This is a conversation between Ralph Allison and Faith, a Guardian CIE.
Ralph: Now we are in a different era of jobs. The production era is coming to a close. The industrial era is being replaced by the Information Era, Bill Gates and the Internet being an example. They are not selling a "thing". They are selling a capacity to interchange and share information. Which means you can live anywhere in the world nowadays. And now we are getting the governments interfering in that because they want to set limits Faith: They want to control.
Ralph: Right, you can't have these dirty pictures. F: Correct. Then, as you see, you see how it is.
Ralph: Let me ask this. I am being here the Devil's Advocate. One German prosecutor said he is going to take CompuServe service into the German court if they don't stop sending those dirty messages over CompuServe wires. CompuServe wiped them all out. Now what he is claiming is that he is protecting those poor German children from reading those nasty dirty messages. A lot of people see nothing wrong with that. That is what the government is there for. Protect the children from harm. F: Why?
Ralph: I was talking to Hope about Job creations. I mean Faith. We were trying to figure out how you can follow your Essence to find the right job. So we were discussing how they create jobs. I am trying to understand where we have moved from having all those plants we don't need, with the steel mills and such as those. They are not very productive anymore. F: You were stating about CompuServe and the German.
Ralph: The one German prosecutor who is protecting the children, if you have a child and have a computer and you enter there and pick out these discussion groups that are using dirty sexy words. So therefore the government feels a responsibility to protect them from harm. Also they might have people lurking on those bulletin boards who want to have messages sent to these children to meet them somewhere where they can sexually abuse them. F: All right.
Ralph: These are bad people. So they are in the business of protecting innocent children. To do that they want to wipe out all communications of sexy things that go to children. F: No.
Ralph: This is where we are faced this week. F: No. The avenue is no.
Ralph: How is CompuServe to deal with such people? We have it in the paper here. F: You do not need to protect. The children are going to the part of them to see it.
Ralph: How could you let that happen? How could you have these innocent little children see something that is sexy, that is so vulgar? I understand, they don't see it as vulgar. The adults see it as vulgar. F: Correct. This is the stereotype they make to the child. And the child therefore has become ingrained that it is wrong, so they are going to seek it out. Therefore it is a control issue, a bureaucrat telling people what they can or cannot do. Correct?
Ralph: Let me ask you, in the Internet, are you going to let them pass the censorship proposal or are we going to have the ACLU win their little battle? We have all this need to protect the children.
Charity: And control.
Ralph: You have to exert control if you are going to protect the children. That's a good reason for control, see.
Charity: No, it isn't.
Ralph: That's what they have done. They have spent a lot of effort at it.
Charity: Of course.
Ralph: You wouldn't want these sexy comments coming on your computer that your four year old might read sometime. You understand they are much more concerned about sexy things than about violent things. Which is another paradox.
Charity: ??
Ralph: Why is that? You have got to wipe out sex and violence. Why is sex such a horrible thing? Violence I can see. Sex is creative, violence is destructive.
Charity: That's where you humans have a contradiction of what you state.
Ralph: That's always – doesn't make any sense.
Charity: No.
Ralph: It is the most positive thing that people do, and we are saying, "Oh, we can't talk about that." We can talk about nonsense, though, talk about washing dishes.