For Better Or For Worse, The Force Is With Us

Brian Lamb, straight-man host and president of C-SPAN, was interviewing a couple of pumped up computer experts on his cable TV network Monday morning, taking e-mail and phone-in questions as well.

They talked about PCs vs. Macs, government documents on the Internet, speedy modems. Is there a memory chip shortage? How good is Windows 95, anyway? The experts were excited; the viewers were excited. Even Brian Lamb was excited!

But, abruptly, C-SPAN switched live to Battery Park in New York to catch California Gov. Pete Wilson announcing he would run for president, and I realized I was feeling a terrible letdown. But why? After all, it was a fairly weighty moment. I’m one who believes Pete Wilson could be sitting in the White House 17 months from now.

Then, an epiphany: In a flash, I realized that I found electrons more fascinating than elections - and that, probably, most other Americans did, too. That’s why the hoopla last week over Windows 95 was fully justified, despite the recent tut-tutting of all those serious journalists.

Dataquest, Inc., a market research firm, predicts Microsoft will sell 30 million copies of its new operating software by next year. Figures like these aren’t the product of hype alone, but of something profound happening in America.

With August winding down, this is a good time to stretch out on the chaise lounge and muse about how far such an electronic revolution could go. One result is that political institutions (all institutions) could become far less important. By bringing information directly into our homes any time we want it, for example, computers could displace schools, offices, newspapers, scheduled television and banks (though probably not dry cleaners).

Government’s regulatory functions could weaken or vanish. It’s already a cinch on the Internet to get around the rules; censorship, telecommunications restrictions and patent laws are easily evaded. Even collecting taxes could become nearly impossible when all funds are transferred by electronic impulses that can be disguised.

Karl Marx may be proven right, but for the wrong reason. The state could wither away as technology makes it irrelevant and deprives it of the money it needs to operate - and perhaps even the loyalty it needs to remain a nation.

The driving force behind such changes - and the reason they aren’t fantasy is something called Moore’s Law, which Stewart Brand, the aging seer who created “The Whole Earth Catalog,” terms “the main event in civilization.”

In 1965, Gordon Moore noted that the number of components that engineers could squeeze onto a microchip had doubled every year since 1959, and he predicted that the pace would continue through 1975. In fact, said Brand in a recent interview, the law has kept operating. Computers keep getting faster, cheaper and smaller.

“If the Boeing 747 obeyed Moore’s Law, it would travel a million miles an hour, it would be shrunken down in size, and a trip to New York would cost about $5,” says Nathan Myrhvold, director of Microsoft’s Advanced Technology Group.

Myrhvold believes that Moore’s Law will persist for another 20 years at least. If so, he says, “Twenty years from now, a computer will do in 30 seconds what one of today’s computers takes a year to do.” What will that mean? Myrhvold says we could develop a living computer model of the economy - a great one, not like today’s clunky Model Ts - that can help businesses and governments plan (though, on second thought, in a brave new Cyberworld there may not be any governments and certainly no planning).

Moore’s Law will also mean that people can go straight to the source for what they want: bypass doctors to get medical information, bypass politicians to find out what’s really in their bills, bypass advertising claims to discover the test results on that new car.

But let’s not go overboard. We will always need authorities and arbiters to pass judgments and give opinions: to decide whether your symptoms mesh with the disease, to explain the bill in plain English, to interpret the test results. Those arbiters may be freelancers, but they’re likely to be connected to a brand-name institution - a medical school, a TV network, even a government.

To see where this revolution is headed, buy a copy of Wired, the jazzy monthly high-tech magazine where the interview with Myrhvold appeared. The September issue of Wired barely mentions Windows 95; Wired readers are well beyond that sort of thing. Instead, they’re bombarded by dozens of short pieces on what’s here and coming: universal free wireless local phone calls, a satellite dish that brings you music with near-CD quality sound and an avalanche of software and Web sites.

But more important, Wired represents a new culture and politics that seem inevitable when you turn people loose on the Internet. As Jay Kinney writes in the current issue: “Libertarianism - with its zealous advocacy of laissez-faire capitalism, deregulation, and privatization - is a ready-made “killer app’ for high-tech start-ups, would-be millionaires and the rest of the ‘don’t tread on me’ cybercrew.”

That may sound like kid stuff, but, be warned: Thanks to Moore’s Law, it may be coming soon to a ballot box near you.

xxxx