2 Question and AnswerThere is also the admittedly disquieting fact that computer networkscan bring sordid activities and materials out of the streets and directlyinto our homes. And of course there’s our general fascination with sexand crime: the mass media in general are fixated on sex and crime, sowhy should the focus be any different when dealing with cyberspace?But there is something else operating here, too, an ideological beliefthat technology is different and that it can and should be held to ahigher standard of perfection and purity. We‘re talking about comput-ers, after all! They’re incorruptible! They don’t make mistakes! They area force for good!Look at the outcry over the infamous bug in Intel’s Pentium micro-processor. It was a minor flaw in a type of product that experts knowroutinely has many flaws, but people found it hard to digest the ideathat their latest and greatest technology product suffered frommundane human imperfections. It’s an ideology about technology thatdates from the European enlightenment-the new will be different andbetter than the old-and even centuries of real-world experience hasn’tdisabused people of this appealing belief.The danger here is that expecting the new to be better can obscurewhat is genuinely different. Heavy reliance on computers, for example,has rendered some types of systems many times more vulnerable to fail-ure-and therefore to sabotage or terrorism or highly sophisticatedcrimes-than they were before. The public telephone network, for one,is now controlled by an elaborate signaling system, and thus, to takedown a broad swath of the network one need only monkey with a keypiece of that system.The social implications of the new forms of communications devel-oping in the on-line world are also of great significance. email is not thesame as an electronic version of a letter or a written version of a phonecall, it’s something truly new. Similarly, chat rooms and discussionforums have no equivalents in the predigital world.Pornography and theft and runaway teenagers, on the other hand,are nothing if not age-old. Titillating though they may be, such phenom-ena are among the least interesting things about cyperspace.Chapter 5Protecting thePublic InterestA Menu of Policy OptionsWhen the Clinton Administration took over the White House-or, moreaccurately, when Al Gore became Vice President-the National InformationInfrastructure (NII) immediately moved from the politically peripheralpassion of a few visionaries to the shortlist of top national priorities. TheNII was described as being central to the nation’s ability to compete in aglobal economy, to upgrade the skills of our workforce, to reform ourschools, and to provide a better life for all Americans. New technology wasalso described as being vital to the government’s efforts to meet citizens’increasing demand for services in the context of limited public sectorresources. Not only was the NII important, it was inevitable. And if thiscountry didn‘t get there first, someone else would-with dire consequencesfor both our GNP and our national security.The Clinton Administration is not the first to propose policies topromote Information Technology (IT). There is a long history of govern-ment studies and reports, dating back to the 193Os, on various aspects ofthe issue. In the mid-1970s, Vice President Nelson Rockefeller released adocument describing the “convergence“of various media and stating theneed for a national information policy office. Still, the Clinton-Gore team isthe first to put IT near the top of its priority list.The government is not the only one that considers cyberspace important.Many different groups in this country, and around the world, are trying toshape the NII. They each have their own,often self-interested, version ofwhat vision and goals the NII should serve, who should use it, and whatusers should be able to do. They have their own perspectives on the beststrategies for realizing those goals: who should design and build the NII,who should pay for it, who should run it once it’s here. And they have7374 Chapter 5lifferent opinions about what transmission technologies and local accesslevices are best suited to serve as the major building block of the NII.The NII is too big and complex for any one group to control it totally. Butsome will try. The differing visions,interests, and proposals will competefor dominance in the public policy-making process because governmentpolicy will establish the context within which the IT marketplace will oper-ate. Knowing what types of policy alternatives the government has at itsdisposal and the implications surrounding the use of each is essential forparticipating in the NII policy-making process.A MENU OF GOVERNMENT STRATEGIESWhen shaping public policy to create new systems, the government hasfour major types of approaches from which to choose. They are not mutu-ally exclusive. The complex process of assembling a legislative majority infavor of a bill often requires delicate compromises. One of the ways thatgovernment deals with conflicting political pressures is by putting togethera mixed bag of actions from each of the approaches. The four approachesinclude:l regulation,l subsidized or direct production,l subsidized or direct consumption, andl subsidized or direct creation of needed infrastructure.RegulationTwentieth century Americans usually think of government as a regulator.Through law and regulation the government creates market rules with thehope of making the pursuit of private interest serve public goals. Marketrules control internal corporate behavior, from the way business treats work-ers to the way they do their accounting. Market rules also impact intercorpo-rate behavior, from preventing monopoly-creating mergers to setting limitson the ways firms can fight their competition. The government’s marketrules shape the way producers and consumers interact, from requiring “truthin advertising” to regulating prices. Government regulation influences thecost of capital and the level of profits that have to be paid in taxes.A Menu of Government Strategies75The telecommunications marketplace has traditionally been a highlyregulated environment. When broadcasting technology was first devel-oped, the airwaves represented the electronic frontier. Like the supposedlyopen lands taken from Native Americans, the lack of legally recognizedtitle holders led to an assumption that the electromagnetic