CNET
Dec. 3, 1996

Denise Caruso, columnist for the New York Times, has been around the electronic block. A longtime
technology industry analyst, fighter for First Amendment rights in cyberspace, and observer of the digital technology and interactive media industries, Caruso is an executive producer of Spotlight, an executive conference for the interactive media industry, and a contributing editor for The Site, which appears nightly on MSNBC.

In 1994, she launched Technology & Media Group, an information services company, for Norman Pearlstine’s Friday Holdings. Before that, Caruso was founding editor of Digital Media, a seminal newsletter in the emerging new media industry, and a columnist for the Sunday technology section of the San Francisco Examiner. Caruso has also served on the board of directors of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and was elected to the board of the Institute for Alternative Journalism in January 1995.

[Q:] What gets your dander up about the technology industry today?

[A:] I’m Italian, and my dander goes up too easily. When I saw Wired’s new [TV] show, The Netizen, there were all these rich white guys talking about “global consciousness.” But they’re so elitist and so arrogant and so imperialist in their views of technology. It’s amazing to me how important it is for us to cram “technology” down other people’s throats. The rich white guys are focused on making as much money as they can on technology. And they pay all this lip service in talking about helping customers or solving social problems.

But basically it’s all this [George] Gilder-nomic trickle-down bullshit. You’re supposed to feel good about giving an old 286 to a high school, and that’s the end of it. That kind of lip service just magnifies our incredible selfishness as a culture. It’s absolutely logical, considering that a free-market capitalist society is all about individuals, and you’re forced to believe that if it’s good for the free market, it’s good for the culture. That’s why Bill Gates can get away with what he does.

[Q:] But people seem to be fascinated with technology as a subject anyway.

[A:] Yes, because we’re running out of industries, and there’s
not much else going on. And we’ve become so consumeristic as a
society that we’re willing to believe anything a high-tech
company’s marketing person tells us. What really shocks me is
the lack of critical thinking, like the way we swallowed the
whole talk about interactive TV. It’s an absolute impossibility
to do what all the big cable and phone companies were trying to
sell us on back then. But they didn’t care. It made for a
killer sound bite, and even though the TCI-Atlantic deal, for
example, didn’t make it out of the gate, their investment
advisors sucked up plenty of money anyhow. There are an
enormous number of carpetbaggers in this business.

[Q:] Does the democratizing force of the Internet give you any
reason to hope that things might change for the better?

[A:] I think the Internet has the potential to be an incredibly
unifying force, but democracy and capitalism are not willing
cohabitants in this world. We don’t have enough information to
vote on technology. And I don’t see waning government interest
in wiretapping and citizen surveillance. But I do believe that
it’s hard to make people less free once they’ve been free.
There are enough smart people in the world who know how to hack
systems, so the balance will be struck.

[Q:] Do you see anything else to be hopeful about?

[A:] The short answer is no. I don’t see a concerted effort on
a broad scale to make sure that more poor people are given
access to technology. All I know is that [for] every action,
there’s an equal and opposite reaction. I hope that this focus
on selfishness will be balanced by a new generation of kids who
ask, “What about everybody else?”

by Bronwyn Fryer

Copyright 1996 CNET Inc. All rights reserved

[best thing about the internet]
That normal, goofy people can say what they want to say, and the entire world can read it, and nobody can stop them…yet.

[biggest technology fear]
That it can be used for surveillance of citizens and that we don’t know enough about the long-term effects of sitting at a computer all day every day.

[Current computer]
Macintosh Performa 6115 PowerPC with ISDN.

[worst job]
Motel maid.

[Favorite quote]
“Some mornings, it’s just not worth chewing through the leather straps.” –Emo Phillips