The Protections Unique to Print
They can't pull the plug on ink on paper
John N. Berry III, Editor-in-Chief -- Library Journal, 3/1/2003
Leaflets were the medium of choice when we went to the streets to protest the Vietnam War. Telephone and e-mail are faster, easier to distribute, and have that wonderful interactivity with the recipient that extends the argument. Ink on paper still offers unique protections for communicators who want privacy and want their messages to get from author to reader without alteration.
As we move more deeply into the electronic age, we can see clearly the distinct advantages of the printed page for free expression, privacy, preservation, and the prevention of manipulation. Modern governments have discovered ways to use the properties of the newer information technologies to spy on us, to tamper with the record, and to shut down communication entirely. They may force us to return to print to enjoy its protections.
Consider the problems of electronic and digital communication. If a government, corporation, or enemy wants to suppress communication, all it has to do is pull the plug. The "system" goes down unintentionally often enough. When governments and virus hackers or spooks and spin doctors put their minds to it, they can wreak havoc.
The existing government shut down the phones and other media when Solidarity protested in Poland. The movement had to revert to that wonderfully simple technology, the mimeograph. After all, you can drop leaflets or hand them out on the streets of Baghdad or New York, but cathode ray tubes are heavy and tend to shatter when handled too much.
Someone erased material from the office tapes of Richard Nixon. Someone tapped Saddam's phone. Federal web sites have been "revised," with information removed for various reasons, all in the name of "national security." Now a group of information vendors wants the National Weather Service to stop providing free weather forecasts so they can sell them.
The current Bush administration is one of the most secretive and, flipping that coin, one of the most intrusive in our history. Its power to spy on Americans has been heavily augmented by a Congress afraid of both terrorism and war. Consider that egregious attack on the Constitution in the USA PATRIOT Act. It amends many federal statutes, excessively expanding the power of the Federal Bureau of Investigation to snoop on Americans, even in their bookstores and libraries.
Under the act, the FBI can force libraries to produce records of patron Internet use, book borrowing, and registration. When a library is served with a warrant to do this, the law makes it illegal for the librarians to warn users of or publicize that FBI monitoring.
Under the Defense Department's proposed Total Information Awareness program, even deeper surveillance of our telephone, digital, and electronic communications may be allowed—though Congress has so far put the brakes on it.
In this atmosphere of spy and spin it would be dangerous for us to abandon ink on paper as an information medium. Protecting and preserving the content of the message, and insuring that it can be delivered in private, is as important, maybe more so, than developing new media to transmit that message.
Of course we will continue to find ways to use digital appliances to improve our communications, register our history, and gain access to all the information. Before we come to depend solely on those marvelous devices, we must find ways to ensure that they give us all the personal security and freedom we had when we could depend on the protections unique to print.
