Nate,
I heard an interview with Case and Levin on pbs' The News Hour. I also
remember hearing Case say virtually the same words as you quote to Levin.
> ``This is not just about big business. This is not just about money,''
It seems that they are singing the same song except that case added that
it's about "the consumer". He then went on to characterize the current
state of the internet as "disorderly", a fragmented market, to which they
intended to give "some order". He kept saying, actually manically
repeating over and over, "we need to capture these consumers. " He must
have used the verb "capture" about 10 times. To say the least it was scary.
> One of the goals, Levin said, is to plug the so-called digital divide,
``to
> try and make sure that ultimately those who can't afford it can get it.''
Sure, I believe this--make sure that those who can't afford to get the
internet through independent ISP can get it through the Time-Warner/AOL
slice of the internet, the one with closed, self-referential loops back into
the "consumer" oriented web-pages that form part of their corporate
alliance. That ought to open a lot of market space, eh??
> AOL and Time Warner vowed to open what would be their vast cable system to
> online rivals. In so doing, they moved to take a debate over access to
> high-speed Internet pipelines out of regulators' hands and into the
> marketplace.
This is the really scary part. Since they unify both access and content in
the merger, they can use the old monopolistic strategy and wage a virtual
price war on independent ISP. They've already said that AOL's current 30%
share of the US internet connection market is too limited--
>
> Levin, 61, said ``new age'' companies had a genuine commitment to social
> progress.
>
Yeah right, the dawning of the age of aquariums.
> ``There are companies with people inside who really care'' about using the
> Internet for social progress, he said on NBC. ''And that's what we're
going
> to try to do.''
>
Who knows what they mean by social progess. Everyone able to consume more?
Even were I to grant that their bottom line is other than profit, I wonder
whether they could actually do anything, or are themselves not constrained
by the dynamics of the capitalist system which they have so spectacularly
reproduced.
As to the question of whether Orwell or Huxley had the more correct vision,
it's clearly a hybrid with a lot of Kafka thrown in for measure:
Time-Warner is watching you through the telescreen that you yourself
installed in your house and continue to pay them for!!! Talk about low
overhead marketing.
Paul
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Tue Feb 01 2000 - 01:01:56 PST