I-1: Invited Paper

Civil Society and Internetworking

Abstract: Institutions of "civil society" - those which operate largely outside the commercial or governmental spheres - are important to the full functioning of any modern society. While the use of inter-networking as currently embodied in the Internet is often recommended by some to facilitate the development and operation of civil institutions, there are costs and characteristics examined in this paper which tend to inhibit such use. The author suggests a design approach which is not necessarily based upon the state of the art, but rather upon principles of "conviviality" as described by Ivan Illich. Some principles of design are listed for consideration in the development of systems intended for use by civil institutions. A system, Community Memory, is described which was developed and implemented over a span of several years for use by untrained people in a public environment. The possibility of making use of obsolescent computer equipment to support such a system is also discussed, along with the outlines of a possible organization of computer enthusiasts which could provide the requisite support structure for a locally-based networked information-exchange system.

Lee Felsenstein is a researcher at Interval Research Corporation. He graduated with a B.S.E.E. degree in 1972 from the University of California at Berkeley, and became involved in the personal computer industry at its inception, designing the first shared-memory display adapter which defined personal computer architecture. In 1980 he designed the first commercially successful portable computer, the Osborne-1. He also defined the meeting process of the Homebrew Computer Club in 1975 and ran the meetings from which 23 companies, including Apple Computer, were formed. In 1994 he received the "Pioneer of the Electronic Frontier" award from the Electronic Frontier Foundation. He lives in Palo Alto, California.