitous) have begun

to have PCs available to rent time on. These advances

make the act of publication immensely easier. The per-

sonal computer, printers and scanners, however, do not

solve the problem of distribution.

The recent development, standardization and

interconnection of computers via computer communi-

cations networks help to solve the problem of distribu-

tion. Examples of on-line utilities include file transfer

(ftp), remote login to other computers (Telnet), remote

execution of programs, electronic mail (e-mail), access

to various information data bases (gopher, WWW),

other information searching utilities (archie, veronica,

Lycos), real-time chat (irc), and a distributed news

service which allows people to share information

publicly and become citizen reporters (Netnews). The

two utilities most relevant to this revolution in human

communication are e-mail and Netnews (or Usenet). E-

mail allows for the private and semi-private distribu-

tion of information and communications through

messages to a particular person or persons, or to a

designated set of people via electronic mailing lists.

Netnews allows for the public dissemination of infor-

mation, opinions and questions in an open forum.

When a Netizen makes a contribution to any of the

many defined subject areas (newsgroups), anyone from

around the world who chooses to read that particular

newsgroup will have a chance to read that message.

Usenet’s potential for inexpensive global distribution

represents one major advance of Usenet beyond the

printing press.

The printing press developed sometime in the

1460s and spread quickly throughout Europe. The

broad distribution of presses ended the age of the

scribal culture and ushered in the age of printing. “Un-

known anywhere in Europe before the mid-fifteenth

century,” Eisenstein writes, “printer’s workshops

would be found in every important municipal center by

1500.”

Eisenstein points out that the printing press

dramatically increased the total number of books,

while at the same time decreasing the number of hours

of labor necessary to create books. She argues that this

made the transition from hand-copied manuscripts to

machine-produced books one of a revolutionary na-

ture, and not evolutionary as claimed in much of the

literature about this transformation.

Understanding

how the printing press unleashed a communications

revolution provides a basis to assess if the establish-

ment of worldwide computer communication network-

ing is the next communication revolution.

New communication technologies facilitate new

ways of organizing information and of thinking. The

invention of the printing press changed the way texts

were handled. From its outset, the men who controlled

the presses, the printers, experimented with ways to

use the printing press to change texts. Textual tech-

niques such as “graduated types, running heads …

footnotes … table of contents … superior figures,

cross references …”

are examples of the ways in

which the press broke through some boundaries which

had previously limited the production of books in

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scribal culture.

Moreover, the new technologies changed the way

books were written. The establishment of printing

shops in the major European cities formed a common

meeting place for scholars and authors from across the

continent. The great number of printing presses and

printing shops enabled more people to write books and

produce works that would be duplicated by the presses.

When these new authors traveled they would gather in

printing shops to meet other writers and scholars. Thus

the printing press facilitated the meeting of minds

pursuing intellectual pursuits. The interconnection of

people led to the quickening of the development of

ideas and knowledge. These progenitors of the printing

trade were in the forefront of the sweeping intellectual

changes which the presses made possible.

Similar

connections among people are taking place on the Net

today at a much faster rate. And, just as the printers

were in the forefront of the printing revolution, so

today the developers of computer communications

software and hardware and netusers are the first to

experience the increased connectivity with other peo-

ple around the world afforded by the computer net-

works.

As printing spread, publishers realized the value

of utilizing input from readers to improve their prod-

uct. Since the press could turn out multiple copies of a

first edition quickly, many people would see the first

edition and could send by letter their comments, cor-

rections and criticisms. Publishers and authors could

then use this feedback to write and print second, and

third editions, and so on. Mistakes would be caught by

careful readers, and printers thus “were also able to

improve on themselves.” Eisenstein explains that

copied mistakes and mistakes in copying common with

scribal copies now could be caught by the increasing

number of readers. She writes, “the immemorial drift

of scribal culture had been not merely arrested but

actually reversed.”

The Net likewise provides a ready mechanism for

the interaction between authors and readers. On the

Net, people often keep track of knowledge, such as

lists of a musician’s records (discographies), or FAQ

files of answers to Frequently Asked Questions.

Authors of these works often act as both editor and

compiler. People send further information, which the

keeper of the file often adds. This makes for a commu-

nal base of information which is often available to

anyone minimally connected to the Net by at least

electronic mail. The constant updating of information

on the Net continues the tradition of revising intellec-

tual work introduced by the printing press.

Eisenstein’s description of how communal infor-

mation was gathered is similar to how such procedures

work on the Net. She writes: “But others created a vast

network of correspondents and solicited criticism of

each edition, sometimes publicly promising to mention

the names of readers who sent in new information or

who spotted the errors which would be weeded out.”

People who ask questions on the discussion sections of

the Net (either Netnews or Mailing lists) often summa-

rize the answers they receive and post this summary

back to the Net. When doing this, many compilers

include acknowledgments to the people who supplied

the information. Also when people send in corrections

to an FAQ, the keeper of the FAQ often makes a list at

the end thanking these individuals.

Eisenstein details these networks of correspon-

dence in an example of a particular text titled the

“Theatrum.”

By the simple expedient of being honest with his

readers and inviting criticism and suggestions, Ortelius

made his Theatrum a sort of cooperative enterprise on

an international basis. He received helpful suggestions

from far and wide, and cartographers stumbled over

themselves to send him their latest maps of regions not

covered in the Theatrum.

On Usenet, too, making a contribution is an in-

tegral part of Netizen behavior. Netizens make a point

of being helpful to others. Often the Net has made a

positive difference in their lives and they return the

favor by making their own contribution, perhaps by

answering the questions of others or developing an

archive. These individual and increasingly group con-

tributions are what have built the Net from a connec-

tion of computers and computing resources into a vast

resource of people and knowledge. People who use the

Net have access to Net resources and can contribute to

them. Thus the culture of the Net has been shaped by

people actively contributing to the growth and devel-

opment of the Net. The tale of the Theatrum shows

there is a historical precedent in human nature for this

“stumbling over oneself” in order to try and be help-

ful.

The flow of information to the publishers of the

Theatrum meant that at least 28 editions were pub-

lished by the time of the publisher Ortelius’ death in

1598.

In a similar way, Usenet is by its very nature

constantly evolving. The basic element of Usenet is the

post whose life is temporary. The Usenet software is

Page 4

designed to “expire” or delete messages after a certain

time period. Without constant new contributions from

people to Netnews, there would be no messages to read

or discussions to take part in. So there is a constant

evolution of Usenet. But, also the material in the more

permanent information depositories is often updated so

they evolve as well.

During the early days of the printing press,

publishers’ requests for information led to people

starting their own research and work. “Thus a knowl-

edge explosion was set off,” Eisenstein exclaims.

The

Net follows in the tradition of the press, by having one

set of people asking questions, leading to another set of

people conducting research. In this sense the Net can

serve the role as a thinktank for the ordinary person.

So the advanced possibilities the printing press made

possible in the sixteenth century is being replicated

many times more by the Net today. It is important to

recognize and value Netnews for its contribution to

human society and the advancement of knowledge.

Eisenstein observed that the art of printing

opened people’s eyes to their previous ignorance. She

quotes the German historian, Johann Sleidan, in his

“Address to the Estates of the Empire” of 1542, de-

scribing the impact printing had in Germany, “[The]

art of printing [has] opened German eyes even as it is

now bringing enlightenment to other countries. Each

man became eager for knowledge, not without feeling

a sense of amazement at his former blindness.”

This

sentiment has been echoed by many Netizens on

Usenet and in other on-line conversations. People have

been amazed at what the Net made possible and how

it was changing their lives.

Eisenstein comments in her book on the role of

feedback to early authors and print publishers. She

wrote that feedback helped to “define the difference

between data collection before and after the communi-

cations shift. After printing, large-scale data collection

did become subject to new forms of feedback which

had not been possible in the age of the scribes.”

Computer networks likewise make possible very easy

and natural feedback. Once one reads a message

(either public or private), a simple keystroke allows the

composition of an answer or response, and another

keystroke is often all it takes to send the response. This

takes less effort than writing to a publishing house or

calling a television station. Since responding to other

messages becomes such a natural part of the on-line

process, the procedure becomes almost automatic.

Many people who use Usenet find television dull

rather than thought provoking. Doug Thompson, a user

of Usenet, wrote “TV is so bloody tame and boring in

comparison to Usenet.” Others, too, have described

how they have completely stopped watching TV and

reading the newspaper because of Usenet.

Eisenstein refers to the process of constant im-

provement which printing made possible, as observed

by the Scottish philosopher David Hume, “The Power

which Printing gives us of continually improving and

correcting our Works in successive Editions appears to

me the chief advantage of that art.”

Eisenstein

expands on this idea adding, “The future seem[ed] to

hold more promise of enlightenment than the past.”

This promise of a better future is also seen by

those on the Net. People on-line are being enlightened

by the interconnection of peoples around the world.

The Net helps people to make social connections

which were never before possible, or which were

relatively hard to achieve. Geography and time no

longer are boundaries. Social limitations and con-

ventions no longer prevent potential friendships or

partnerships. In this manner Netizens are meeting other

Netizens from far-away and close by that they might

never have met without the Net.

Eisenstein reports that the printing press too

helped people interact with other people who they

would not have met before its invention. “Vicarious

participation in more distant events was enhanced,”

she writes, “and even while local ties were loosened,

links to larger collective units were being forged.”

Improvement of information about other parts of the

world “by the output of more uniform maps containing

more uniform boundaries and place names” helped

people to know more of the facts of the world. “Simi-

lar developments affected local customs, laws, lan-

guages, and costumes.”

The Net similarly provides people with a broader

view of the world by introducing them to other peo-

ple’s ideas and opinions. The Net makes it possible to

access more and differing viewpoints than were

normally available in a person’s daily life.

Much as printer’s houses in the sixteenth century

served as places to stop when traveling, computers and

phone lines connect people around the world as in our

times. Eisenstein describes how such print shops,

“point to the formation of polygot households in

scattered urban centers upon the continent.” She

observes that during the sixteenth century, “such

printing shops represented miniature ‘international

houses.’ They provided wandering scholars with a

Page 5

meeting place, message center, sanctuary, and cultural

center all in one. The new industry encouraged not

only the formation of syndicates and far-flung trade

networks, similar to those extended by merchants

engaged in the cloth trade, or in other large-scale

enterprises during early modern times. It also encour-

aged the formation of an ethos which was specifically

associated with the Commonwealth of Learning –

ecumenical and tolerant without being secular, genu-

inely pious yet opposed to fanaticism, often combining

outward conformity to diverse established churches

with inner fidelity to heterodox creeds.”

The social networks made possible by Usenet

and the emergence of the printing press are very

similar. Even though Netnews has no official guiding

body, Netizens have developed social rules which

control and mediate the medium. As the forum is

democratic, there will be people who have nothing

intelligent to add, or only want to be disruptive or

offensive. Others will often debate these troublemakers

and through argumentation and the posting of opposite

opinions help others to make up their own minds as to

the value of the original postings.

The printing press facilitated new cross-cultural

networks which encouraged “forms of combinatory

activity which were social as well as intellectual.”

Differing ideas were more easily set against one

another. The theories of Arabists were set against the

theories of Galenists and those of Aristoteleans against

Ptolemaists. Eisenstein writes: “Not only was confi-

dence in old theories weakened, but an enriched

reading matter also encouraged the development of

new intellectual combinations and permutations. Com-

binatory intellectual activity … inspires many creative

acts.”

The Net helps people communicate with each

other who might not have communicated before.

Strangers meet each other because of interest in each

other’s ideas and this leads to new intellectual collabo-

rations and combinations.

The connection of differing ideas and people

meant the first century of printing is recognized for

“intellectual ferment” and by what Eisenstein writes

was a ‘somewhat wide-angled, unfocused scholar-

ship.’”

The new availability of different theories or

opinions about the same topics led Eisenstein to

conclude that the contribution a scientist like Coperni-

cus was able to make was not that he produced a new

theory, but rather he was “confronting the next genera-

tion with a problem to be solved rather than a solution

to be learned.”

Lastly on this subject, Eisenstein

equates the quickening of science toward a “cognitive

breakthrough of an unprecedented kind.”

The Net is

continuing and accelerating that advance.

The lure of being able to produce numerous

copies of books cheaply, was that an author’s words

could be spread around the world. This proved to be

powerful. Eisenstein quotes Maurice Gravier on the

power the press presented to the Protestant reformers:

“The theses … were said to be known throughout

Germany in a fortnight and throughout Europe in a

month … . Printing was recognized as a new power

and publicity came into its own. In doing for Luther

what copyists had done for Wycliffe, the printing press

transformed the field of communications and fathered

an international revolt. It was a revolution. The advent

of printing was an important precondition for the

Protestant Reformation taken as a whole; for without

it one could not implement ‘a priesthood of all believ-

ers.’ At the same time, however, the new medium also

acted as a precipitant. It provided the ‘stroke of magic’

by which an obscure theologian in Wittenberg man-

aged to shake Saint Peter’s throne.”

This idea is

repeated by the English writer Daniel Defoe (1660-

1732), whom Eisenstein quotes, when he wrote “The

preaching of sermons is speaking to a few of mankind,

printing books is talking to the whole world.”

The

Net has opened up a channel for “talking to the whole

world” to an even wider set of people than did printed

books.

A social role which grew to be crucial in this new

world of printing was that of the master printer. His

was the business of running a print shop, and finding

and promoting potential authors. In the course of this

work his workshop became a center of intellectual

excitement. Eisenstein explains that the master

printer’s “workshop became a veritable cultural center

attracting local literati and celebrated foreigners, pro-

viding both a meeting place and message center for an

expanding Commonwealth of Learning.”

This development of an intellectual family

started to bring the world closer together. “In the late

sixteenth century,” Eisenstein maintains, “for the first

time in the history of any civilization, the concept of a

Concordia Mundi was being developed on a truly

global scale and the ‘family of man’ was being ex-

tended to encompass all the peoples of the world.”

The hospitality which the printers provided to travelers

and intellectuals helped to make this happen.

Page 6

The Net continues in this tradition of uniting the

world. It is easy to hold conversations and develop

relationships with others from around the world. The

Net speeds this transaction as the conversation is

brought from the print shop into a Netizen’s home. A

major advancement which the personal computer and

the Net make possible is accessibility of publishing.

Anyone who owns a personal computer can develop

and print their own books, pamphlets, signs, and so

forth. The Net comes in to help with distribution.

Eisenstein talks about one result that standardiza-

tion of printing brought about. “One might consider,”

she writes, “the emergence of a new sense of individu-

alism as a by-product of the new forms of standardiza-

tion. The more standardized the type, indeed, the more

compelling the sense of an idiosyncratic personal

self.”

Similarly, because Usenet and mailing lists

only present people via their ideas and writing styles,

people have to write the way they want themselves to

be viewed. Thus people develop their own styles.

Reading posts can therefore at times be an enjoyable

experience. A famous cartoon printed in the New

Yorker magazine in 1993 show a dog at a computer.

He says to another dog, “On the Internet, no one

knows you’re a dog.” In fact, no one knows if you are

white or black, yellow or purple, ugly or beautiful,

short or tall. Discrimination based on appearance and

visual impressions loses its basis. People can still be

verbally harassed if they act stupid, or prove unhelpful

to the Net. One problem, however, which has not yet

been solved is harassment based on user name. For

example, women with user names that are clearly iden-

tifiable as a woman’s still receive some attention and

sometimes harassment.

The printing revolution affected both tool making

and symbol manipulation, which led to new ways of

thinking. As Eisenstein notes, “The decisions made by

early printers, however, directly affected both tool

making and symbol making. Their products reshaped

powers to manipulate objects, to perceive and think

about varied phenomena.” Computers, too, are in gen-

eral directly affecting tool production and symbol

manipulation. The tools on the Net are new tools – and

thus lead to radical ways of thinking and dealing with

information. People’s thought processes can expand

and develop in original ways. New ways of manipulat-

ing information, such as Unix tools, hypertext media

and search engines for searching distributed data

sources foster new means of intellectual activity.

Printing made consultation of various texts much

easier – no longer did someone have to be able to be a

“Wandering Scholar” to gain access to various infor-

mation. With the development of the Net, information

access becomes much more varied and widespread.

The local public library, along with libraries around

the world, other data banks and knowledgeable people

are becoming accessible via the Net, for some netusers

even from their homes. Only a few libraries currently

offer electronic access to any of the actual texts of their

holdings, but that is rapidly changing. Undertakings

such as Project Gutenberg and various digital library

initiatives are trying to make library resources avail-

able from any computer hooked into the Net.

Both the printing revolution and the Net revolu-

tion have been a catalyst for increased intellectual

activity. Such activity tends to provide pressure for

more democracy. When people have the chance and

the means to start thinking, ideas of self-rule appear.

Eisenstein describes how, “Puritan tradesman who had

learned to talk to God in the presence of their appren-

tices, wives, and children were already on their way to

self-government.”

Many social and political ques-

tions are being discussed on Usenet newsgroups

especially questions like censorship and Net access

which affect the Net directly. Based on these discus-

sions, Netizens are exerting pressure on their govern-

ments to form new democratic structures like the

NTIA on-line conference.

Mass production via printing makes it possible to

have sufficient books so that everyone who wants a

copy can borrow one from a library or buy one.

Eisenstein presents Thomas Jefferson’s view of this

“democratizing aspect of the preservative powers of

print which secured precious documents not by putting

them under lock and key but by removing them from

chests and duplicating them for all to see.” According

to Eisenstein, “The notion that valuable data could be

preserved best by being made public, rather than being

kept secret, ran counter to tradition, led to clashes with

new censors, and was central both to early modern

science and to Enlightenment thought.”

The dem-

ocratizing power and effect of the printing revolution,

Eisenstein contends, is overlooked in most historical

writings.

With the advent of printing, the Law was affected

by the onset of the ability to duplicate numerous copies

of a single document cheaply. People saw that this

capability would be helpful in making the Law avail-

able for the common person to read and understand,

and therefore the common person would be able to

Page 7

watch carefully if it was administered fairly. John

Liburne, a person who lived in England during the

Stuart Monarchy felt that legal documents should be

freed from the confines of Latin and old French so that

“every Freeman may read it as well as the lawyers.”

People like him also held that knowledge which had

been esoteric, “rare, and difficult,” should be trans-

formed into a form where it could be useful to all.

Eisenstein also quotes Florio, who made translations

and dictionaries in English. He symbolized the demo-

cratic possibilities of the printing press saying, “Learn-

ing cannot be too common and the commoner the

better … . Why but the vulgar should not know all.”

Legal decisions are now being made available on

the Net so that anyone with a computer and modem

and net connection will have access to them. Also

there are legal newsgroups on Usenet like misc.legal

where various laws are examined and discussed. This

provides a helpful perspective for understanding the

value of the Net. The culture that is currently charac-

teristic of the Net supports the principle that much of

it should be available openly for the rest of the world

to use. There is a collective communal democratic

aspect of it, too. The simple fact of the matter is that

every single person who is connected to the Net and

has Usenet access can make a post to Netnews and

every net user can send electronic mail to any other

person who is on-line.

The scribal tradition restricted who made the

choice of what was copied to the Church or those who

had substantial property. “As long as texts could be

duplicated only by hand, perpetuation of the classical

heritage rested precariously on the shifting require-

ments of local elites.”

With the spread of the printing

press, the monopoly of these elites was broken. Net-

news is a similar advance over today’s mass media. In

the ‘traditional’ forms of mass media, the content is

decided by the national ‘elites’. However, on Netnews

there is no control over the whole and the content is

contributed to by every single person who is active on

the Net.

Eisenstein compares this control of elites over

what manuscripts were copied to the role of the printer

and publisher who have it in their interest to unleash

all sorts of books. Eisenstein writes: “The politics of

censorship made [the printers] the natural opponents

not only of church officials but also of lay bureaucrats,

regulations and red tape. As independent agents, they

supplied organs of publicity and covert support to a

‘third force’ that was not affiliated with any one

church or one state. This third force was, however,

obviously affiliated with the interests of early modern

capitalists.”

These publishers were “the natural enemy of

narrow minds,” and “encouraged the adoption of a new

ethos which was cosmopolitan, ecumenical, and toler-

ant without being secular, incredulous or necessarily

Protestant … .”

The Net has offered a parallel en-

couragement by providing a new kind of public space

separate from either commercial purposes or religious

or political limitations or ideas.

The printing press provided a new way for people

to challenge the status quo. Eisenstein asks the ques-

tion, “Did printing at first serve prelates and patricians

as a ‘divine art,’ or should one think of it rather as the

‘poor man’s friend’?”

She answers it might have

served in both roles, but that literacy seemed more

“compatible” with the life of a peasant than that of a

noble or lord.

We can pose the same question about the Net.

Should one think about the Net as a ‘poor man’s

friend’? If we think of the Net as an alternative to the

current media of Television, Radio, and Newspapers

and Magazines – the answer is yes. People who have

a lot of money can afford to own a segment of the

mass media described above, and control the content

of that media, whereas the Net is controlled by the

mass of people connected to it, so it is ‘the poor man’s’

version of the mass media.

The printing revolution fostered the spread of

education. Books were used by apprentices and stu-

dents to learn more than was offered by their teachers.

The Net similarly makes multiple resources available

for people interested in learning. People can access

more information resources and, even more important,

other people. This increased accessibility of people to

each other means we can all gain and learn from the

interests and knowledge of others, more so than from

any single teacher.

The impact of the new print technology on

science was enormous. Collaboration and cooperation

over longer distances were made possible by the power

of print. In particular, Eisenstein refers to the impact

on the science of Astronomy. The change she sees

happened within Copernicus’s lifetime. “Copernicus

was not supplied, as Tycho’s successors would be,

with precisely recorded fresh data,” she notes. “But he

was supplied, as Regiomontaus’s successor and Aldus

Manutius’s contemporary, with guidance to technical

literature carefully culled from the best Renaissance

Page 8

Greek manuscript collections, and for the first time,

made available outside library walls.”

The progress of science is much faster because of

the speed of communication afforded by the Net. -

Articles to be published in scientific journals are often

available as electronic preprints – and thus have wider

distribution earlier than was the norm before the Net.

An outstanding example of this increased speed of

scientific activity occurred when researchers all over

the world tried to reproduce the result of the two

University of Utah researchers who had announced

that they had achieved cold fusion. A newsgroup

sci.physics.fusion was very quickly set up and research-

ers’ questions and results and problems were posted

regularly and feverishly. As a result, what might have

taken years to retest and figure out was sorted out in a

three or four month period. The physicists found the

rapid exchange of data and results invigorating and

encouraging and felt they were more productive and

sharper in their work because of the Net. Also, they

argued that the use of the Net saved much valuable

research time which might have been wasted if the

original claims had not been shown to have been faulty

in such a short amount of time and to such a wide body

of scientists.

The invention of the printing press, which led to

many developments not possible before the power of

printing, “laid the basis for modern science … and

remains indispensable for humanistic scholarship.”

Eisenstein poignantly claims that printing is responsi-

ble for “our museum without walls.”

As a storehouse

of information and living information contained in

other people, the Net could also be seen as a living

“museum without walls.” In her conclusion Eisenstein

states that “Cumulative processes were set in motion in

the mid-fifteenth century, and they have not ceased to

gather momentum in the age of the computer printout

and the television guide.”

We, too, are in an age of

amazing changes in communications technologies, and

it is important to realize how these changes are firmly

based on the extension of the development of the

printing press which took place in the fifteenth and

sixteenth centuries.

Notes

1. Elizabeth L. Eisenstein, The Printing Revolution in Early

Modern Europe, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1993, p. 78.

2. Ibid., p. 12.

3. Ibid., p. 13.

4. Ibid., p. 22.

5. Ibid., p. 45.

6. Ibid., p. 73.

7. Ibid., p. 74.

8. Ibid.

9. See “The Net and the Netizens,” Chapter 1 in Netizens: On the

History and Impact of Usenet and the Internet.

10. The Printing Revolution in Early Modern Europe, p. 74.

11. Ibid., p. 75.

12. Ibid., p. 150.

13. Ibid., p. 76.

14. Ibid., p. 77.

15. Ibid., p. 78.

16. Ibid., p. 95.

17. Ibid., p. 56.

18. Ibid., p.101.

19. Ibid., p. 45.

20. Ibid., p. 44.

21. Ibid., p. 45.

22. Ibid., p. 223.

23. Ibid., p. 225.

24. Ibid., p. 154.

25. Ibid., p. 157.

26. Ibid., p. 25.

27. Ibid., p. 182.

28. Ibid., p. 56.

29. Ibid., p. 64.

30. Ibid., p. 167.

31. See “The Net and the Future of Politics,” Chapter 13 in

Netizens: On the History and Impact of Usenet and the Internet.

32. The Printing Revolution in Early Modern Europe, p. 81.

33. Ibid., Chapter 1, “An Unacknowledged Revolution.”

34. Ibid., p. 165.

35. See “The Computer as Democratizer,” Chapter 18 in Netizens:

On the History and Impact of Usenet and the Internet.

36. The Printing Revolution in Early Modern Europe, p. 125.

37. Ibid., p. 178.

38. Ibid., pp. 177-178.

39. Ibid., p. 31.

40. Ibid.

41. Ibid., p. 209.

42. Ibid., p. 275.

43. Ibid., p. 276.

This article can be seen online at:

http://www.columbia.edu

/~hauben/ronda2014/printing.pdf

Page 9

[Editor’s Note: The following article appeared online on October

14, 1992, with the title “James Mill & Usenet News.” A later

version appeared as Chapter 18 of Netizens: On the History and

Impact of Usenet and the Internet by Michael Hauben and Ronda

Hauben published in 1997 by the IEEE Computer Society, on

pages 315-320.]

The Computer as a

Democratizer

by Michael Hauben

“… only through diversity of opinion is there, in

the existing state of human intellect, a chance of

fair play to all sides of the truth.”

John Stuart Mill, “On Liberty”

“In a very real sense, Usenet is a market-

place of ideas.”

Bart Anderson, Bryan Costales,

and Harry Henderson

Political thought has developed as writers pre-

sented the theoretical basis behind the various class

structures from aristocracy to democracy. Plato wrote

of the rule of the elite Guardians. Thomas Paine wrote

why people need control of their governments. The

computer connects to this democratizing trend through

facilitating wider communications among individual

citizens to the whole body of citizens.

James Mill, the father of John Stuart Mill, takes

a look at democracy in his article “Liberty of the

Press” from the 1825 Supplement to the Encyclopedia

Britannica. He writes about the question of a govern-

ment that works as it should – for the advantage and

gain of the people instead of the advantage and gain

for those in control. Mill sees the government neces-

sarily being corrupted if the chance exists. Those in the

position of rule, would abuse that power for their

advantage. Mill describes, “If one man saw that he

might promote misrule for his own advantage, so

would another; so, of course would they all.” (James

Mill, “Liberty of the Press,” p. 20) Mill says that the

people need a check on those in government. People

need to keep watch on their government in order to

make sure this government works in the interest of the

many. Mill thus concludes, “There can be no adequate

check without the freedom of the press. The evidence

of this is irresistible.” (Mill, p. 18)

What Mill often phrases as freedom of the press,

or liberty of the press, is more precisely defined as the

uncensored press. The uncensored press provides for

the dissemination of information that allows the reader

or thinker to do two things. First, a person can size up

the issue and honestly decide his or her own position.

Second, as the press is uncensored, this person can

make his distinctive contribution available for other

people to consider and appreciate. Thus what Mill calls

“freedom of the press” makes possible the free flow

and exchange of different ideas.

Thomas Paine, in The Rights of Man, describes

a fundamental principle of democracy. Paine writes,

“that the right of altering the government was a na-

tional right, and not a right of the government.” (p.

341) Mill also expresses that active participation by the

populace is a necessary principle of democracy. He

writes: “Unless a door is left open to the resistance of

the government, in the largest sense of the word, the

doctrine of passive obedience is adopted; and the

consequence is, the universal prevalence of the mis-

government, ensuring the misery and degradation of

the people.” (Mill, p. 13)

Another principle Mill links democracy to, is the

right of the people to define who can responsibly

represent their will. However, this right requires infor-

mation to make a proper decision. Mill declares: “We

may then ask, if there are any possible means by which

the people can make a good choice, besides liberty of

the press? The very foundation of a good choice is

knowledge. The fuller and more perfect the know-

ledge, the better the chance, where all sinister interest

is absent, of a good choice. How can the people

receive the most perfect knowledge relative to the

characters of those who present themselves to their

choice, but by information conveyed freely, and

without reserve, from one to another?” (Mill p. 19)

Without information being available to the people, the

candidates for office can be either as bad as the incum-

bents or worse. Therefore there is a need to prevent the

government from censoring the information available

to people. Mill explains: “If it is in the power of their

rulers to permit one person and forbid another, the

people may be sure that a false report, – a report

calculated to make them believe that they are well

governed, when they are ill-governed, will be often

presented to them.” (Mill, p. 20)

After electing their representatives, democracy

gives the public the right to evaluate their chosen

representatives in office. The public continually needs

Page 10

information as to how their chosen representatives are

fulfilling their role. Once these representatives have

abused their power, Paine’s and Mill’s principle allows

the public to replace those abusers. Mill also clarifies

that free use of the means of communication is another

extremely important principle: “That an accurate

report of what is done by each of the representatives,

a transcript of his speeches, and a statement of his pro-

positions and votes, is necessary to be laid before the

people, to enable them to judge of his conduct, no-

body, we presume, will deny. This requires the use of

the cheapest means of communication, and, we add,

the free use of those means. Unless every man has the

liberty of publishing the proceedings of the Legislative

Assembly, the people can have no security that they

are fairly published.” (Mill, p. 20)

Ignorance, Thomas Paine calls the absence of

knowledge and says that man with knowledge cannot

be returned to a state of ignorance. (The Rights of Man,

p. 357) James Mill shows how the knowledge man

thirsts after leads to a communal feeling. General

conformity of opinion seeds resistance against misgov-

ernment. Both conformity of opinion and resistance

require general information or knowledge. Mill ex-

plains: “In all countries people have either a power

legally and peaceably of removing their governors, or

they have not that power. If they have not that power,

they can only obtain very considerable ameliorations

of their governments by resistance, by applying

physical force to their rulers, or, at least, by threats so

likely to be followed by performance, as may frighten

their rulers into compliance. But resistance, to have

this effect, must be general. To be general, it must

spring from a general conformity of opinion, and a

general knowledge of that conformity. How is this

effect to be produced, but by some means, fully

enjoyed by the people of communicating their senti-

ments to one another? Unless the people can all meet

in general assembly, there is no other means, known to

the world, of attaining this object, to be compared with

freedom of the press.” (Mill, p. 18)

In the previous quote Mill places his champion-

ing of the freedom of press as a realistic alternative to

Rousseau’s general assembly, which is not possible

most of the time. Mill expands on the freedom of the

press by setting the rules. An opinion cannot be well

founded until its converse is also present. Here he sets

forth the importance of developing your own opinion

from those that exist. Mill writes: “We have then

arrived at the following important conclusions, – that

there is no safety to the people in allowing anybody to

choose opinions for them; that there are no marks by

which it can be decided beforehand, what opinions are

true and what are false; that there must, therefore, be

equal freedom of declaring all opinions both true and

false; and that, when all opinions, true and false, are

equally declared, the assent of the greater number,

when their interests are not opposed to them, may

always be expected to be given to the true. These prin-

ciples, the foundation of which appears to be impreg-

nable, suffice for the speedy determination of every

practical question.” (Mill, p. 23)

The technology that is the personal computer,

international computer networks, and other recent

contributions embody and put into practice James

Mill’s theory of liberty of the press. The personal

computer makes it affordable for most people to have

an information access station in their very own home.

There are international computer networks that exist

which allow a person to have debates with other

people across the world, search for data in various data

banks, or even play a computer game.

If a person is affiliated with a university commu-

nity, works at a business which pays to connect to the

Internet, or pays a special service fee, he or she can

connect to a network of computer networks around the

world. A connection to this international network

empowers a person by giving him access to various

services. These services include electronic mail, which

means the ability to send private messages electroni-

cally to people across the world who also have elec-

tronic mail boxes. The public alternative to this is a

service called Usenet. This service is an example of

James Mill’s democratic principles.

Usenet consists of many newsgroups which each

cover a broad, but yet specific topic. People who

utilize Usenet typically pick certain newsgroups or

topics to focus on. Every group has several items of

discussion going on at the same time. Some examples

of newsgroups include serious topics such as

talk.politics.theory, – people “talking” about current

issues and political theory, sci.econ – people discuss-

ing the science of economics, soc.culture.usa – people

debating questions of United States society; and

recreational topics (which might also be serious) such

as alt.rock-n-roll – discussing various aspects of rock

music, rec.sport.hockey – a discussion of hockey and

rec.humor – jokes and humor. The discussions are very

active and provide a source of information that fulfills

James Mill’s criteria for both more oversight over

Page 11

government and a more informed population. In a

sense, what was once impossible, is now possible;

everyone’s letter to the editor is published. (Hauben,

Interview with Staff Member, The Amateur Com-

puterist, vol. 4 no. 2-3, p. 14) What is important is that

Usenet is conducted publicly, and is uncensored. This

means that everyone can both contribute and gain from

everyone else’s opinion.

The importance of Usenet also exists in that it is

an improvement in communications technology from

that of previous telecommunications. The predecessors

to computer networks were the Ham Radio and Citizen

Band Radio (CB). The computer network is an ad-

vance in that it is easier to store, reproduce and utilize

the communications. It is easier to continue a pro-

longed question and answer session or debate. The

newsgroups on Usenet have a distribution designation

which allows them to be available to a wide variety of

different size areas – local, city, national, or interna-

tional. This allows for a variety of uses. The problem

with the Internet is that in a sense it is only open to

those who either have it provided to them by a univer-

sity or company that they are affiliated with, or who

pay for it. This limits part of the current development

of the computer networks.

An example of a public enterprise, however, is a

computer service called Freenet in Cleveland, Ohio.

Freenet is operated by Case Western Reserve Univer-

sity as a community service. Anyone with a personal

computer and a modem (a device to connect to other

computers over existing phone lines) can call a local

phone number to connect to Freenet. If members of the

public do not own computers, they can use Freenet at

the public library. Besides Usenet, Freenet provides

free access to a vast variety of information databases

and community information. Freenet is just one

example of the computer networks becoming much

more readily available to broad sectors of society. As

part of its databases, Freenet includes Supreme Court

decisions, discussion of political issues and candidates,

and debate over contemporary laws. Freenet is be-

ginning to exemplify Mill’s principle that democracy

requires the “use of the cheapest means of communica-

tion, and, we add, the free use of those means.” (Mill,

p. 20)

This is an exciting time to see the democratic

ideas of some great political thinkers beginning to be

practiced. James Mill wrote that for government to

serve the people, it must be watched by the people

utilizing an uncensored press. Freedom of the press

also makes possible the debate necessary for the

forming of well-founded opinions by the people.

Usenet and Freenet are examples of the contemporary

electronic practice of the uncensored accessible press

required by Mill. These networks are also the result of

hard work by many people aspiring for more democ-

racy. However, they still require more help from those

dedicated to the hard fight against tyranny.

Bibliography

Anderson, Bart, Bryan Costales, and Harry Henderson, Unix

Communications, Indiana, 1991.

Hauben, Michael, “Interview with a Staff Member,” The Amateur

Computerist, Vol. 4 No. 2-3.

Mill, James, Essays on Government, Jurisprudence, Liberty of the

Press, and Law of Nations, reprint, Kelley Publishers, New

York, 1967.

Mill, John Stuart, “On Liberty” in Three Essays, Oxford, 1975.

Paine, Thomas, “The Rights of Man” in Two Classics of the

French Revolution, Anchor Books, Doubleday. New York,

1989.

Watkins, Beverly T, “Freenet helps Case Western fulfill its

Community-Service Mission,” April 29, 1992, Chronicle

of Higher Education, p. A21.

This article is online at:

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

/ronda2014/democratizer.pdf

[Editor’s Note: The following declaration was written as a New

Year's message, January 2, 1994 by Michael Hauben. It appears

just after page 344 in Netizens: on the History and Impact of

Usenet and the Internet by Michael Hauben and Ronda Hauben

published in 1997 by the IEEE Computer Society and is online at:

https://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/614/535.]

Proposed Declaration of the

Rights of Netizens

We Netizens have begun to put together a De-

claration of the Rights of Netizens and are requesting

from other Netizens contributions, ideas, and sug-

gestions of what rights should be included. Following

are some beginning ideas.

The Declaration of the Rights of Netizens

In recognition that the net represents a revolution

in human communications that was built by a co-

operative non-commercial process, the following

Declaration of the Rights of the Netizen is presented

Page 12

for Netizen comment.

As Netizens are those who take responsibility

and care for the Net, the following are proposed to be

their rights:

• Universal access at no or low cost.

• Freedom of Electronic Expression to promote the

exchange of knowledge without fear of reprisal.

• Uncensored Expression.

• Access to Broad Distribution.

• Universal and Equal access to knowledge and infor-

mation.

• Consideration of one’s ideas on their merits.

• No limitation of access to read, to post and to other-

wise contribute.

• Equal quality of connection.

• Equal time of connection.

• No Official Spokesperson.

• Uphold the public grassroots purpose and partic-

ipation.

• Volunteer Contribution – no personal profit from the

contribution freely given by others.

Protection of the public purpose from those who would

use it for their private and money making purposes.

The Net is not a Service. It is a Right. It is only

valuable when it is collective and universal. Volunteer

effort protects the intellectual and technological com-

mon-wealth that is being created.

DO NOT UNDERESTIMATE THE POWER OF THE

NET and NETIZENS.

Inspiration from: RFC 3 (1969), Thomas Paine,

Declaration of Independence (1776), Declaration of

the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (1789), NSF

Acceptable Use Policy, Jean Jacques Rousseau, and

the current cry for democracy worldwide.

[Editor’s Note: The following was written in 1995 as a paper for

the Columbia University course “Radical Tradition in America.”

It can be seen online at:

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

/ronda2014/sds.txt. The year 2022 marked the 60

Anniversary of

the Port Huron Statement which was issued on June 15, 1962.]

Participatory Democracy

From the 1960s and SDS into

the Future On-line

by Michael Hauben

The 1960s was a time of people around the world

struggling for more of a say in the decisions of their

society. The emergence of the personal computer in

the late 70s and early 80s and the longer gestation of

the new forms of people-controlled communication

facilitated by the Internet and Usenet in the late 80s

and today are the direct descendants of 1960s.

The era of the 1960s was a special time in

America. Masses of people realized their own potential

to affect how the world around them worked. People

rose up to protest the ways of society which were out

of their control, whether to fight against racial segrega-

tion, or to gain more power for students in the univer-

sity setting. The Port Huron Statement created by the

Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) was a docu-

ment which helped set the mood for the decade.

By the 1970s, some of the people who were

directly involved in student protests continued their

efforts to bring power to the people by developing and

spreading computer power in a form accessible and

affordable to individuals. The personal computer

movement of the 1970s created the personal computer.

By the mid 1980s they forced the corporations to

produce computers which everyone could afford. The

new communications media of the Internet grew out of

the ARPANET research that started in 1969 and

Usenet which was born in 1979. These communica-

tions advances coupled with the availability of com-

puters transforms the spirit of the 1960s into an achiev-

able goal for our times.

SDS and The Need for Participatory

Democracy

The early members of SDS found a real problem

in American society. They felt that the United States

was a democracy that never existed, or rather which

was transformed into a representative system after the

constitutional convention. The United States society is

called a democracy, but had ceased being democratic

after the early beginnings of American society. SDS

felt it is crucial for people to have a part in how their

society is governed. SDS leaders had an understanding

of democratic forms which did not function democrati-

cally in the 1960s nor do they today. This is a real

problem which the leaders and members of SDS

intuitively understood and worked to change.

An important part of the SDS program included

the understanding of the need for a medium to make it

possible for a community of active citizens to discuss

and debate the issues affecting their lives. While not

Page 13

available in the 1960s, such a medium exists today in

the 1990s. The seeds for the revival of the 1960s SDS

vision of how to bring about a more democratic society

now exists in the personal computer and the Net. These

seeds will be an important element in the battle for

winning control for people as we approach the new

millennium.

The Port Huron Statement and Deep

Problems With American Democracy

The Port Huron Statement was the foundation on

which to build a movement for participatory democ-

racy in the 1960s. In June 1962, an SDS national con-

vention was held in a UAW camp located in the

backwoods of Port Huron, Michigan. The original text

of the Port Huron Statement was drafted by Tom

Hayden, who was then SDS Field Secretary. The

Statement sets out the theory of SDS’s criticism of

American society. The Port Huron convention was

itself a concrete living example of the practice of

participatory democracy.

The Port Huron Statement was originally thought

of as a manifesto, but SDS members moved instead to

call it a “statement.” It was prefixed by an introductory

note describing how it was to be a document that

should develop and change with experience: “This

document represents the results of several months of

writing and discussion among the membership, a draft

paper, and revision by the Students for a Democratic

Society national convention meeting in Port Huron,

Michigan, June 11-15, 1962. It is presented as a

document with which SDS officially identifies, but

also as a living document open to change with our

times and experiences. It is a beginning: in our own

debate and education, in our dialogue with society.”

(Port Huron Statement in Miller, p. 329)

This note is important in that it signifies that the

SDS document was not defining the definite solution

to the problems of society, but was making suggestions

that would be open to experiences toward a better

understanding. This openness is an important precursor

to practicing participatory democracy by asking for the

opinions of everyone and treating these various opin-

ions equally.

The first serious problem inherent in American

society identified by the Port Huron Statement is the

myth of a functioning democracy: “For Americans

concerned with the development of democratic societ-

ies, the anticolonial movements and revolutions in the

emerging nations pose serious problems. We need to

face the problems with humility; after 180 years of

constitutional government we are still striving for

democracy in our own society.” (Port Huron Statement

in Miller, p. 361)

This lack of democracy in American society

contributes to the political disillusionment of the pop-

ulation. Tom Hayden and SDS were deeply influenced

by the writings of C. Wright Mills, a philosopher who

was a professor at Columbia University until his death

early in 1962. Mills’ thesis was that the “the idea of the

community of publics” which make up a democracy

had disappeared as people increasingly got further

away from politics. Mills felt that the disengagement

of people from the State had resulted in control being

given to a few who in the 1960s were no longer valid

representatives of the American people. In his book

about SDS, Democracy is in the Streets, James Miller

wrote: “Politics became a spectator sport. The support

of voters was marshaled through advertising cam-

paigns, not direct participation in reasoned debate. A

citizen’s chief sources of political information, the

mass media, typically assaulted him with a barrage of

distracting commercial come-ons, feeble entertain-

ments and hand-me-down glosses on complicated

issues.” (Miller, p. 85)

Such fundamental problems with democracy con-

tinue today in the middle of the 1990s. In the Port

Huron Statement, SDS was successful in identifying

and understanding the problems which still plague us

today. This is a necessary first step to working toward

a solution. The students involved with SDS understood

people were tired of the problems and wanted to make

changes in society. The Port Huron Statement was

written to address these concerns: “… do they not as

well produce a yearning to believe there is an alterna-

tive to the present that something can be done to

change circumstances in the school, the workplaces,

the bureaucracies, the government? It is to this latter

yearning, at once the spark and engine of change, that

we direct our present appeal. The search for a truly

democratic alternatives to the present, and a commit-

ment to social experimentation with them, is a worthy

and fulfilling human enterprise, one which moves us,

and we hope, others today.” (Port Huron Statement in

Miller, p. 331)

Describing how the separation of people from

power is the means used to keep people uninterested

and apathetic, the Port Huron Statement explains:

“The apathy is, first, subjective – the felt powerless-

Page 14

ness of ordinary people, the resignation before the

enormity of events. But subjective apathy is encour-

aged by the objective American situation – the actual

structural separation of people from power, from

relevant knowledge, from pinnacles of decision-

making. Just as the university influences the student

way of life, so do major social institutions create the

circumstances which the isolated citizen will try hope-

lessly to understand the world and himself.” (“The

Society Beyond” in the Port Huron Statement, in

Miller, p. 336)

The Statement analyzes the personal disconnec-

tion to society and its effect: “The very isolation of the

individual – from power and community and ability to

aspire – means the rise of democracy without publics.

With the great mass of people structurally remote and

psychologically hesitant with respect to democratic

institutions, those institutions themselves attenuate and

become, in the fashion of the vicious cycle, progres-

sively less accessible to those few who aspire to

serious participation in social affairs. The vital demo-

cratic connection between community and leadership,

between the mass and the several elites, has been so

wrenched and perverted that disastrous policies go

unchallenged time and again.” (Port Huron Statement

in Miller, p. 336)

The Statement describes how it is typical for

people to get frustrated and quit going along with the

electoral system as something which works. The pro-

blem has continued, as we now have all time lows in

voter turn-outs for national and local elections. In a

section titled “Politics Without Publics,” the Statement

explains: “The American voter is buffeted from all

directions by pseudo problems, by the structurally

initiated sense that nothing political is subject to

human mastery. Worried by his mundane problems

which never get solved, but constrained by the com-

mon belief that politics is an agonizingly slow accom-

modation of views, he quits all pretense of bothering.”

(Port Huron Statement in Miller, p. 337)

Students in SDS did not let these real problems

discourage their efforts to work for a better future.

They wanted to be part of the forces to defeat the pro-

blems. The Port Huron Statement contains an under-

standing that people are inherently good and can deal

with the problems that were described. This under-

standing is conveyed in the “Values” section of the

Statement: “Men have unrealized potential for self-

cultivation, self-direction, self-understanding, and cre-

ativity. It is this potential that we regard as crucial and

to which we appeal, not to the human potential for

violence, unreason, and submission to authority. The

goal of man and society should be human independ-

ence: a concern not with the image of popularity but

with finding a meaning in life that is personally au-

thentic; a quality of mind not compulsively driven by

a sense of powerlessness, nor one which unthinkingly

adopts status values, nor one which represses all

threats to its habits, but one which easily unites the

fragmented parts of personal history, one which openly

faces problems which are troubling and unresolved;

one with an intuitive awareness of possibilities, an

active sense of curiosity, an ability and willingness to

learn.” (Port Huron Statement in Miller, p. 332)

Participatory Democracy

Those participating in the Port Huron convention

came away with a sense of the importance of participa-

tory democracy. This sense was in the air in several

ways. The convention itself embodied participatory

democracy through the discussion and debate over the

text of the Statement as several people later explained.

The Port Huron Statement called for the implementa-

tion of participatory democracy as a way to bring

people back into decisions about the country in gen-

eral, and their individual lives, in particular. One of

Tom Hayden’s professors at University of Michigan,

Arnold Kaufman, came to speak about his thoughts

and use of phrase ‘participatory democracy.’

Miller writes that in a 1960 essay, “Participatory

Democracy and Human Nature,” Kaufman had de-

scribed a society in which every member had a “direct

responsibility for decisions.” The “main justifying

function” of participatory democracy, quotes Miller,

“is and always has been, not the extent to which it

protects or stabilizes a community, but the contribution

it can make to the development of human powers of

thought, feeling and action. In this respect, it differs,

and differs quite fundamentally, from a representative

system incorporating all sorts of institutional features

designed to safeguard human rights and ensure social

order.” (Miller, p. 94)

“Participation” explained Kaufman, “means both

personal initiative – that men feel obliged to help

resolve social problems – and social opportunity – that

society feels obliged to maximize the possibility for

personal initiative to find creative outlets.” (Miller, p.

95)

A participant at the Port Huron Conference,

Richard Flacks remembers Arnold Kaufman speaking

Page 15

at the convention, “At one point, he declared that our

job as citizens was not to role-play the President. Our

job was to put forth our own perspective. That was the

real meaning of democracy – press for your own

perspective as you see it, not trying to be a statesman

understanding the big picture.” (Miller, p. 111)

After identifying participatory democracy as the

means of how to wrest control back from corporate

and government bureaucracies, the next step was to

identify the means to having participatory democracy.

In the “Values” section of The Port Huron Statement,

the means proposed is a new media that would make

this possible: “As a social system we seek the estab-

lishment of a democracy of individual participation

governed by two central aims: that the individual share

in those social decisions determining the quality and

direction of his life; the society be organized to en-

courage independence in men and provide the media

for their common participation.” (Port Huron State-

ment in Miller, p. 333)

Others in SDS further detailed their understand-

ings of participatory democracy to mean people be-

coming active and committed to playing more of a

public role. Miller documents Al Haber’s idea of

democracy as ‘a model, another way of organizing

society.’ The emphasis was on a charge to action. It

was how to be out there doing. Rather than an ideology

or a theory.” (Miller, pp. 143-144)

Tom Hayden, Miller writes, understood partici-

patory democracy to mean: “number one, action; we

believed in action. We had behind us the so-called

decade of apathy; we were emerging from apathy.

What’s the opposite of apathy? Active participation.

Citizenship. Making history. Secondly, we were very

directly influenced by the civil rights movement in its

student phase, which believed that by personally

committing yourself and taking risks, you could enter

history and try to change it after a hundred years of

segregation. And so it was this element of participation

in democracy that was important. Voting was not

enough. Having a democracy in which you have an

apathetic citizenship, spoon-fed information by a

monolithic media, periodically voting, was very weak,

a declining form of democracy. And we believed, as an

end in itself, to make the human being whole by

becoming an actor in history instead of just a passive

object. Not only as an end in itself, but as a means to

change, the idea of participatory democracy was our

central focus.” (Miller, p. 144) Another member of

SDS, Sharon Jeffrey understood “Participatory” to

mean “involved in decisions.” She continued, “And I

definitely wanted to be involved in decisions that were

going to affect me! How could I let anyone make a

decision about me that I wasn’t involved in?” (Miller,

p. 144)

It is important to see the value of participatory

democracy as a common understanding among both

the leaders and members of SDS. While the Port

Huron Statement contained other criticisms and

thoughts, its major contribution was to highlight the

need to more actively involve the citizens of the

United States in the daily political process to correct

some of the wrongs which passivity had allowed to

build. Richard Flacks summarizes this in his article,

“On the Uses of Participatory Democracy”: “The most

frequently heard phrase for defining participatory

democracy is that ‘men must share in the decisions

which effect their lives.’ In other words, participatory

democrats take seriously a vision of man as citizen:

and by taking seriously such a vision, they seek to

extend the conception of citizenship beyond the

conventional political sphere to all institutions. Other

ways of stating the core values are to assert the follow-

ing: each man has responsibility for the action of the

institutions in which he is embedded … .” (Flacks, pp.

397-398)

The Need for Community for Participatory

Democracy

The leaders of SDS strove to create forms of

participatory democracy within its structure and organ-

ization as a prototype and as leadership for the student

protest movement and society in general. Al Haber, the

University of Michigan graduate student who was the

first SDS national officer, describes the need for a

communication system to provide the foundation for

the movement: “The challenge ahead is to appraise and

evolve radical alternatives to the inadequate society of

today, and to develop an institutionalized communica-

tion system that will give perspective to our immediate

actions. We will then have the groundwork for a

radical student movement in America.” (Sale, p. 25)

He understood the general society would be the

last place to approach. There was a need to start

smaller among the elements of society that was becom-

ing more active in the 1960s or the students. Haber

outlined his idea of where to start: “We do not now

have such a public [interaction in a functioning com-

munity] in America. Perhaps, among the students, we

Page 16

are beginning to approach it on the left. It is now the

major task before liberals, radicals, socialists and

democrats. It is a task in which the SDS should play a

major role.” (Miller, p. 69)

The Port Huron Statement defines ‘community’

to mean: “Human relations should involve fraternity

and honesty. Human interdependence is a contempo-

rary fact; … . ‘Personal links between man and man

are needed.’” (Port Huron Statement in Miller, p. 332)

Prior to his full time involvement with SDS,

Hayden wrote an article for the Michigan Daily

describing how democratic decision making is a

necessary first step toward creating community.

Hayden’s focus was on the University when he wrote,

“If decisions are the sole work of an isolated few rather

than of a participating many, alienation from the

University complex will emerge, because the Univer-

sity will be just that: a complex, not a community.”

However, this sentiment persisted in Hayden’s and

others thoughts about community and democracy for

the whole country. (Miller, p. 54)

This feeling about community is represented in

the Port Huron Statement’s conclusion. The Statement

calls for the communal sharing of problems to see that

they are public and not private problems. Only by

communicating and sharing these problems through a

community will it be a chance to solve them together.

SDS called for the new left to “transform modern

complexity into issues that can be understood and felt

close-up by every human being.” The statement

continues, “It must give form to the feelings of help-

lessness and indifference, so people may see the

political, social an economic sources of their private

troubles and organize to change society … .’” (Port

Huron Statement in Miller, p. 374)

The theory of participatory democracy was en-

gaging. However, the actual practice of giving every-

one a say within the SDS structures made the value of

participatory democracy clear. The Port Huron Con-

vention was a real life example of how the principles

were refreshing and capable of bringing American

citizens back into political process. The community

created among SDS members brought this new spirit

to light. C. Wright Mills writings spoke about “the

scattered little circles of face-to-face citizens discuss-

ing their public business.” Al Haber’s hope for this to

happen among students was demonstrated at Port

Huron. SDS members saw this as proof of Mills’ hope

for democracy. This was to be the first example of

many among SDS gatherings and meetings. Richard

Flacks highlighted what made Port Huron special. He

found a “mutual discovery of like minds.” Flacks

continued, “You felt isolated before, because you had

these political interests and values and suddenly you

were discovering not only like minds, but the possibil-

ity of actually creating something together.” It was

also exciting because, “it was our thing: we were there

at the beginning.” (Miller, p. 118)

The Means For Change

SDS succeeded in doing several things. First,

they clearly identified the crucial problem in American

democracy. Next, they came up with an understanding

of what theory would make a difference. All that re-

mained was to find the means to make this change

manifest. They discovered how to create changes in

their own lives and these changes affected the world

around them. However, something more was needed to

bring change to all of American society.

Al Haber understood this something more would

be an open communication system or media which

people could use to communicate. He understood that,

“the challenge ahead is to appraise and evolve radical

alternatives to the inadequate society of today, and to

develop an institutionalized communication system

that will give perspective to our immediate actions.”

(Sale, p. 25) This system would lay the “the ground-

work for a radical student movement in America.”

(Sale, p. 25) Haber and Hayden understood SDS to be

this, “a national communications network” (Miller, p.

72)

While many people made their voices heard and

produced a real effect on the world in the 1960s, last-

ing structural changes were not established. The real

problems outlined earlier continued in the 1970s and

afterwards. A national, or even an international, public

communications network needed to be built to keep the

public’s voice out in the open.

Members of SDS partially understood this, and

put forth the following two points in the Port Huron

Statement section on “Toward American Democracy”:

– “Mechanisms of voluntary association must be

created through which political information can be

imparted and political participation encouraged.”

– “The allocation of resources must be based on social

needs. A truly ‘public sector’ must be established, and

its nature debated and planned.” (Port Huron State-

ment in Miller, p. 362)

Page 17

International Public Communications

Network – or The Net

This network and the means to access it began

developing toward the end of the 1960s. Two mile-

stones in the genesis were 1969 when the first

ARPANET node was installed and in 1979 when

Usenet started. Both are pioneering experiments in

using computers to facilitate human communication in

a fundamentally different way than already existing

public communications networks like the telephone or

television networks. The ARPANET, which was a

prototype for today’s Internet, and Usenet, which con-

tinues to grow and expand around the world, are parts

of the Net, or the worldwide global computer commu-

nication networks. Another important step toward the

development of an international communication net-

work was the personal computer movement, which

took place in the middle to late 1970s. This movement

created the personal computer which makes it afford-

able for an individual to purchase the means to connect

to this public network.

However, the network cannot simply be created.

SDS understood that “democracy and freedom do not

magically occur, but have roots in historical experi-

ence; they cannot always be demanded for any society

at any time, but must be nurtured and facilitated.”

(Port Huron Statement in Miller, p. 361)

Participants on the ARPANET, Internet and

Usenet inherently understood this, and built a social

and knowledge network from the ground up. As Use-

net was created to help students who did not have

access to the ARPANET, or a chance to communicate

in a similar way, they came to it in full force. In

“Culture and Communication: The Interplay in the

New Public Commons,” Michael Hauben writes that

the on-line user is part of a global culture and consid-

ers him or herself to be a global citizen. This global

citizen is a net citizen, or a Netizen. The world which

has developed is based on communal effort to make a

cooperative community. Those who have become

Netizens have gained more control of their lives and

the world around them. However, access to this world

needs to spread in order to have the largest possible

effect for the most number of people. In addition, as

some efforts to spread the Net become more commer-

cial, some of the values important to the Net are being

challenged.

A recent speech I was invited to present at a

conference on “the Netizen Revolution and the Re-

gional Information Infrastructure” in Beppu, Japan

helps to bring the world of the Netizen into perspective

with the ideas of participatory democracy: “Netizens

are not just anyone who comes on-line, and they are

especially not people who come on-line for isolated

gain or profit. They are not people who come to the

Net thinking it is a service. Rather they are people who

understand it takes effort and action on each and every

ones 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.” (Hauben,

Hypernetwork '95 speech)

The Net is a technological and social develop-

ment which is in the spirit of the theory clearly defined

by the Students for a Democratic Society. This under-

standing could help in the fight to keep the Net a

uncommercialized public commons (Felsenstein). This

many to many medium provides the tools necessary to

bring the open commons needed to make participatory

democracy a reality. It is important now to spread

access to this medium to all who understand they could

benefit.

The Net brings power to people’s lives because

it is a public forum. The airing of real problems and

concerns in the open brings help toward the solution

and makes those responsible accountable to the general

public. The Net is the public distribution of people’s

muckraking and whistle blowing. It is also just a damn

good way for people to come together to communicate

about common interests and to come into contact with

people with similar and differing ideas.

The lack of control over the events surrounding

an individual’s life was a common concern of protest-

ers in the 1960s. The Port Huron Statement gave this

as a reason for the reforms SDS was calling for. The

section titled “The Society Beyond” included that

“Americans are in withdrawal from public life, from

any collective efforts at directing their own affairs.”

(Port Huron Statement in Miller, p. 335)

Hayden echoed C. Wright Mills when he wrote,

“What experience we have is our own, not vicarious or

inherited.” Hayden continued, “We keep believing that

people need to control, or try to control, their work and

their life. Otherwise, they are without intensity, with-

out the subjective creative consciousness of themselves

which is the root of free and secure feeling. It may be

too much to believe, we don’t know.” (Miller, p. 262)

The desire to bring more control into people’s

daily life was a common goal of student protest in the

Page 18

1960s. Mario Savio, active in the Berkeley Free

Speech movement, “believed that the students, who

paid the university to educate them, should have the

power to influence decisions concerning their univer-

sity lives.” (Haskins and Benson, p. 55) This desire

was also a common motivator of the personal com-

puter movement.

The Personal Computer Movement

The personal computer movement immediately

picked up after the protest movements of the 1960s

died down. Hobbyist computer enthusiasts wanted to

provide access to computing power to the people.

People across the United States picked up circuit

boards and worked on making a personal minicom-

puter or mainframe which previously only large

corporations and educational institutions could afford.

Magazines, such as Creative Computing, Byte and Dr.

Dobbs’ Journal, and clubs, such as the Homebrew

Club, formed cooperative communities of people

working toward solving the technical problems of

building a personal and inexpensive computer.

Several pioneers of the personal computer move-

ment contributed to the tenth anniversary issue of

Creative Computing Magazine. Some of their impres-

sions follow: “The people involved were people with

vision, people who stubbornly clung to the idea that

the computers could offer individuals advantages

previously available only to large corporations … .”

(Leyland, p. 111) “Computer power was meant for the

people. In the early 70s computer cults were being

formed across the country. Sol Libes on the East Coast

and Gordon French in the West were organizing

computer enthusiasts into clubs … .” (Terrell, p. 100)

“We didn’t have many things you take for granted

today, but we did have a feeling of excitement and

adventure. A feeling that we were the pioneers in a

new era in which small computers would free everyone

from much of the drudgery of everyday life. A feeling

that we were secretly taking control of information and

power jealously guarded by the Fortune 500 owners of

multimillion dollar IBM mainframes. A feeling that

the world would never be the same once ‘hobby com-

puters’ really caught on.” (Marsh, p. 110) “There was

a strong feeling [at the Homebrew Club] that we were

subversives. We were subverting the way the giant

corporations had run things. We were upsetting the

establishment, forcing our mores into the industry. I

was amazed that we could continue to meet without

people arriving with bayonets to arrest the lot of us.”

The Net and Conclusion

The development of the Internet and of Usenet is

an investment in a strong force toward making direct

democracy a reality. These new technologies present

the chance to overcome the obstacles preventing the

implementation of direct democracy. Online communi-

cation forums also make possible the discussion

necessary to identify today’s fundamental questions.

One criticism is that it would be impossible to assem-

ble the body politic in person at a single time. The Net

allows for a meeting which takes place on each per-

son’s own time, rather than all at one time. Usenet

newsgroups are discussion forums where questions are

raised, and people can leave comments when conve-

nient, rather than at a particular time and at a particular

place. As a computer discussion forum, individuals can

connect from their own computers, or from publicly

accessible computers across the nation to participate in

a particular debate. The discussion takes place in one

concrete time and place, while the discussants can be

dispersed. Current Usenet newsgroups and mailing

lists prove that citizens can both do their daily jobs and

participate in discussions that interest them within their

daily schedules.

Another criticism was that people would not be

able to communicate peacefully after assembling.

Online discussions do not have the same characteris-

tics as in-person meetings. As people connect to the

discussion forum when they wish, and when they have

time, they can be thoughtful in their responses to the

discussion. Whereas in a traditional meeting, partici-

pants have to think quickly to respond. In addition,

online discussions allow everyone to have a say,

whereas finite length meetings only allow a certain

number of people to have their say. Online meetings

allow everyone to contribute their thoughts in a mes-

sage, which is then accessible to whomever else is

reading and participating in the discussion.

These new communication technologies hold the

potential for the implementation of direct democracy

in a country as long as the necessary computer and

communications infrastructure are installed. Future

advancement toward a more responsible government

is possible with these new technologies. While the

future is discussed and planned for, it will also be

possible to use these technologies to assist in the cit-

izen participation in government. Netizens are watch-

ing various government institutions on various news-

groups and mailing lists throughout the global com-

puter communications network. People’s thoughts

Page 19

about and criticisms of their respective governments

are being aired on the currently uncensored networks.

These networks can revitalize the concept of a

democratic “Town Meeting” via online communica-

tion and discussion. Discussions involve people inter-

acting with others. Voting involves the isolated

thoughts of an individual on an issue, and then his or

her acting on those thoughts in a private vote. In

society where people live together, it is important for

people to communicate with each other about their

situations to best understand the world from the

broadest possible viewpoint.

The individuals involved with SDS, the personal

computer movement and the pioneers involved with

the development of the Net understood they were a

part of history. This spirit helped them to push forward

in the hard struggle needed to bring the movements to

fruition. The invention of the personal computer was

one step that made it possible for people to afford the

means to connect to the Net. The Internet has just

begun to emerge as a tool available to the public. It is

important that the combination of the personal com-

puter and the Net be spread and made widely available

at low or no costs to people around the world. It is

important to understand the tradition which these

developments have come from, in order to truly

understand their value to society and to make them

widely available. With the hope connected to this new

public communications medium, I encourage people to

take up the struggle which continues in the great

American radical tradition.

Bibliography

Felsenstein, Lee. “The Commons of Information.” In Dr. Dobbs’

Journal. May 1993

Flacks, Richard. “On the Uses of Participatory Democracy.” In

Dissent. No. 13. November 1966. Pp. 701-708. Reprinted

in The American Left. Edited by Loren Baritz. Pp. 397-405.

Freiberger, Paul and Michael Swaine. Fire in the Valley: The

Making of the Personal Computer. Osborne/McGraw-Hill.

Berkeley. 1984.

Haskins, James and Kathleen Benson. The 60s Reader. Viking

Kestrel. New York. 1988.

Hauben, Michael. “Culture and Communication: The interplay in

the new public commons – Usenet and Community”.

Online in 1995. http://www.columbia.edu/~hauben/CS

/usenet-culture.txt

Hauben, Michael and Ronda Hauben. Netizens: On the History

and Impact of Usenet and the Internet. 1994.

http://www

.columbia.edu/~hauben/netbook/

Hauben, Michael. “Netizens and Community Networks.” Presen-

tation at the Hypernetwork '95, Beppu Bay Conference.

November 24, 1995. Beppu Bay, Oita Prefecture, Japan.

Leyland, Diane Asher. “As We Were.” In Creative Computing.

Vol. 10 no. 11. November 1984. Pp. 111-112.

Marsh, Robert. “1975: Ancient History.” In Creative Computing.

Vol. 10 no. 11. November 1984. Pp. 108-110.

Miller, James. Democracy is in the Streets. Simon and Schuster.

New York. 1987.

Sale, Kirkpatrick. SDS. Vintage Books. New York, 1974.

SDS. Port Huron Statement. As found in Miller. Pp. 329-374.

Terrell, Paul. “A Guided Tour of Personal Computing.” In

Creative Computing. Vol. 10 no. 11. November 1984. Pp.

100-104.

This article is online at:

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

/CS/netdemocracy-60s.txt

EDITORIAL STAFF

Ronda Hauben

William Rohler

Norman O. Thompson

Michael Hauben (1973-2001)

Jay Hauben

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