Laws of Electronic Communities & Their Roads: High Noon?

People from all walks of life still have the opportunity to help shape the eventual form of laws in cyberspace. In fact, the democratic nature of electronic communities coupled with the ever increasing numbers of people joining the Internet require continual change in the application of these legal principles. Because users of electronic communities can determine the rights and duties of their fellow participants via an acceptable-use policy, commonality may be achieved as disparate groups in different networks realize independently similar conclusions regarding how to apply fairness and justice in their electronic community.

Learning with the World Wide Web: Connectivity Alone Will Not Save Education

By means of global networking on the Internet special interest groups and clubs are being formed. These groups can break down large issues into smaller ones and collaborate to solve problems.

The Global Telecommunication Infrastructure and the Information Society

I do not believe that an International Digi-Police is the answer to transborder flows of material which is acceptable in its place of origin, but not in the destination. But we must recognize that this dilemma is likely to affect political constraints on tomorrow’s GII.

The Global Telecommunication Infrastructure and the Information Society

We can imagine some of the possible benefits of this new medium: Shared information resulting in more fluid, global markets; Sharing of the world’s educational and research resources; Pooling the contributions of the creative and intellectual potential of individuals from all parts of the world; Eliminating geographic barriers and the filtering due to the tendency of conventional media to selectively report the words and echo the thoughts of individuals from particular countries and positions in the socio-political hierarchy; Wide range of available entertainment.

The Global Telecommunication Infrastructure and the Information Society

There are as many views of what the Global Information Infrastructure (GII) might be as there are segments of the information and communication industry … A high-performance computer network which will facilitate high-speed data access and retrieval … a multimedia network for which the primary use will be conveying video datastreams in conjunction with data, text and voice … a medium for interactive television, in which it is the intelligent television set rather than the home computer or the videophone which is the main communication channel.

Harley Hahn: Author

I think what you will find is that the kids who are using the Net will learn how to use the stuff without any problem at all, and they’ll feel right at home, and when they’re 25 they won’t understand why a 25-year-old would think that anonymous FTP is a difficult thing to learn how to use any more than, at your age, you think how anybody could think that driving is difficult to use.

Harley Hahn: Author

I think we’re just starting to see the potential of human beings, and the Net is starting to do that for us. In a very narrow sense – and I’m being ignorant here – all of human culture and history and effort so far has been sort of concentrating just so we can all get connected up together, and finally we are all getting connected up together, and now we’re going to see what happens.

Harley Hahn: Author

The potential for the Net for people to communicate is much larger than the newspapers and radio and television. I see the Net as being our best hope, in fact, our inevitable hope, and it definitely will happen, for the world finally starting to become a global community and everybody just getting along with everyone else.