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What is the electronic environment

THINK BIG!

Think of what we are calling the electronic environment as no more or less than a new alphabet -- one which is just beginning to take hold in an age where there was no “alphabet” before. Or a book, in a time and place where before books were limited to very few people and for very few applications (almost none of which particularly useful). By this we mean that this phenomenon which we are in the midst of living -- which goes by many names as well, such as: information processing, networking, electronic pearling, Internet, World Wide Web, the Information Society, what have you -- is much more than just the techno-thrill (or techno-annoyance) of the moment. It is in fact the primary means by which we are now going to be able to move (under our own individual steam) into a new millennium and a new age. An age which, with any luck at all, will be a lot more just, efficient and convivial than that from which we are now emerging.

The electronic environment is thus an enormous tool which already has capabilities which substantially outstretch both our uses of them and -- and here is a real challenge for us now! -- of our imaginations. Moreover, these are tools that are growing in power and their accessibility to who knows whom at rates which are close to impossible to fathom by those who have grown up in an industrial age. As those who labor daily in this field at least feel, if they do already not objectively recognize, just about the slowest thing going in this new realm of technology and society is the so-called Moore’s Law (which reads that the speed and capacity of computing power roughly double each eighteen months). And that is, quite literally, the slowest part of this new system. Traffic on Internet, though already at unheard of levels for a new technology, is still doubling every nine months or so. But that is just the beginning -- a situation you can really appreciate fully only if you happen to be right in the middle of it and can see new techniques and products offering significant improvements are now coming on line at a cadence which is measured in weeks and not months or years (never mind the kinds of planning periods which you see in the auto industry, truck business, or, say traditional infrastructure development). Let us sum up, in a nutshell, that it is only very very weird (i.e., unfamiliar) and very very fast moving.

We are thus living, like it or not and whether you recognize it or not, in a virtual Renaissance Age. Think of it! Even as you scan these lines, there are hundreds of thousands of mainly young and just about all very bright and energetic people around the world who are working hard to make various parts of this system work better. These people are beavering away in rooms not only in sunny California or the computer labs of MIT, but also in perhaps not quite so luxurious quarters in India, the former Soviet Union, the northern reaches of Sweden and the Outer Hebrides, and in many other ‘odd corners’ of the world. (And most of this work is, incidentally, going on in small groups, small businesses, many of which are set to go bust in a few months and others which will never become ‘legal’ in the old sense but which still are contributing to the momentum of what is going on.)

All this of course you know full well, but we wanted to open this section with this point -- so that we are sure that all who join us have a shared understanding of what we mean when we talk about this thing we have chosen to call the electronic environment (and which otherwise might strike you as friendly, comfortable and recognizable as an old pair of slippers, which it certainly is not!).

One final point remains to be made before we turn to the more focused detail that you were perhaps looking for when you turned to this section. And that is our understanding that what we present to you here is not only a very modest achievement thus far, but moreover that we have to admit that we have no real idea of how this is all going to play itself out over the next few years. On the one hand, the technology is moving so fast.

But perhaps even more important than this is the fact that, if we think of technology as the supply side, there is what is going to happen on the “demand side” -- i.e., our collective ability to put these technologies to work for the broader social objectives that are the concern of The Commons. In is in this last area where, with any luck at all, we can expect to see development and changes at even faster rates. The truth is that for the most part our public institutions and procedures, together with the political process that underlies them, are approaching the issues before them using means that are close to antediluvian. But this is a situation which is, we hope at least, unlikely to prevail in the face of these new capabilities on the one hand, together with the fact that there are a large number of increasingly empowered citizens our there in most of our countries who have a great deal to say and do, whose brains, insights and differences have not in the past been adequately factored into the decision making process. It is our guess that this is now going to occur. It is going to shake our institutions and ideas of governance to the core. And, in all of this, it is our intention that The Commons and the electronic environment will have their part to play.

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