Source
Automatically imported from: http://commons.somewhere.com:80/rre/1997/citizens.panel.on.teleco.html
Content
| | | | --- | --- | | Red Rock Eater Digest | Most Recent Article: Sun, 4 Jun 2000 |
citizens panel on telecom
``` ---
This message was forwarded through the Red Rock Eater News Service (RRE). Send any replies to the original author, listed in the From: field below. You are welcome to send the message along to others but please do not use the "redirect" command. For information on RRE, including instructions for (un)subscribing, send an empty message to rre-help@weber.ucsd.edu
---
Date: Thu, 06 Mar 1997 07:27:26 -0500 (EST)
From: Richard Sclove
[...]
---
Loka Alert 4:2 (March 5, 1997)
PLEASE REPOST WIDELY (WHERE APPROPRIATE)
From Dick Sclove, The Loka Institute:
Friends & Colleagues: The Loka Institute invites you to attend an....
HISTORIC, FIRST-TIME U.S. CITIZENS' PANEL Topic: "TELECOMMUNICATIONS & THE FUTURE OF DEMOCRACY"
When: April 2-4, 1997
Where: At Tufts University (near Boston)
What: This event will be the first-ever U.S. emulation of a European-style "consensus conference"--a process for involving everyday citizens in policy deliberations on complex, controversial topics. The topic, "Telecommunica- tions & the Future of Democracy," has profound implications for all aspects of American society. Vital national and state-level policy decisons are pending. But to date the voices of ordinary citizens--including especially those who do not currently use computers or the Internet--have not been heard! On April 2nd-3rd a diverse group of non-expert citizens (residents of the greater Boston area) will cross-examine noted experts and stakeholders on telecommuni- cations policy in an open public forum. The next day (April 4th) the lay panelists will announce their own findings and policy recommendations at a national press conference (also open to the public). Scheduled to attend, among others, is U.S. Congressman Ed Markey, a leading U.S. legislator on telecommunications policy. Citizens' Panels represent one promising antidote to America's democratic malaise. All are welcome to attend this historic event.
SPONSORING OR COOPERATING ORGANIZATIONS for the pilot Citizens' Panel:
o The Loka Institute, Amherst, Mass. o The EPIIC Program (Education for Public Inquiry & International Citizenship) at Tufts University* o The Massachusetts Foundation for the Humanities & Public Policy o MIT's Technology Review magazine o University of Massachusetts Extension* o The Jefferson Center, Minneapolis, MN
Supplementary financial support has been provided by a grant from the U.S. National Science Foundation.
LOGISTICAL DETAILS: The times and locations for the pilot Citizen's Panel on "Telecommunications & the Future of Democracy": PUBLIC HEARINGS:
When: APRIL 2ND from 9 AM TO NOON and from 1 PM TO 3:30 PM (Lay panel listens to diverse experts testify) APRIL 3RD from 9 AM TO NOON (Lay panel freely cross-examines previous day's expert witnesses. This is dramatic!!) Where: In the HILLEL CENTER of TUFTS UNIVERSITY on PACKARD AVENUE, MEDFORD, MASSACHUSETTS (NEAR BOSTON).
LAY PANEL'S CULMINATING NATIONAL PRESS CONFERENCE (open to the public): When: APRIL 4th at 11 AM (Lay panel announces their own findings and policy recommendations. Also dramatic!!)
Where: In the COOLIDGE ROOM OF BALLOU HALL, again on the TUFTS UNIVERSITY MAIN CAMPUS, MEDFORD, MASSACHUSETTS
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION on logistical details or on the organization of this event, contact:
Kerri Sherlock Laura Reed Project Assistant Project Manager Tel. +(617)628-5000 ext. 2045 Tel. +(617)926-3431 Fax +(617)627-3940 Fax +(617)926-6117 E-mail: ksherloc@emerald.tufts.edu E-mail: shulmanreed@msn.com
FOR ADDITIONAL BACKGROUND INFORMATION on Citizen Panels and
on European experience with consensus conferences, see RICHARD
SCLOVE'S article "TOWN MEETINGS ON TECHNOLOGY" in the JULY 1996
issue of TECHNOLOGY REVIEW magazine (vol. 99, no. 5, pp. 24-31).
This article is also available on the World Wide Web at
The Loka Institute Tel. +(413) 582-5860 Fax +(413) 582-5811 E-mail: Loka@amherst.edu World Wide Web: http://www.amherst.edu/~loka
For those unable to attend the pilot Citizen's Panel, a
future Loka Alert will report the outcome (for a free Loka Alert
subscription, see below). This information will also be placed
on the Loka Institute Web page:
---
ADDITIONAL BACKGROUND INFORMATION on the Pilot Citizen's Panel:
---
CONTENTS
Demographic Composition of the 15-Member Lay Panel........................................ (1/3 page) Lay Panelist Quotes: Why They Are Participating....... (1 page) Objectives for this Pilot Citizen's Panel............. (1/2 page) Procedural Steps in Organizing a Citizen's Panel...... (1 page) Issue Discussion: Telecommunications & the Future of Democracy................................... (2-1/2 pages) About the Loka Institute.............................. (1 page)
---
COMPOSITION OF THE 15-MEMBER LAY PANEL for the Citizen's Panel on "Telecommunications & the Future of Democracy":
Gender: 8 Female, 7 Male Ages: 5 between 14-34, 5 between 35-49, 5 who are 50 or older Race: 10 White, 4 African American (with 1 Haitian), 1 Other (Native American, in part) Education: 3 High School, 3 some College, 9 College Graduate Geography: 8 Urban, 7 Suburban Computer: 6 with no prior Internet experience (including 3 who have never used a computer for any purpose), 1 with extensive computer and Internet experience, the rest with some experience
Occupations: Arts Administrator, Automobile Restorer, Corrections Officer (retired), Engineer, Unemployed (homeless/ phoneless), City Year Volunteer from Haiti, Corporate Manager, Teacher/Nurse, Consultant, Writer/Actor, Unemployed, High School Graduate/City Year Volunteer, Computer Manager, Executive Assistant, Engineer (retired).
LAY PANELIST'S REASONS FOR PARTICIPATING:
"I am anxious to participate. I'm at a point where I want to give something back." --Contract manager from a sonar imaging firm
"I became a voter in Roosevelt's time when I believed that my voice counted. I would like my vote to count again." --A woman from Cambridge and a former corrections officer
"I am a founder of the Boston Coalition for Freedom of Expression and I have been following this issue for years." --An unemployed man and former case worker
"I live steeped in antiquity and I won't give houseroom to computers or microwaves. Although the superhighway of technology is foreign to me, I am interested in the ways that technology will affect education." --A woman from Andover who has never used computers
"There is a lot I can learn and a lot that I may have to teach someday." --A young Haitian who is currently working for City Year
"I have been homeless since 1991. I am a representative of the have-nots." --A woman living in a Cambridge shelter
"I am frustrated with this issue because I know pieces but not the whole picture." --A college-educated woman and consultant who would like to open her own photography business
"I like the format and the topic." --A recent high school graduate from Allston who restores automobiles
"I want to have a hand in preserving democracy." --A writer and actress
"I am a passionate advocate for everyday people to have their voices heard." --An arts administrator and community organizer from Roxbury
"I am concerned that the working poor will not be able to afford democracy." --A former MIT Community Fellow who currently manages a computer clubhouse for inner city youth
"If information is the foundation of democracy, then access to information is the cornerstone." --A retired industrial engineer from Acton
OBJECTIVES FOR THIS PILOT CITIZENS' PANEL
For several reasons the results of this pilot Citizen's Panel promise to be of broad interest throughout the U.S. and beyond:
During the past decade many Americans have expressed deepening frustration with the inadequate opportunities in our nation for citizen involvement in public policy decisions. At the same time, with computer and telecommunications technologies changing at lightening pace, many people are anxious about being left in the dust...or resent being forced to watch from the sidelines.
Thus substantively, the goal of the pilot Citizen's Panel is to offer a diverse group of non-experts (in this case, Boston area residents) an opportunity to develop and publicize informed judgments on emerging technologies and policies that promise to profoundly affect American society. A Citizens' Panel on this topic is especially important because new telecommunications systems promise to alter life for everyone in the U.S.-- independent of whether one has ever used a computer or ever wants to--yet to date the vast pool of non-computer users, for example, has had virtually no representation in telecommunications policy deliberations. Moreover, while the Citizen's Panel mechanism has been used now about 20 times in four European nations (Denmark, the Netherlands, the U.K. and Norway), the majority of European implementations have concerned biotechnology, and not one has yet focused on telecommunications. Procedurally, this first-time U.S. emulation of the European "consensus conference" process will provide an initial test of whether such an approach can be adapted to work in a society as socioeconomically diverse as the U.S. (As organizers of a first- time U.S. pilot, we expect to make lots of mistakes; our ambition here is not perfection, but to learn.) But we anticipate that the pilot will help demonstrate that the Citizens Panel process, or others related to it in spirit, could be replicated and incorporated routinely into public policy deliberations--thus helping to redress America's serious democratic malaise.
PROCEDURAL STEPS IN A CITIZEN'S PANEL
The basic process of the pilot Citizens' Panel is:
(1) The organizers select a complex, controversial policy issue (in this case, emerging telecommunications systems and the future of democracy).
(2) The organizers assemble a steering committee comprising a balanced group of knowledgeable specialists, including representatives of organized stakeholder groups.
(3) With guidance from the Jefferson Center in Minneapolis (originators of the related Citizens Jury process), the Project Manager--assisted by a group of students participating in Tufts University's EPIIC Program--recruits a diverse pool of residents of the greater Boston area. They use random phone calling (more than 1000 calls), supplemented by word-of-mouth networking to ensure, for example, that non-phone owners and non-computer users are also represented. Each person contacted who indicates a readiness to participate is asked to complete a questionnaire.
(4) A final lay panel of 15 members is selected with the aim of achieving a balanced group that fairly represents the community of greater Boston.
(5) The lay panel is briefed over the course of two weekends (the first was February 22-23, 1997; the second will be on March 8-9). During these background meetings--which are professionally facilitated to ensure that all members have a fair chance to contribute and that no one or two members dominate--the panel decides what specific subsidiary issues will be addressed at the public forum in April. The panel also helps develop a list of experts and stakeholders that they would like to question during the April forum.
(6) On April 2nd 1997 the lay panel will hear presentations by a diverse group of contending experts and stakeholders during a public forum at Tufts University. After deliberating privately late that afternoon and in the evening, the lay panel will return to the public forum on the morning of April 3rd to freely question and cross-examine the experts who testified on the previous day.
(7) During the afternoon and evening of April 3rd, the lay panel will meet privately to discuss their views and to draft a report summarizing their group's findings.
(8) On April 4th the lay panel will announce its findings at an 11 a.m. press conference attended by policy makers, members of the expert panel, the media, and interested members of the public.
(9) The lay panel's report will be publicized through the media; distributed to members of Congress and the Executive Branch, and to local government officials; and discussed in follow-up local forums. The objective is to increase popular and government awareness of citizen perspectives and concerns on this issue, to stimulate debate, and to contribute to public policy deliberations.
ISSUE DISCUSSION: TELECOMMUNICATIONS & THE FUTURE OF DEMOCRACY
Recent and impending advances in telecommunications services (reflected in the metaphor of an "information superhighway") promise sweeping transformations in economic organization, society, and politics. Important and relatively familiar issues include questions of industrial structure (for example, the recent wave of corporate media megamergers), government regulation (for example, of free speech in cyberspace and personal privacy), the accessibility and affordability of new technologies, and whether or not they will be deployed in ways that support or erode civic functions (such as access to government information and to public policy deliberations). But other issues, arguably at least as vital, have received much less public attention.
For instance, jobs will be created, eliminated, dramatically altered, and shift location. There are already many examples of jobs ranging from industrial manufacture, insurance claims processing, and software design being exported to low-wage nations. Within the U.S. individual workers may find their opportunity to flexibly adjust their own working conditions much enhanced (e.g., via the voluntary option to telecommute from home or from a local telecommuting center) or, alternatively, diminished as a result of computer pacing and monitoring or a nonvoluntary requirement that they telecommute from home. Any of these developments might, in turn, have implications for labor organizing and for workers' political power.
There will be direct and indirect repercussions for community life. For instance, the growth of electronically mediated "virtual communities" may or may not prove a viable substitute for face-to-face social life. But will virtual communities tend to erode or complement traditional forms of social engagement? And will they tend to reinforce or break down current ethnic, racial, class and other social divisions?
Electronic commerce could benefit small communities and businesses that find themselves suddenly able to compete in larger markets. Alternatively, electronic commerce could sap economic and cultural vitality from existing neighborhoods and downtown business centers. And what might the social and environmental consequences be if, for example, new waves of affluent telecommuters resettle themselves from cities and suburbs into the once-remote countryside?
Any such economic and social transformations will, in turn, translate into changes in political structures and social power relations. For instance, small or geographically dispersed groups, or people with physical disabilities, may be able to communicate and coordinate in new, socially empowering ways. But it is also possible that the new technologies will make individuals more dependent on global market forces and on multinational corporations that they cannot appreciably influence. The new technologies could also enhance the relative power of government and corporate bureaucracies, by dint of these organizations' superior capability to amass, analyze and act on the basis of huge agglomerations of data. Moreover, the governance of territorially-based political jurisdictions could be challenged if social relations become increasingly nonterritorial.
Thus, opinion differs widely on whether the coming changes will on balance be socially beneficial or detrimental. There are optimists who predict an impending Utopia of global creativity, prosperity, and harmony. There are pessimists who foresee wrenching economic dislocations and deepening social and political inequality (sometimes described as a society of information "haves" and "have nots"). In between, there are a wide array of intermediate or alternative views.
Opinions even vary on whether the emerging telecommunications systems will indeed fundamentally change societies, or simply extend social trends underway for other reasons, or merely reproduce prevailing social systems. Meanwhile, technological determinists--who come in both optimistic (e.g., Newt Gingrich) and pessimistic (e.g., the Unabomber) variants--tend to view social outcomes as largely predetermined by socially autonomous technological imperatives. But others insist that the specific technologies that are adopted, and their ultimate social consequences, will depend crucially on social choices and policies governing their development, design, and use.
The current climate of uncertainty over the future of telecommunications provides citizens with a remarkable opportunity to formulate and publicize their own judgments. For instance, the U.S. Telecommunications Reform Act of 1996 mandates a series of important Federal Communications Commission and state public utility commission decisions during the next few years that will shape the future of telecommunications--and consequently the economy, society and politics--for many years to come.
---
ABOUT THE LOKA INSTITUTE
The Loka Institute, which is spearheading the U.S.
introduction of the Citizen's Panel process and other innovative
methods for democratizing science and technology, is a nonprofit
organization dedicated to making science and technology
responsive to democratically decided social and environmental
concerns. TO FIND OUT MORE ABOUT THE LOKA INSTITUTE or to help,
visit our Web page
This post represents Loka Alert 4:2, one in an occasional
series of electronic postings on democratic politics of science
and technology issued by the Loka Institute. LOKA ALERTS are
issued free of charge, on average not more than once per month
(which helps protect over-busy people from unwanted clutter). IF
YOU WOULD LIKE TO BE ADDED TO, OR REMOVED FROM, THE LOKA
INSTITUTE'S E-MAIL LIST, please send a message to:
--Dick Sclove, Executive Director The Loka Institute, P.O. Box 355, Amherst, MA 01004, USA E-mail: resclove@amherst.edu World Wide Web http://www.amherst.edu/~loka PLEASE NOTE THE LOKA INSTITUTE'S NEW PHONE & FAX NUMBERS Tel. +(413) 582-5860; Fax +(413) 582-5811
LOKA INSTITUTE INTERNSHIPS:
The Loka Institute has openings for volunteer interns and paid work-study students for the remainder of 1997 (and beyond). We may also be able to take on one or two paid, full-time student interns for the summer of 1997 and beyond. We are a small nonprofit organization, and the activities in which interns are involved vary from research assistance and writing to assisting in organizing conferences, project development and management, fundraising, managing our Internet lists, Web page updates, helping with clerical and other office work, etc. If you are interested in working with us to promote a democratic politics of science and technology, please send a hard copy resume along with a succinct letter explaining your interest to: The Loka Institute, P.O. Box 355, Amherst, MA 01004, USA.
To learn more about the Loka Institute's concerns and vision, see Loka founder Richard Sclove's book, DEMOCRACY AND TECHNOLOGY--recognized in 1996 by the American Political Science Association as "the best book of the year on science, technology and politics". For a paperback copy, contact your local bookseller or Guilford Press (in the U.S. telephone toll free 800-365-7006; or, from anywhere, fax Guilford Press in the U.S. at +(212)-966-6708 or E-mail: info@guilford.com):
"Mr. Sclove is refreshing in the way he rejects ideas so nearly universally held that most people have never thought to question them." -- New York Times Book Review
LOKA COMPUTER NEEDS: Loka's staffing continues to expand, and with it our computer needs. We would be very grateful to anyone who can help us acquire one or more, high-end (new or used) IBM-compatible 486's or better. (We are a recognized by the I.R.S. as a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt nonprofit organization, so any gifts are deductible on U.S. tax returns to the full extent of the law.) Thanks!
--- ```
| | | --- | | ProcessTree Network TM For-pay Internet distributed processing. | | Advertising helps support hosting Red Rock Eater Digest @ The Commons. Advertisers are not associated with the list owner. If you have any comments about the advertising, please direct them to the Webmaster @ The Commons. |