(Excerpted from In These Times 1986)
By Connie Blitt & Dennis Bernstein
Ecology activists in Salinas were in a bind. They had lobbied the Monterey Board of Supervisors to ban the release of genetically engineered iceminus into the atmosphere. If it were used on strawberry fields it would protect the crops from the frost, but it might also prevent frost from forming on wild plants.
Members of the European Parliament had drafted a statement opposing the potentially rissky experiment. But it appeared the Europeans' statement would not reach Salinas in time.
German Green Party member Bennie Harlen, who had been in the U.S. investigating possibilities for an international computer network, remembered NewsBase a San Francisco based electronic bulletin board. The Europeans uploaded their statement with their computer over the telephone lines. The ecologist in Salinas "captured" the document and printed it out moments before the crucial hearings were to commence.
The chairman of the Monterey supervisors later told Business Week that an important item in their decision to ban the release of ice-minus in their country had been the international opposition, including a statement by 33 European Parlementarians.
Richard Gaikowski, NewsBase's founder and dedicated SYSOP (system operator) is pleased that his own 'electronic soapbox' was able to provide that vital link. "Communication by computer is an excellent way for those who have special information to share it with a wider audience," Gaikowski told In These Times during an electronic interview over NewsBase. "Local alternative newspapers could have a ready source of articles."
In his converted storefront apartment in San Francisco's Mission district, the SYSOP will pull out his collection of yellowing clippings tracing the escapades of his early journalistic career. As a reported for the Albany Knickerbocker News, Gaikowski went to great lengths to get himself arrested so he could write about jail conditions from the inside.
Although he could have become a mainstream newspaper editor, Gaikowski went in another direction. He moved to Haight-Ashbury in 1969 where he edited a weekly underground newspaper, the San Francisco Good Times, and experimented with film and video, always creating networks for distributing other people’s work while producing his own.
In 1982 Gaikowski acquired a computer in order to keep track of his film and video distribution company. He soon learned that computer "hackers" were avidly exchanging information by connecting their computers through the telephone lines to a central computer, which served as an electronic bulletin board. "I wanted to see if the technology could be used in a more vital way" Gaikowski says. Since then, thousands of noncommercial computer bulletin boards have sprung up all over the country, among them NewsBase. But few have its mix of information.
Available on NewsBase are first-hand reports from leftist journalists and activists who have just returned from Guatemala, Nicaragua, Cuba and the Middle East. Notices of housing demonstrations and U.S. Green Party meetings are posted, and free-form discussions rage on, with messages back and forth on censorship and pornography, Lydon LaRouche or baseball. Even poetry thrives on NewsBase.
"A reader can accept or reject a newspaper, but at most the biggest input she can have is writing a letter to the editor." comments Gaikowski. "Bulletin boards demand interaction."
And readers do "interact." For instance, "Robot Wars," in which Ann Garrison descibed a new breed of tanks with artificial intelligence sparked a debate following the article on why advanced technology is so often put to military use.
Electronic Nazis
Perhaps one indication of the success of NewsBase is the attention it has attracted on the radical right, including electronic white supremacists who discovered NewsBase this spring.
Gaikowski knew something was up when the following message was left on new of NewsBase's public message boards by someone who signed on as "Dick Guycowski": "The people of earth must wonder about the feasibility of nuclear energy." read the electronic message. "This is the legacy we have for our children. But maybe this is the only way we have to cleanse this earth of all the scum, the faggots, commie, pinko liberals who pollute our culture with their slimy creppie ideology" [sic]. The electronic onslaught grew gradually personal, with attacks on individual NewsBase contributors.
The warnings escalated to physical threats with the following message from "Yo Mama" to another NewsBase regular Steve Soderby. "I have found out where you live. My police friendswere able to track you down. Be careful what you do and where you go."
NewsBase's founder then became the butt of the atack. :Real Americans are taking back this country from you fa**ot, pu**y-whipped ni**er-loving qu**rs." declared "Whiteman." "This bulletin board has got to go and WE WILL CLOSE IT DOWN. The bill of rights will not protect you."
Gaikowski finally decided to limit his "open door policy" whereby anyone who... continued on page 23.
Page 23 not available.
- 0 ratings
Leave a comment