By JON KATZ
In 1995 paranoia about the information revolution transcended cultural debate to become a national trauma. Books like Kirkpatrick Sale's "Rebels Against the Future: The Luddites and Their War on the Industrial Revolution" and Clifford Stoll's "Silicon Snake Oil" all warned that computer technology was risk-laden, dehumanizing, or economically destructive. Movies like "Disclosure," "The Net" and "Virtuosity" suggested that new technology is invasive, a threat to democracy and freedom, or just plain murderous. Politicians like Bob Dole portrayed a screen-driven culture as undermining the entire value system of America -- quick to blame the recent torching of a New York subway toll booth clerk on the movie "Money Train" but silent about the M-1 rifle the robbers left behind. Dole, an unyielding opponent of gun control, called on those in Hollywood who "engage in a pornography of violence" to do "some serious soul-searching."
Meanwhile, Senator Jim Exon (who sports one of the worst wigs in public life) sponsored a bill to regulate "lewd, lascivious, filthy, or indecent" imagery in cyberspace. And former Secretary of Education William Bennett (the best-selling author of a trilogy of books on morals and virtues) became the spiritual leader of this media reform crusade, expanding his attacks on gangsta rap to include the "immoral" content of television talk shows.
In July Time published its now infamous "Cyberporn" cover story, based on a highly suspect study conducted by a Carnegie Mellon undergraduate. In September, the FBI raided alleged child pornographers across the country in an America Online sting. Newspapers and magazines warned of bomb-makers, militias and pornographers loose on the Net, stalking America's gullible, helpless, and presumably ignorant children. So did local newscasts, which regularly ran series on "cyber-crime."
"What's lurking online?" warned the promo for one such "special report" on a local New York TV station this spring. "You'll be shocked." What was lurking online? Dirty pictures, of course.
The Great Popular Culture Hysteria of 1995 is expected to result in at least one new law aimed at the Net -- most likely a reintroduced Exon bill. This digital crackdown will be cheered not only on the Christian Right but throughout suburbia. Wherever parents get together -- at PTA meetings, on the sidelines of soccer matches, at dinner parties -- there is clucking over violent cartoons, provocative rap and rock lyrics, graphic videos, and digital dangers. "She doesn't read anymore." "He ought to be doing his homework first." "I won't let them watch all that junk." "They just turn into zombies." "My phone bill is going through the roof." "How do you know what they're doing up there? They could be talking to anybody."
Living rooms and kids' bedrooms have become cultural battlegrounds. Turn off the TV. Get off the computer. We're going to block MTV, drop AOL, cancel the cable. The President of the United States advocated installation of a "V" chip in televisions to enable parents to block all but the televised images they approve of -- and Congress, which agreed with him on almost nothing, rushed to make it law.
Next page: Pornography: the unstoppable force
