Spreading the net.

• Author: Young, John E.
• Position: Computer networks

IN THE RACE TO CREATE A SUSTAINABLE SOCIETY, A GLOBAL "NETWORK OF NETWORKS" OF PERSONAL COMPUTERS MAY OFFER THE FIRST REAL HOPE OF VASTLY ACCELERATING ENVIRONMENTAL COMMUNICATIONS WORLDWIDE.

Between fourteen and nineteen Yanomami Indians were massacred by goldminers between the Hemosh and Xidea villages in the Yanomami territory in roraima state in the northern Brazilian Amazon. The dead include men, women and children who were decapitated with machetes...

--from a notice on Econet, a U.S. computer network, and its 12 international affiliate networks, on August 18, 1993.

Just got e-mail from a friend in Moscow saying tanks are "blasting away" at the White House...

--from an electronic mail message sent to the author by a Seattle-based friend the morning that troops attacked the Russian parliament building.

Environmentalists have always had an uneasy relationship with technology--and with good reason. From fossil fuels in the 19th century to organic chemical synthesis and nuclear reactors in the 20th, the unthinking application of new technologies has brought about a large share of the environmental problems that now threaten to undermine our future.

It is thus no surprise that many on the environmental front lines have greeted the rapid proliferation of computers with apprehension, if not suspicion. As media critic Jerry Mander puts it, "Computer technology has sprung us headlong into an entirely new existence." He and many others in the environmental movement see in the computer the technological epitome of all that is wrong with industrial civilization.

Indeed, it is easy to view computers, which were originally developed for the design of bombs and artillery, as simply the ultimate tool of the powerful institutions--corporations, governments, the military--that now dominate our world. There is little doubt that computers are now helping to accelerate the onslaught of the consumer economy and to consolidate the power of the large entities that control them.

But the computer revolution has another side as well--one that is just beginning to take shape. The linking of computers to one another, through the global wiring originally built to carry telephone conversations, is creating a new communications medium. Computer networks are changing how people connect with one another, get information, and organize around issues of common interest. And, despite their misgivings about the technology, many environmentalists and their allies have become forces in this revolution.

Networks are making activists better informed, better organized, and better able to react quickly to developments around the world. Consider, for example, the quotes at the beginning of this article. The first is from an Econet conference--a sort of electronic bulletin board--on rainforests. It appeared two days before the first appearance of the same news in the New York Times, and three days before its first mention in The Washington Post.

The bulletin on the Yanomami murders catalyzed a flurry of international organizing. Within hours, and long before the story showed up in traditional news media, additional bulletins provided addresses and fax numbers of senior Brazilian officials for those who wanted to express their concern and outrage. Protest vigils at Brazilian embassies and consulates in several cities were quickly organized, and dozens of environmental and indigenous rights groups put together a joint letter of protest to the president of Brazil. The second quote, from a computer note sent from Seattle to Washington, D.C., told of the climactic battle between Russian troops and hard-liners occupying the parliament building and--with the typical speed of computer networks--arrived a day before the same events showed up in the Washington newspapers.

BEYOND SPEED

Thousands of activists and organizations are embracing computer communications because it allows them to do things they could not do before. A lengthy document can go from London to Sydney in a few hours, or even a few seconds, depending on the system used. Electronic mail (e-mail) is cheaper than international phone calls, faxes, or express package services, and allows its users to bypass busy signals, erratic postal services, and schedule conflicts created by different time zones.

But it is not just speed that makes computer networks so different from other media. Perhaps even more important is their power to bring together people with similar interests. "The topic becomes the address," as computer writer Howard Rheingold puts it. A phone book--even a computerized phone book--only lists people by name or address, but electronic conferences organized around individual interests allow like-minded people to connect, regardless of geography. Birders and biologists, for example, can share information on migrations and rare and endangered species. And, as happened after the Yanomami massacre, people increasingly use global computer networks to bypass traditional media, getting their information directly from other people and institutions who share their concerns. The 13 networks of the Association for Progressive Communications (APC), in particular, are used primarily by people concerned with the interrelated issues of human rights, labor, peace, world development, and the environment. All told, the system now links 17,000 users in 94 countries. APC users can send e-mail...