Also available on Charlie's Angel: project.

Social Good: CPSR's National Information
Infrastructure: Serving the Community

The Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility's report Serving the Community: A Public Interest Vision of the National Information Infrastructure (the NII is a vision for a national inter-network network akin to the Internet) is one of the most articulate linkages of social and technological goods in a particular field.  An interesting feature of the CPSR report is that pitfalls as well as goals and opportunities are described.  This approach implies that it is the responsible development of technology, not the technology itself that accrues benefits to society, and provides a good clarification of the possible social benefit and harm the NII project has the potential to produce, something appropriately applicable to the Internet as a measure of its success and a plan for further action.

Some of the important goals CPSR describes for the NII include:

• Guarantee universal access
• Promote widespread economic benefits
• Promote diversity in content markets
• Provide access to government services over the NII, without eliminating services
• Encourage democratic participation in the design and development of the NII

• NII services should not emphasize commerce at the expense of communication

The most important novel ideas presented here are certainly the last four, and they are ideas which we will have to keep in mind when trying to address shortcoming of the Internet from public policy approaches.

Next: ATP.