net.wars by Wendy M. Grossman
Wendy Grossman is a freelance journalist who has covered the Internet since 1992 for major publications including Wired, the Daily Telegraphand New Scientist. Her article "alt.scientology.war" was the runner-up for the 1996 American Society of Journalists and Authors award for "Reporting on a Significant Topic". She currently lives in London.
This review, by John Kerr, appeared in the October 1998 issue of New Humanist.
Wherever World War 3 is fought, it's unlikely to be in the jungles of Burma or Brazil. Why? Because it's illegal for the Burmese to own a modem, and a phone connection in Sao Paulo can cost up to $6000. These are the kind of research facts which add spice to Wendy Grossman's absorbing commentary on world cyber-tension. The war has virtually begun, it seems, and it's being fought out behind the sanitised front pages of our Virgin, Lineone and other ISP accounts. The Net may look like an extension of Piccadilly Circus to those of us who've led sheltered lives, but the New Electronic Frontier has become the battleground for worldwide strife.
We won't see Kate Adie or John Simpson reporting on this war. There will be no mortars or tomahawk missiles flying overhead. The trouble-spots exist only in a virtual world, the targets constantly shifting ground. For the Net is not a field, like Naseby, nor even a theatre of war, like the Pacific. It's not even a single entity or sovereign territory as some might speak of or wish it to be.
From her home office vantage point, Grossman gives us a complete lowdown on all the raids and skirmishes currently being fought out at the borders where cyberspace meets the ‘real' world. The combatants are bemused bureaucrats brought unwillingly into the fray, cynical media and telecomms moguls caught up in the power game, various flavours of spivs, carpetbaggers and cypher-punks who've muscled in on the act, and a motley gang of grizzled frontiersmen who wouldn't have looked out of place at the Alamo.
If wars are fought out in defence of causes, good or bad, then there's no shortage of them at stake in this one. Bereft of physical boundaries, there seems nothing to stop the collective passions of various sects, cults and vested interests from flaming it out in a war of words, pranks and dirty tricks to get what they want. With its easy facility for whipping up opinions, mass indignation doesn't spread much faster than on the Net. And there's no shortage of spoilers, hysterics and nutters - both on and off the Net - willing to add fuel to the fire.
Many issues are at stake. Central is the paradox on how to make cyberspace safe and secure for decent law-abiding netizens who are just like you and me. The US and other governments want to control the processes of strong encryption, ostensibly for good moral purpose like licking the paedophiles. They can't do so because net.guerrillas can always find ways to wrong-foot the authorities; meanwhile big business fears losing out to overseas developers, either to countries with fewer scruples or to continents, like Europe, with different legal frameworks.
As in all wars, this one has already thrown up its raft of folk heroes and villains: Cryptographers like Phil Zimmermann and Matt Blaize, spammers Canter and Siegel, social visionary John Perry Barlow and many others have a part to play. They may not any longer see the whites of their opponents' eyes, except perhaps in court, but Americans certainly know how to slug it out with passion, venom and ingenuity when their liberties are threatened. Not just Americans, of course. They may be the major arms suppliers, they may be leading the way against the assorted junk mailers, porn merchants, hackers and scam poachers, but the rest of us better watch our backs too if the new generation of net.priests turn out to be an equally bad lot.
Grossman's book leads us through the complex issues in entertaining style. It raises serious concerns for us all and provides many useful insights (‘Many old-time Net users believe that the Net may herald a new era of peace, instead of realising that the Net will let people misunderstand each other and start fights faster') Grossman has been part of the net.scene and knows where it's at. With a foot on both sides of the Atlantic, she cuts through the techno-babble and speaks with authority. She isn't afraid to sling the mud where it sticks or throw in a little gossip and anecdotal evidence where it suits. Yet she avoids ranting and keeps a sane distance from her subject, backing up her opinions with plenty of good, solid journalistic research.
In the end, she's a traditionalist. The Net is wonderful but not really special. There's nothing new or unique about free speech, copyright protection, privacy invasion, sexual harassment, vandalism and even terrorism currently worrying the millions of new net.users. They just need different measures to tackle them. Grossman argues - convincingly - that moderation, cultural diversity and peer pressure are better than a backlash of regulation to achieve maturity in what is, after all, an incredibly recent phenomenon.
Whether you believe net.culture is the most significant social development of the 20th Century, or just a passing fad, this book certainly helps to define a moment in time when the cyber-frontiers are still being drawn. Serious investigative journalism doesn't come much better.
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