Richard Barbrook on Thu, 12 Jun 1997 04:00:03 +0200 (MET DST) |
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Re: <nettime> Re: The Piran Nettime Manifesto |
Hiya, >the Labour party's rumoured scheme to manipulate the >unemployment figures by organising large groups of people >(in association with British Telecom) to dig holes in the >roads and lay fibre all over Britain over the next few >years. > I wish that the Labour Party did have a definate scheme to build a fibre-optic network over here! As a party member, I would certainly do everything that I could to encourage them to launch such a project. We need a fibre-optic grid both to provide employment for those living on inadequate benefits and to create an infrastructure for anyone wanting broadband communications. Unfortunately the unthinking anti-statism on both right and left makes such long-term public infrastructure schemes seem very unfashionable nowadays. How boring to talk about sweaty manual labour by road-diggers when you can fantasise about ludic "non-work" instead! However the development of the hi-tech gift economy still needs a functioning broadband network if everyone is allowed to join the game.... Later, Richard ------------------------------------------------------------------- Dr. Richard Barbrook Hypermedia Research Centre School of Design & Media University of Westminster Watford Road Northwick Park HARROW HA1 3TP http://www.hrc.wmin.ac.uk/ +44 (0)171-911-5000 x 4590 ------------------------------------------------------------------- "...the History of the World is nothing but the development of the Idea of Freedom." - Georg Hegel ------------------------------------------------------------------- --- # distributed via nettime-l : no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a closed moderated mailinglist for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: majordomo@icf.de and "info nettime" in the msg body # URL: http://www.desk.nl/~nettime/ contact: nettime-owner@icf.de