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Understanding Micropolis and Compunity 59

tion highway” thus has another parallel, to Fordism, particularly as
it engages Fordist notions of efficiency, supplanting a mechanical
system with an electronic one.
But to control information to the extent that we can manage not
only its movement from our own selves into the public realm but its
subsequent metamorphosis in and during public discourse is nearly
impossible, and denies that we are public beings, denies our essen-
tial humanity. We can no more control information, once external-
ized, than we can control the propagation of waves from a raindrop
that has fallen into a pool of water. Of particular concern, then, is
that continuing emphases on privacy concerns, by engaging us in a
frenzy of largely unproductive activity to ensure that we control our
inner and outer worlds, do, to some extent, more than symbolically
privatize us more than we may want or need.

Property

Relatedly, once information about us is made external to us, and
subsequently made digital and available electronically, its dissemi-
nation is relatively not complex. Copying files on disks or sending
them over networks is electronically and mechanically much, much
easier than photocopying a book, for instance.
But more interesting than simply the ease with which we can
accomplish copying is that ultimately, given that information in the
digital domain is essentially string upon string of ones and zeros, we
are beginning to redefine the term, and perhaps very nature of,
“property.” Who owns a numeral or a “bit”? We have some evidence
of the nature of that question from experience with software and
compact audio discs. When we can not only copy but clone things,
how will we identify “originals”? And, more importantly in industrial
(and again, Fordist) terms, how will we restrict production and ac-
quisition to effectively control the marketplace? Copyright law from
its very beginnings relied on adjudication, not enforcement, by the
government. For enforcement it relied on technology. In the past
copying a book was labor-intensive, and the process itself mitigated
against copyright infringement. It was simply easier to buy a book
than to copy it. The photocopying machine changed that equation of
time and money, just as the cassette deck changed the relation be-
tween consumption and copying for music, the VCR changed it for
films and TV shows, and the computer changed it for software.
The most often asked question in this regard is: What will au-
thors and publishers do to ensure income from their work if it’s
available on an electronic network? The issue is not in the first