Foreword
By Michael Fraase
Thursday, 02 September 1999 08:31PM CST
Section: 00 Administrivia
You ever get the feeling something is wrong but you can’t put your finger on it? You know it has something to do with corporations, special interests, conglomerates, the law making process, the political system, arcane statutes, the changing nature of modern “media,” and so forth. But it’s so damned complex all you can evolve to think about it is a paranoid sounding set of prejudices based on disjunct groups of “factoids” that can’t exactly explain or communicate your unease. If you try to talk about it, your scanty intuitions sound suspiciously like wild conspiracy theories. It’s not that it was exactly planned this way, it’s just that the fact base is so complex and inter-related not even the law makers know what might be a good action and what would be a poor one. They have political careers to attend to and little time to become experts on what amounts to a Ph.D. program in law and technology. Often enough, all they know for sure is that they don’t want the kids having access to porn, because that stance is where the votes lie. But that particular red herring has next to nothing to do with the true power struggles for control of information flow. Not that it isn’t a subject of grave concern, but it’s essentially a way of diverting attention from the true issue of just who is to rule the world.
Wool covers the eyes of all except those who’ve devoted their professional lives to figuring the ins and outs of the emerging techno-monstrosity; of those tending to serve the special interests which profit from the confusion. The movers and shakers. Information Eclipse puts the mountain of facts and implications together and wises the marks. According to somebody’s way of reckoning, that’s probably subversive. Nothing is more dangerous to special interest groups than an enlightened public. The fact is, you must know what your rights are in order to exercise them. And you must know exactly which rights are being eroded, and how, in order to reclaim them.
Michael Fraase has written a textbook for the dispossessed. The system has the seeds of fairness planted in it, but you have to know where to spade and hoe. And spade you must. Your privacy and rights of access have been turned into a commodity which does not profit you. Wise up. Read this and begin to speak and act with accurate knowledge. Democracy is not a form of rule which favors the apathetic. Lift that rock in the garden and watch things scurry from the light.
—Robert Hunter