Results of an environmental scan

January 2000-March 29, 2002

For

Complied by

Jim Dator, David Brier, Avigal Lemberger, Mark Nickum

With assistance from

Robin Brandt and Kaipo Lum

Table of Contents

Introduction and Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

1. 9/11: From "Land of the Free" to a "Gated Community"? .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

1.1 Surveillance .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .8

1.2 Government is good .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ..14

1.3 Other Consequences .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . .15

2. After 9/11 — Some Alternative Futures .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

3. Faith .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22

4. Judiciary and Law .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .25

4.1 Do it yourself .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . 25

4.2 Cybercourt .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .29

4.3 Jurisprudence of Artilects .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33

4.4 Crime, Its Causes and Cures .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33

4.5 Causes of Violence .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37

5. Science and Technology .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .40

5.1Breakthroughs .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40

5.2Internet Society .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41

5.2.1 Internet Futures .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41

5.2.2 Internet Sex .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44

5.2.3 Internet Commerce .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45

5.2.4 Internet Crime .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .47

5.2.5 Internet Learning.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48

5.2.6 Internet Health Care .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .51

5.2.7 E-Books .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .52

5.2.8 Telecommuting .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52

5.2.9 E-Government.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .53

5.2.10 China and the Internet .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . 57

' 5.2.11Beyond Reading and Writing .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . 57

5.3 Robots and Artificial Intelligence .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . .59

5.4 Physics and Electronics .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65

5.5 Teleportation .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66

5.6 Space .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . 68

5.7 Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . 70

5.7.1 Beyond the Genome .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .71

5.7.2 Business opportunities .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . .72

5.7.3 Threats and dangers .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75

5.7.4 Genetic Testing .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79

5.7.5 Biology Primer.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .80

5.8 Nanotechnology .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .81

5.9 Other Developments .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .82

6. The Economy .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84

6.1 Gratis Economy .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . 84

6.2 Growing Rich/Poor Gap .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85

6.3 Consumer Debt .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . .90

6.4 Work and Not Work .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .94

7. Globalization .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99

8. The Environment .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . .101

8.1 Global Warming and Climate Change .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . .101

8.2 Responding to Climate Change .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104

8.3 Population .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . 107

8.4 Water .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . 112

8.5 Energy .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . 113

8.6 Inventing and Managing Artificial Worlds .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . .117

9. Futures of Human Evolution .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . .122

10. Futures Studies: Practices, Theories, Methods and Institutions .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .123

10.1 Foresight and Prediction .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .123

10.2 Age-Cohort Analysis .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .126

Some Thoughtful Words to End On .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ..128

INTRODUCTION AND SUMMARY

In the years since we first began doing environmental scans for the Virginia Judiciary, we have seen many things that were viewed as quite marginal when we identified them zoom into immediate relevance and then burst forth as major challenges and opportunities for the courts. We hope that the advance information we have provided in our past scans has proven useful to the Virginia Judiciary so that it has been able to anticipate these aspects of the futures appropriately and manage them effectively.

Among the items we identified in early warnings that have by now become pressing realities with multiple implications for the futures are:

Problems caused by gene testing

Problems with genetically-modified food

Controversies over cloning

Controversies over stem-cell research

Although this is still in its early stages, nanotechnology has moved quickly from being decidedly on the fringe to becoming a major target for public and private research funding. Indeed, nanotechnology was dubbed "The Breakthrough of the Year" by Science magazine in 2000, indicating it has moved well up the emerging issues curve towards becoming a powerful problem/opportunity.

The Internet has moved from being a play toy of a few to a vital, growing, and all-encompassing environment for all aspects of life, with even more impact over the near future. Of special importance in this present scan is the movement of the Internet away from a dependence on surface lines (telephone or cable) to various forms of wireless interconnection. A mobile, global net using hand-held (or smaller) devices is replacing the fixed web with large, expensive equipment, enabling "E-everything" to emerge where land-based telephones may not even--or ever--exist.

seem fully on track of achieving what might have seemed to be exuberantly optimistic claims in previous scans. Every day brings new stories of artificially-intelligent robots doing things and making judgements in areas once thought to be the sole purview of humans. Concern for the "rights of robots" is rapidly becoming a matter of fact and not speculation.

largely as a consequence of all of the items listed above, continues unabated, and indeed accelerated. A slight ray of hope is found in the recent emergence of "Sustainability Science". Unlike traditional science which pretends passively and objectively to study a vast, given, and orderly "nature", proponents of Sustainability Science understand that even if such a "nature" did at one time exist, there no longer is such a subject "out there" patiently awaiting our understanding. Science now must study and manage a world very much under human influence, and do so for the survivability of human and other life on the planet--and not out of idle curiosity or intellectual novelty.

is the hope that global population growth may be slowing down so that the worst-case scenarios for the 21st Century may be avoided. Nonetheless overall population of the globe by the end of this century will still tax the carrying capacity of Earth on the one hand and the organizational abilities of humanity, on the other. And global population may still exceed current optimistic projections--policies are being formulated in some depopulating parts of the world to encourage women to have more children. In part, this results from the growing recognition (especially in Europe and Japan, and to some extent in North America and eventually throughout East Asia) that the problems of substantial population decline are almost as challenging as rapid population growth, since much past "economic development" has been in large measure a by-product of population increase. Maintaining economic growth--if that remains the goal--while population declines will be a new challenge for more and more communities worldwide.

Unlike our most recent scan, the current views we encountered vary only concerning how bad it might get, not how good it might become. The euphoria over the "New Economy" that had forever banished the business cycle so that we could look forward to twenty or more years of expanding prosperity is totally absent in our current scans. While many aspects of the New Economy have been incorporated into the modified Old Economy--E-commerce being the most obvious part--serious problems remain, highlighted not only by the collapse of the "dot.com" stockmarket boom, but also by the profound doubts about the fundamental fairness of the economic system caused by the Enron/Arthur Andersen collapse and other scandals.

between north and south continues to widen with powerfully damaging consequences. Indeed, one of the most important lessons that could have been learned from previous scans is that the gap between the superrich nations of the north, especially the US, and the superpoor nations of the South will sooner or later very directly impact all of us comfortably living with the wealth of the north. That certainly must be one of the most important of the many lessons from 9/11: rich America cannot hide from the negative effects of globalization and only reap the advantages.

itself is now in doubt, if not as an irresistible trend, at least as an obvious good. We identified major pockets of opposition to globalization in the US (as well as elsewhere) in previous scans. It now seems possible that policies favoring globalization of the neoliberal variety will be reversed during the current presidential administration. Both the anti-foreign fears of many Americans on the one hand and the anti-free trade actions of the present US administration on the other suggest that US insistence on and leadership of globalization will be diminished, even if the overall globalization pressures (non-economic as well as economic) continue.

Probably the biggest developments of direct impact on the judiciary involve discussions about "the jurisprudence of artilects" and the creation of functioning (instead of merely hypothetical) cybercourts, along with the rapid automation and online availability of many legal and judicial services. More and better opportunities for do-it-yourself justice--and the increased use of non-adversarial, informal, and mutually-agreeable (rather than officially-required) dispute resolution processes--abound. But at the same time, the immediate and perhaps long-ranged consequence of legal and psychological changes in the aftermath of 9/11 suggest that the great period of American personal freedom and self-confidence is over. An era of indefinite length and depth--featuring love of governmental control and support for very sophisticated and omnipresent governmental surveillance over almost aspects of life--has emerged. This was absolutely not anticipated in its current form in any previous scan, and reminds us again of the severe limits to social anticipation.

• Americans are extremely fearful of their future, expecting escalating violence.

• They thus are quite willing--if not eager--to give up rights once considered to be "sacred" in exchange for security. Major changes in civil rights and procedures have already been made, and accepted, while others are planned.

• Whereas government was hated and considered the enemy by increasing numbers of Americans before 9/11, with more and more services removed from governmental operations and turned over to the private sector, now many Americans seem to believe that governments may do things better and more reliably, if not always more cheaply, than the private sector.

• Activities requiring Americans to travel or to receive physical things from strangers (eg, mail) have suffered while online services (email, eshopping, even egovernment) seem to have increased.

• Younger Americans who have lived relatively prosperous and carefree lives now are confused and fearful about their future. As described in a later scanning cluster on "age-cohort analysis," the profile of the comparatively more numerous "Millennial Generation" just beginning to emerge from high school suggests a rising generation of Americans quite willing to accept authoritarian control in exchange for security and prosperity.

• Honolulu Advertiser, February 29, 2002, p. a3.

Prior to Sept. 11, counterterrorism programs did not lead Attorney General John Ashcroft's list of priorities.

Molded by wartime politics and passed a week and a half ago in furious haste, the new anti-terrorism bill lays the foundation for a domestic intelligence-gathering system of unprecedented scale and technological prowess, according to both supporters and critics of the legislation. Overshadowed by the public focus on new Internet surveillance and "roving wiretaps" were numerous obscure features in the bill that will enable the Bush administration to make fundamental changes at the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Central Intelligence Agency and several Treasury Department law enforcement agencies.

Known as the U.S.A. Patriot Act, the law empowers the government to shift the primary mission of the FBI from solving crimes to gathering domestic intelligence. In addition, the Treasury Department has been charged with building a financial intelligence-gathering system whose data can be accessed by the CIA. Most significantly, the CIA will have the authority for the first time to influence FBI surveillance operations inside the United States and to obtain evidence gathered by federal grand juries and criminal wiretaps.

"We are going to have to get used to a new way of thinking," Assistant Attorney General Michael Chertoff, who is overseeing the investigation of the Sept. 11 attacks, said in an interview. "What we are going to have is a Federal Bureau of Investigation that combines intelligence with effective law enforcement."

The new law reflects how profoundly the attacks changed the nation's thinking about the balance between domestic security and civil liberties. The bill effectively tears down legal fire walls erected 25 years ago during the Watergate era, when the nation was stunned by disclosures about presidential abuses of domestic intelligence-gathering against political activists. The overwhelming support in Congress shows that the nation's political leadership was persuaded that intelligence-gathering can no longer be restricted by the reforms that emerged out of a landmark 1975 Senate investigation. After wading through voluminous evidence of intelligence abuses, a committee led by Sen. Frank Church warned that domestic intelligence-gathering was a "new form of governmental power" that was unconstrained by law, often abused by presidents and always inclined to grow.

• Jim McGee. The Washington Post Sunday, November 4, 2001

U.S. authorities are monitoring a growing number of contacts between American extremists and foreign terrorist groups to make sure the two don't begin collaborating on attacks, government officials say. The officials caution there is no evidence to date that American extremists have been collaborating on any specific operations with European, Mideast or Asian terrorists. But they said they have evidence that neo-Nazis, white supremacists and Black Muslim factions have reached out to foreign terrorists whose similar hatred for Israel and the U.S. government might make them natural allies. "On the international terrorism front, we see people here and overseas communicating mainly via the Internet and talking back and forth and communicating that way,'' Dale Watson, the FBI's assistant director for counterterrorism, said recently. Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge is aware there are contacts between American extremists and foreigners and backs the FBI's stepped up efforts, a spokesman said Wednesday.

In the aftermath of Sept. 11, some American white supremacists have written pieces aimed at Middle Eastern or Muslim audiences that blame the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon on U.S. politicians and Israel. "The real reason we have suffered the terrorism of the WTC attack is shockingly simple,'' former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke wrote in one such piece. "Too many American politicians have treasonously betrayed the American people by blindly supporting the leading terrorist nation on earth: Israel.'' Duke's articles on his Web site are now translated into Arabic and have appeared in Mideast and Muslim publications since Sept. 11.

One of the groups being watched in the United States is al-Fuqra, a splinter sect of black Muslims that authorities have linked to several crimes over the past decade from Colorado to New York.

• John Solomon.The Associated Press. February 28, 2002

Refers specifically to the Earth Liberation Front and the Animal Liberation Front, but may well be used to label any environmental activists.

• Honolulu Advertiser. Feb 13. 2002, p. A8

Since 11 September last year, up to 2,000 people in the United States have been detained without trial, or charge, or even legal rights. The fate of most is unknown. Andrew Gumbel investigates a scandal that shames the land of the free

The federal government has made a concerted and wide-ranging effort to limit access to sensitive government information that could be used by terrorists. Currently, about 30 pieces of legislation are waiting for debate in Congress over a narrowing of the rights guaranteed under the Freedom of Information Act. Because electronic records are so readily available and easy to disseminate, the government has taken special efforts to remove sensitive information from electronic sources. Some organizations are cooperating fully, such as the Federation of American Scientists, which used to make satellite photos of nuclear sites available online. Even consumer search engine site Google has agreed to erase records of certain federal sites that showed sensitive material. Public disclosure groups and some libraries, however, are voicing concern about the growing trend to limit available information. Although George Mason University librarian Joy Suh immediately complied with a government request to destroy a CD-ROM on the U.S.'s water supply, for example, she is concerned about limiting the public's access to data.

• Ariana Eunjung Cha. Washington Post, 24 February 2002.

The Pataki administration has quietly ordered state agencies to restrict information available on the Internet, including bridge plans and power-plant maps.

Michael Goldberg expected to hear from the FBI because he knew the agency wanted "The List." So the phone call from federal investigators to the American Society of Microbiology in Washington, DC, requesting the names and addresses of 43,000 members came as no surprise. Goldberg, the society's executive director, received a letter citing the names of two agents who would come to the ASM office. The letter says it "reaffirms ... that all membership information disclosed by ASM will be used for official purposes and is not subject to [public] disclosure." The organization happily complied with the FBI. But the official scrutiny fuels a growing uneasiness among some US life scientists. Once touted as the leaders of the country's next economic miracle--a burgeoning biotechnology sector--they increasingly feel themselves the targets of paranoia and misunderstanding.

Proposed restrictions will limit work by foreigners currently subcontracted by the U.S. Department of Defense. Officials said the restrictions are needed to get a handle on the proliferation of foreign nationals who work on government computer systems, but the plan has raised concerns that the government is being xenophobic and shortsighted. Experts said barring foreign nationals from certain computer projects opens the prospect that key jobs will go unfilled because of a shortage of qualified citizens--a situation exacerbated by the relatively small number of U.S. students who pursue advanced technology degrees. Costs may also rise sharply as higher-paid U.S. citizens replace foreign workers." And small contractors may be forced to withdraw from some bidding.

• Leonard Pitts, Jr. Honolulu Advertiser. February 29, 2002, P. A8.

Make way for the wartime opportunists. Corporate interests and their proxies are looking to exploit the September 11 tragedy to advance a self-serving agenda that has nothing to do with national security and everything to do with corporate profits and dangerous ideologies.

Fast track and the Free Trade Area of the Americas. A corporate tax cut. Oil drilling in Alaska. Star Wars. These are some of the preposterous "solutions" and responses to the terror attack offered by corporate mouthpieces. No one has been more shameless in linking their agenda to the terror attack than U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick. Writing in the Washington Post last week, Zoellick proclaimed that granting fast-track trade negotiating authority to the president -- to assist with the ramming through Congress of a Free Trade Area of the Americas, designed to expand NAFTA to all of the Americas, among other nefarious ends -- was the best way to respond to the September 11 tragedy.

• The Wartime Opportunists. Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman

ABC has signed a $25 million deal to promote the U.S. Military Academy at West Point through television specials and commercials. Announced Tuesday, it shows how the lines between advertising and entertainment on television are blurring as clients seek something different from traditional commercials. ABC, which is owned by the Walt Disney Co., promised to run a prime-time special next June, "Young America Celebrates West Point." The deal also includes other properties wholly or partly owned by Disney - ESPN, The History Channel, Lifetime, A&E, ABC Radio and even ESPN magazine.

The deal between ABC and the West Point Project LLC, a group of West Point alumni, was in the works before the Sept. 11 attacks. But Joseph Franklin, a retired general who's the chief adviser for the West Point Project, said it was a "wonderful coincidence" that ABC was featuring the military at a time of war. Keyed to the U.S. Military Academy's 200th anniversary, the purpose of the ad campaign is to help West Point's recruiting, he said.

Besides the prime-time special, a vignette series called "West Point Minute" will air on ABC News programs "Good Morning America" and "Nightline." They will be clearly marked advertising, the network said. Noted sports filmmaker Bud Greenspan is making a two-hour documentary on West Point's sports history to air on ESPN. ESPN Classic will air an Army football special titled "Field of Honor" and rebroadcast old Army football games.

• David Bauder. Associated Press Release, October 23, 2001

Noting that people in the United Kingdom have "easily adapted" to pervasive public surveillance and that "there has not been an outcry about privacy there," Washington, D.C. police officials are busy expanding the public use of surveillance cameras. A police department spokesman says, "In the context of September 11, we have no choice but to accept the greater use of this technology." MIT emeritus sociology professor Gary T. Marx concedes that "almost all of the surveillance innovations are easily justifiable" but worries that "the major concern is: where is it leading?"

A Vancouver bank robber is probably wondering about his decision to leave the scene of the crime in a taxi equipped with satellite tracking technology. A 26-year-old man held up the VanCity Credit Union on the city's east side and, after grabbing the money, he fled the building and jumped into a waiting taxi, according to Vancouver police. Police called the taxi company, which tracked the vehicle via a global positioning system to an intersection several blocks from the bank. The man was quickly arrested in what police believe was their first use of a satellite to find a bank robber.

On December 26th, a U.S. District judge ruled in Newark N.J. that the Federal Bureau of Investigation did not have to secure a wiretap order to attach a keystroke-recording device to an alleged mobster's computer in order to discover the password to an encrypted file.

The judge also allowed prosecutors to keep secret the specifics of the technology, saying disclosure "would cause identifiable damage to the national security of the United States." Lawyers for Nicodemo Scarfo Jr., who had been indicted on gambling and loan-sharking charges in June of 2000, had asked the court not to allow the gambling file obtained from his computer to be used as evidence, saying that the FBI violated the Fourth Amendment, collecting more information than was needed by picking up modem transmissions without a wiretap order under the provisions of 18 U.S.C. 2510. The government did, however, have a search warrant.

After prosecutors invoked the 1980 Classified Information Procedures Act, the judge held an in camera hearing to review classified information about how the logger operates, after which he issued a protective order under CIPS but ordered the government to provide Scarfo's attorneys with an unclassified explanation of how the logger works. The ruling was based in part on the FBI's evidence that it configured the logger to record keystrokes only when the modem was not transmitting. The opinion in the case may be found at:

Federal aviation authorities and technology companies will soon begin testing a vast air security screening system designed to instantly pull together every passenger's travel history and living arrangements, plus a wealth of other personal and demographic information. The government's plan is to establish a computer network linking every reservation system in the United States to private and government databases. The network would use data-mining and predictive software to profile passenger activity and intuit obscure clues about potential threats, even before the scheduled day of flight. It might find, for instance, that one man used a debit card to buy tickets for four other men who sit in separate parts of the same plane-- four men who have shared addresses in the past. Or it might discern an array of unusual links and travel habits among passengers on different flights. Those sorts of details -- along with many other far more subtle patterns identified by computer programs -- would contribute to a threat index or score for every passenger. Passengers with higher scores would be singled out for additional screening by authorities. As described by developers, the system would be an unobtrusive network enabling authorities to target potential threats far more effectively while reducing lines at security checkpoints for most passengers.

Critics say it would be one of the largest monitoring systems ever created by the government and a huge intrusion on privacy. Although such a system would rely on existing software and technology, it could be years before it is fully in place, given that enormous amounts of data would need to be integrated and a structure would need to be established for monitoring passenger profiles. At least one carrier, Delta Air Lines, has been working with several companies on a prototype. Northwest Airlines has acknowledged that it is talking with other airlines about a similar screening system. Federal authorities hope to test at least two prototypes in coming months or possibly sooner, according to government and industry sources familiar with the effort.

Efforts by the ACLU and other civil liberties groups to turn public opinion against the president's anti-terrorism initiatives are falling on deaf ears, according to a poll conducted by Zogby International. "Despite the best efforts by the ACLU and other rights groups... the various anti-terrorist efforts by the president and the attorney general have strong public support," said pollster John Zogby, president and CEO of Zogby International. The Zogby poll indicates that 54 percent of Americans favor allowing telephone conversations to be monitored; 80 percent favor allowing video surveillance of public places such as street corners; 67 percent favor roadblock searches of vehicles, and 67 percent favor having their mail monitored.

John Zogby says he finds it "shocking" that Americans are willing to allow the government to have greater access to their personal lives in exchange for security. "We are in a moment where fear trumps other considerations," Zogby said. "Frankly, I guess I never thought [that] I would live to see the day when Americans would want their cars stopped and checked, or their mail monitored, but we certainly had that day."

• John Rossomando. December 13, 2001

National support for ubiquitous ID cards is beginning to taper off after initial demand following the Sept. 11 attacks. In a recent survey, Gartner found that just 26 percent of Americans now support the idea and 41 percent oppose it. The week after Sept. 11, the Pew Research Center found 70 percent backed a national ID to help identify terrorists, a sentiment bolstered by the fact that 11 of the hijackers used false IDs. The Gartner poll found subtle differences in the way people perceived national IDs, depending on what they would be used for. For airport security, the IDs are largely supported, but not for use in conjunction with health care or financial services. Most respondents said that private industry should administer the system if it is implemented. Critics of a national ID scheme say the knee-jerk reaction to the terrorist attacks is giving way to a more reasonable, calculated mentality that recognizes the inherent flaws in any system. Privacy advocates had said a national ID was one step closer to a police state where government would be able to monitor citizens' movements and activities.

• Wired News. 13 March 2002

Imagine a system which recorded everything its participants saw or heard, and continually monitored their precise locations. Assume that, because of various benefits the system provided, and the availability of mechanisms to ensure privacy, that virtually everyone participated. Sounds fantastic? Sounds awful? Well a system like this was proposed in one of the Turing lectures (the Computer Science equivalent of the Pulitzer prize). I'm interested in collecting ideas about the benefits that such a system could provide. For instance, what studies of interest would become available that made use of this gigantic database?

• Date: Fri, 26 Jan 2001 12:07:28 -1000

With the outbreak of civil war in Colombia, another country has fallen deeper into the ranks of the unstable. This has been a week of destabilizations. Iran appears to be moving toward internal crisis, Venezuela's political problems are deepening and conflict between Israelis and Palestinians is entering a new era. This troubling spread of instability is rooted in the current structure of the international system. As the world's only superpower, the United States' inevitable obsession with al Qaeda has contributed to this process of destabilization.

• The Global Intelligence Report. 21 February 2002

The US war on terrorism has encouraged/emboldened other governments to be quick to use violence to solve their problems--in the name of fighting terrorism. In Colombia, President Pastrana began referring to the FARC and ELN only recently as "terrorists"--war there began yesterday. President Bush is now trying to give Colombia extra money to protect the Occidental Petroleum's pipeline through that country--because "terrorists" are attacking our energy sources. Uzbek president Islam Karimov is now justifying his repressive regime's actions against Islamic organizations that are not sanctioned by the state by labeling them "terrorists"--the US no longer even pretends to be opposed to his regime's horrible human right's record. Even Slobodan Milosevic is defending himself in the tribunal he faces by claiming he was fighting "terrorism."

Project this trend elsewhere. Now, environmental organizations in the US are now branded as "the largest terrorist organizations in the U.S." When will they be targeted, and what will the response be? When John Ashcroft told Congress than anyone who dissented was "aiding the terrorists," was that tantamount to saying "aiding and abetting," which is a crime punishable by death? When will dissenters be targeted as those who give aid and comfort and abet terrorists? The question these questions lead to is will the "fighting terrorism"-induced instability eventually lead to instability in the U.S.?

When the US justifies its military actions against something as ill-defined as "terrorists worldwide," and then casts the terrorist net very, very widely, others will follow suit, esp. those governments that we recently befriended in order to conduct these military operations. This uptick in violence and repression should have been expected after Bush gave his speech to the joint session of Congress after the Sept 11th attacks--it essentially gave the green light to anyone doing nearly anything in the name of "fighting terrorism."

• 22 Feb 2002

Bush administration officials expect to make a final decision on the proposed GovNet government intranet within 90 days. They are currently reviewing the technical feasibility and usefulness of the system. Approximately 170 comments about GovNet have been submitted to the General Services Administration, with comments ranging from extremely supportive of the proposed network to extremely opposed to it. The Critical Infrastructure Protection Board, which is reviewing the comments, is also tasked with devising a national strategy to protect the nation's digital infrastructure from attack. The Board is working on a strategy to protect the cellular phone network; tools to predict how breakdowns in one computer system may affect others; and a plan to protect networks from computer viruses and worms. The group also supports funding an NSF scholarship program for computer sciences, including network security.

• Newsbytes, 12 March 2002

A task force formed by the Business Roundtable, an organization of corporate chief executives, is planning a nationwide system called CEO Link, designed to allow corporations to communicate with each other in the event of a terrorist attack. The president of Business Roundtable said that the more than 40 top executives who worked on the project "are really looking to make a difference for the country. They aren't coming to the table with business agendas. They're looking at how to make the country more secure." The group is chaired by C. Michael Armstrong of AT&T, which is preparing the design of CEO Link at its own expense. The system will include a wireless phone network as well as a secure Web site.

• Washington Post 13 Mar 2002

After 50 years of market ascendancy, government may be poised to reclaim its role as an integral and admirable part of American life.

For the past three years, New Orleans has been lurching toward hiring private contractors to upgrade and operate its municipal water and sewer system. The plan was to open bids after Christmas and award a 20-year, $1 billion contract by February.

Until Sept. 11.

Since then, one mayoral candidate has persuaded the City Council to call for delaying privatization because it "may pose a serious threat to the security" of the city water supply. Another is pushing a referendum that would allow voters to veto this and other big outsourcing contracts. "Sept. 11," says Councilman James Singleton, the referendum backer, "caused people to pause and ask themselves, `Wait! Is this something we want to do now? Turn our water over to private concerns?'

Over the past 25 years, the pendulum in economies all over the world has swung away from government and toward the market, competition and private operation of what once were deemed "public services." By the end of the 1990s, world governments had sold more than $1 trillion in assets to private investors. And a growing number of state and local governments had turned to private operators to run prisons, parking lots, ambulance services, public schools and social-services operations.

Even before the terrorists struck, the beginnings of a backlash were stirring. Since Sept. 11, the forward march of the market is stalling and, in some places, shifting into reverse. If the shift endures, that Tuesday may prove to be a turning point in the relationship between business and government, comparable to the elections of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan that began a wave of privatizations and an ear of market ascendancy. This in turn raises questions about whether the prosperity of the 1990s -- so intertwined with the unleashing of market forces nearly everywhere -- will resume when the global economy recovers. The price of security, in short, may be tolerating more of the inefficiency of government and settling for slightly slower economic growth.

The clearest sign of change came last week when President Bush acquiesced to those in Congress, many of them Republicans, who argued that air travel would be safer if passengers were screened by 28,000 government employees, instead of private contractors. This wasn't an isolated event. Talk of turning the U.S. Postal Service and Amtrak into shareholder-owned private corporations appears dead for now. So does the political appeal of expanding New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani's move to let private ambulance companies respond to more 911 calls.

The Pentagon has temporarily shelved plans to farm out the back-office operations of its high-tech mapping unit. An antiterrorism commission headed by the chairman of the Republican National Committee, Virginia Gov. James Gilmore, says the federal government should build and own a plant to make vaccines for anthrax, smallpox and other diseases. "There's no market for it normally," he says. "Why would a private manufacturer want to go through the expense?"

In the wake of Sept. 11, the very definition of national security is being expanded. Now, it includes getting to work safely and even shopping at the mall without fear of a terrorist attack. What's more, government workers, once caricatured for inefficiency, are being praised as heroes for their sacrifices on Sept. 11 and during the anthrax mail scare. "People noticed who was going up the stairs when others were going down," says John Donahue, who tracks privatization trends at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. When President Bush threw the opening pitch at a recent World Series game in New York, he wore a blue New York Fire Department windbreaker.

• Yochi Dreazen and Andrew Caffrey. Private Concerns: Now, Public Works Seem Too Precious For the Free Market A High Price for Feeling Safe. The Wall Street Journal. 11/19/2001.

Will the current reluctance to travel stimulate widespread use of videoconferencing? The stock market seems to think so.

One consequence of last week's events is a strong upturn in the use of videoconferencing to replace travel. This upturn also occurred in the Gulf War, but then leveled off.

Shortcomings in U.S. public health services in fighting anthrax underscore risks of privatizations, deregulation, and globalization, a best-selling Canadian anticorporate author said Tuesday. Naomi Klein, the author of the 1999 book No Logo: Taking Aim at Corporate Bullies, said questions about globalization "have never been more relevant'' than now in the United States. "The front line in the war on terrorism domestically in the U.S. is precisely the public infrastructure [and] social services that have been deregulated, privatized, run down, and vilified for the past 15 years,'' Klein said.

Losing mail delivery in 2001 is nowhere near the problem it would have been just a few years ago. Electronic communications, particularly e-mail, fax and the Web, have already supplanted the postal service--commonly known in the high-tech community as snail mail. It's just another example of the relentless calculus of the digital revolution, where bits trump atoms. The threat that a deadly disease might be a consequence of opening an envelope could be a tipping point that leads to changes in the way we look at snail mail--and heads us down a road where daily mail delivery goes the way of the milkman.

• Steven Levy. Newsweek Web Exclusive. 01/10/13

The American Council for the United Nations University (ACUNU) also asked its vast global futures network to offer their visions of the United States. The titles of the resulting scenarios are:

Scenario 1: ESCALATION

Scenario 2: COUNTER MINDSET

Scenario 3: ROOT CAUSES

Scenario 4: SOCRATIC JUSTICE.

Scenario 5: THE WILD WEST

Scenario 6: THE PEACEFUL COWBOY

Scenario 7: THE NEXT YEAR

Scenario 8: FORTRESS USA/OECD

Scenario 9: ESTABLISHING A GLOBAL CIVIC ETHIC

ESCALATION: A long war involving attack and counter attack through biological and nuclear saber rattling. The poppy fields of Afghanistan are attacked with Agent Orange to dry up a principal source of terrorist income. But it is a long war. (Gordon)

COUNTER MINDSET: Political Islamisists saw secular Western capitalism as reducing everything to a commodity, reinforcing individualism and greed, and arrogantly running financial and political rules of the world to American's benefit. They believed that Islam’s mission was now to set the world right. The strategies followed by the international community addressed this mindset. Television, radio, software, magazine, music materials were designed to reinforce the idea that this was a war against terrorism and promoted the restoration of the right and proper image of Islam. A "Global Partnership for Development" gave reason for people not to be sympathetic with terrorists. In short, this was an "intellectual arms race" (Glenn)

ROOT CAUSES: The US-led military war against terrorism failed to end terrorism. The US proposed a different global strategy involving the provision of minimal standards of health, education, services and housing, worldwide. After a short period of expansion and association with other social radical movements, terrorism started to lose ground. A strong emphasis was placed on education by nations of the world to reduce inequality in access to work opportunities and to attain an acceptable standard of living on a global basis. (Gutierrez)

SOCRATIC JUSTICE: The US used all of the powers that the UN could offer. The US ratified the International Criminal Court and encouraged other nations to do so. The US brought captured terrorists and criminals to the Court and then focused on new modes of international cooperation. (Gordon)

THE WILD WEST: US and Allied military strikes led to endless escalation in a war that apparently was won, but over time sped up the process of decline, with terror meeting terror. The CIA got back into business on a big scale. Nations already poor became poorer.

(Inayatullah)

THE PEACEFUL COWBOY: The US sought means to cooperate with other nations to deal with terrorism in a more contained, targeted way, although a great deal of wild west posturing continued. There were three parts to its strategy: improved internal security; enhanced intelligence; and economic action. Eventually, protection against terrorism has become almost a habit. (Barton)

THE NEXT YEAR: An invasion of the Taliban areas results in the execution of the Taliban- held UN aid workers. This provides additional moral support for more military strikes. The US considered withdrawing support for Israel unless they reduced their military severity. Casualties mounted. Bin Laden was apparently assassinated by one of his men but more likely by Alliance special forces. (Rogers)

FORTRESS USA/OECD: Borders were closed, locked down. This led to general impoverishment and the loss of innovation that accompanies immigration. in the short run. It provided the appearance of security, but in the longer run, poverty resulted. (Inayatullah)

ESTABLISHING A GLOBAL CIVIC ETHIC: Key international NGO’s formed a global council that believed that the major impediment to lasting peace and global security was the lack of a global civic ethic. A World Public Service was formed in which volunteers took on global ethical management tasks in international conflict resolution. Their strategy: potential combatants have to agree to mediation and to implement the outcomes thereof. Failing this, sustained ongoing sanctions would follow. Comprehensive military action overseen by a global peace force would be a last resort. (Wildman)

COLONIALISM REBORN: After the US destroys the Taliban regime, internal conflicts in Afghanistan cause local rioting and escalating conflicts. bin Laden’s death (or capture) creates enthusiasm in the US and unrest in the Muslim countries. Massive deliveries of assistance for Afghanistan are provided to the country in the form of food, quick rebuilding of hospitals, others services, and infrastructure. In the Middle East, the US is forced either to put pressure on both parties to find a compromise, or to accept complete failure of the peace process and thus the West becomes further involved in the unstable region from Pakistan to the Middle East. An unexpected terrorist event dramatically changes the situation which then becomes similar to the colonial wars of the 19th and 20^th centuries. A long period of reshuffling of the political and security system follow.

CALL ON THE UN: The investigation that "followed the money" to map the criminal network and catch the criminals proved to be extremely complex and the speed of international financial markets made this task more difficult than anticipated. It became clear that the US experience in Afghanistan would become similar to the USSR’s, but complicated by continued terrorism at home. This situation lasted for more than one year and induced some serious political changes both in different Islamic countries where extremists obtained greater influence and in the US too, where the war (and Bush) became unpopular. The "anti-global" movement gained influence, and new leaders with new policies appeared. The UN was seen as potentially more useful in settling international disputes than direct interventionism had proven to be. The Bin Laden case, still unsolved, was taken over by the International Criminal Court.

Another group affiliated with the ACUNU offered the following thoughts:

1. No action except condemnation: terrorism will become more and more unbridled; civilization will be threatened; world security and peace will disappear, and terrorism will control the whole world in the end.

2. Hate to hate or tooth to tooth with immediate response and direct military strikes, the military base of terrorism will be destroyed, injured families will be consoled, the power of justice and the confidence of striking on terrorism will be shown to the whole world, but more innocent citizens will suffer from the strikes while the terrorists hide among them. At the same time, they initiate new attacks (at least psychological attacks) resulting in long term mental chaos in the civilized society.

The two scenarios above will produce a positive feedback and cause the whole world to be unstable.

3. Love to hate with cultural, economic, spiritual and legislative action including speeding up the process of reducing conflicts in hot areas of the world, reducing the gap between rich and poor, enhancing justice, equity and faith in those poor areas, and encouraging attitude change from hate to love. This transition will lead to long term sustainability, but temporally some people who can not be tolerant may act out, and some domestic political instability in US may occur by acts of people who criticize the government as being too soft and weak.

4. Love to hate as a long term strategy from outside as mentioned above, while helping local people against terrorism in those countries where the terrorism is based while encouraging internal force to take justice on the terrorism. Measures include financial, institutional, spiritual, ethical and political. In this scenario, terrorism will not be overestimated and soon will become isolated and extinguished. The local people in terrorism-based countries will have time and resources against the terrorism. The world will keep peace, people will keep confidence, and terrorism will gradually disappear or be reduced to its minimum. The future is optimistic. The global order is expected to be set up in a rather new pattern rather than the current mono-pole pyramid pattern.

Pervez Hoodbhoy, Professor of physics at the Quaid-e-Azam University in Pakistan wrote in the February 2002 issue of Journal of Futures Studies (Vol. 6, No. 3, pp. 169-176):

"Terrorism does not have a military solution." " If the world is to be spared what future historians may call the 'Century of Terror,' we will have to chart the perilous course between the Scylla of American imperial arrogance and the Charybdis of Islamic religious fanaticism." "For Muslims, it is time to stop wallowing in self-pity. Muslims are not helpless victims of conspiracies hatched by an all-powerful, malicious West. The fact is that the decline of Islamic greatness took place long before the age of mercantile imperialism. The causes were essentially internal. Therefore, Muslims must introspect, and ask what went wrong."

"The US too must confront bitter truths. It is a fact that the messages of George W. Bush and Tony Blair fall flat while those of Osama bin Laden, whether he lives or dies, resonate strongly across the Muslim world. Bin Laden's religious extremism turns off many Muslims, but the find his political message easy to relate to--stop propping up corrupt and despotic regimes across the world just because they serve US interests. Americans will also have to accept that the US is past the peak of its imperial power; the 50s and 60s are gone for good. Its triumphalism and disdain for international law is creating enemies everywhere, not just among Muslim. Therefore they must become less arrogant, and more like other peoples of this world. While the US will remain a superpower for some time to come, it is inevitably going to become less and less super." " Our collective survival lies in recognizing that religion is not the solution; neither is nationalism. Both are divisive, embedding within us false notions of superiority and arrogant pride that are difficult to erase. We have but one choice: the path of secular humanism, based upon the principles of logic and reason. This alone offers the hope of providing everyone on this globe with the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."

September 11, 2001 can be seen as one of those hinges of history where everything changes. There is no doubt it had that potential. But the real hinges (of which 9/11 was just a more recent turning) were the first and second "Arab Oil Crises" of the early and mid 1970s, and the profound impact of America's defeat in Vietnam earlier. The defeat of the wimpish, peace- and sustainability-oriented president, Jimmie Carter, and the ascendancy of debt-driven excessive wealth amid massive growing poverty nationally and globally--aka Reaganomics--during the 80s and 90s, leading to excesses of the dot.com era, were merely steps in a long path of denial of the end of the American Empire, and of the dominance of Western culture in general (one indicator of which is the negative population growth of Europe and Japan, and of Anglos in North America, while population continues to grow rapidly in the rest of the world).

This suggests three possible alternative futures:

1. Continued spiraled decline into tragedy as the US kills more and more innocent people in order to save them, leading to its own destruction:

From within: The end of civil liberties; rise internal shootings and killings; refusal/inability of Americans to continue to shop-till-you-drop; continued firings; the end of welfare payments while the economy at lowest ebb. Money goes to cronies for profits rather than equitably for income maintenance or social infrastructure. Thus the end of the consumer-based American economy. Manichean beliefs that God blesses America while all terrorists are and personify "Evil" so that our God can beat your god.

As well as attacks from without, biological perhaps but more likely nuclear.

Spiraling down into a new, global, dark ages with no one able to get out of it because of the arrival of long-deferred global population, energy, and pollution problems--and especially of global warming and climate change.

2. Leading to the collapse of the US into civil war, and the slow rise over the 21st Century of China, India and Islam, with their conflicts, and a regionalization/globalization on their cultural and technological bases.

3. Or leading to a spiritual awakening, a sustainable and equitable economy, deglobalization and re-localization.

"White House office of 'faith-based initiatives'" "plan means channeling serious federal taxpayer money and other aid to church charity programs and religion-based social efforts."

• John Hanchette. Honolulu Advertiser. January 6, 2001, p. B3

The new name is to be "Armies of Compassion"

• James Gerstenzang, Honolulu Advertiser. Feb 8, 2002, P. A8 .

• Cathy Lynn Grossman and Anthony Debarros, Honolulu Advertiser. December 24, 2001, p. 1D, 4D

Calling the United States "a nation guided by faith" in a speech broadcast across China on Friday, President Bush pressed for religious freedom.

While attendance at the nation's houses of worship has pretty much dropped to pre-Sept. 11 levels, there is instead a rising, slightly desperate, faith in technology.

• Toby Lester. Atlantic Monthly. February 2002, pp. 37-45.

While hate crimes against Muslims are rising all over the world, surprisingly the US military is one of the safest places to be a Muslim. Indeed, Qasem Ali Uda forecasts that in 20 years, 25% of all US marines will be Muslim. And many religious conversions of inmates in prison is to Islam

Given the incredible influence that former military personnel have on US policies (ie a look at Who's Who in America shows that military background and law school education are the two common denominators on the resumes of America's most influential people), inclusion is the wisest policy.

• Ayeda Husain Naqvi. NewsLine. July 1996. 75-77.

Sharif M. Shuja. 7 Aug 2001 12:29:39 -1000

The spread of Islam has had an impact on the globalisation of culture. Islam has spread not only as a religion but has helped also to give birth to languages which are today spoken by many more non-Muslims than Muslims. Kiswahili in Africa is today the most important indigenous language to have emerged out of Africa - but its origins lie in the interaction between Islam and African culture. Islam and the Arabic language have bequeathed the Arabic alphabet for languages like Farsi, Urdu, Old Hausa and others. The Arabs have given the world the so-called Arabic numerals through which the twentieth century has computerised the human experience. Today the Quran is the most widely read book in its original language in human history. Muslims are expected to read the Quran in its original Arabic and not a translation that may change the intended meaning. The Christian Bible is the mot widely read book in translation. Almost one out of every five human beings is a Muslim. In the course of the 21st century a quarter of the human race will probably be Muslim. The new demographic presence of Islam within the Western world is indicative that Islamisation is now a major globalising force.

In the second half of the twentieth century both Muslim migration to the West and conversions to Islam within the West are consolidating a new human Islamic presence. In Europe as a whole, there are now 20 million Muslims, eight million of whom are in Western Europe. These figures exclude the Muslims of the Republic of Turkey, who number some 50 million. There are new mosques from Munich to Marseilles.

Also as a manifestation of the demographic Islamisation of the Western world, there are now over a thousand mosques and Islamic centres in the U.S. alone. And the country has professional associations for Muslim engineers, Muslim social scientists and Muslim educators. There are some six million American Muslims - and the number is rising impressively.

Currently Islam is the fastest growing religion in Central Asia. After the collapse of the U.S.S.R., all five states of Central Asia - Kazakhstan, Kyrghyztan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and Tajikistan - made an official place for Islam as the dominant religion. In France, Islam is becoming the second most important religion numerically after Catholicism. In Britain some Muslims have been experimenting with an Islamic parliament of their own, and others are demanding state subsidies for Muslim denominational schools. In Germany it has been belatedly realized that the importation of Turkish workers in the 1970s was also an invitation to the muezzin and the minaret to establish themselves in German cities. Australia has discovered that it is a neighbour to the largest Muslim country in the world in terms of population (Indonesia). There are new mosques, Islamic schools and Quranic centres from Brisbane to Perth.

The rise of Islamic movements in different parts of the world, aimed at resisting Western domination and control over Muslim territories and resources, Muslim cultures and communities, has provoked a new wave of aggressive emotions against the religion and its practitioners. That it is resistance to Western domination and control - and not some threat to the West as such - which is taking place within the Muslim world is a reality that is concealed from the general public.

The depiction of Islam and the Islamic countries as a monolithic entity may reflect the errors of the orientalist mind-set, which refuses to understand the diversity within Islam for the convenience of a simple explanation. The assumed identity, through segregation and confinement of the Islamic civilization, is a product of the Western imagination and sustains a deep phobia because the simple explanation, ironically, renders Islam both 'unknown' and mysterious.

It is orientalist scholarship that has invested Islam both with internal unity and an external political ambition. Orientalists have reconstructed Islam as a political religion despite the fact that there is little in original Islamic sources on how to form states or run governments.

It should also be mentioned that the fundamentalist movement, most active in the Shi'ite countries of Iran, Iraq and Lebanon, is also diverse and a minority movement in most Islamic countries. Even assuming Islamic fundamentalism would spread significantly, it is not inevitable that it will inexorably lead to a clash with the West. After all, the West, and particularly the United States, has maintained a very special relationship with Saudi Arabia, one of the most fundamentalist of Arab States.

One also needs to be clear about the teachings of Islam. Some analysts in the West take the view that the rapidly growing Muslim population in Europe and the United States, and Islamic revivalism generally, are potential threats to Western culture. The study of Islam demonstrates that it is not a violent doctrine. Islam, like other world religions, is a faith of peace and social justice. In fact, Islam is as universalist as Christianity, and offers a generous consolation when it comes to finding purpose and guiding the soul in a confusing world. It does not turn to fundamentalist militancy, because it has always been a tolerant religion and dislikes extremism and killing. Islam does not encourage terrorism and threatening behaviour. These violent concepts do not originate in Islam as a faith. Those groups who practice terror under the flag of Islam are a small minority, rejected by the great majority of Muslims. In relation to aggressive attitudes, the key message to Western scholars is to oppose extremist Muslims but not blame all Islam.

Today's tensions should lead to tomorrow's aspirations. What we need now is a culture of peace that would help broaden cross-cultural understanding between Islam and the West. With proper knowledge of the culture of the Arab and Muslim worlds, this understanding would help foster tolerance and resolve conflict. We need to sustain a diversity of cultures, not a diversity of imagined clashes and conflicts.

• Denise LaVoie. Honolulu Star Bulletin. March 23, 2001. p. A13

From Sacramento to Washington, D.C., officials advocating greater access to legal services for low-income residents are keeping a close watch on Range County, Calif. and its technology-based solution. The Interactive Community Assistance Network, better known as I-CAN!, already has helped thousands of local residents obtain legal services, including the tools they need to represent their own interests in court...

The Internet could throw many law professors out of work, and the law school as a physical entity may vanish with the growth of online legal education. The winners on the Internet will be law schools with well-known brand names, as well as faculty members at those institutions. Celebrity faculty members may find new markets for their courses and reap the benefits, financially and professionally. Mr. Froomkin called this the Arthur-Miller-on-a-disk model, referring to the Harvard University law professor who has already offered to tape his lectures for Concord Law School, an online program. Perhaps someday, all law students will study from Arthur R. Miller, and basic courses will become a commodity in the new national market for online legal education, said Mr. Froomkin. Nonacademics may find it easy to teach certain subjects, or to hire themselves out as graders, e-mail-discussion leaders, and even directors of the entire first-year curriculum. The losers in the new era of legal education will be second- and third-tier institutions that lack name recognition and its concomitant prestige, and their faculties. They will either have to become discount law schools, or go online themselves. And if a school goes online, what need will there be for a physical structure, especially that expensive law library? Some law professors are already living the distance-learning model. Peter W. Martin, a professor at Cornell Law School, transmits his course, "Copyright and Digital Works," to three other law schools: Chicago-Kent College of Law and the law schools at the Universities of Colorado and Kansas. Mr. Martin is paid by the three institutions as an adjunct, and grades each course separately, on a curve.

• Wendy R. Leibowitz, Law Professors Told to Expect Competition From Virtual Learning, Chronicle of Higher Education, January 21, 2000.

The same entrepreneur who came up with the concept of brokering "pollution credits" now has found a new marketplace to tackle -- corporate law. He's planning to soon launch what amounts to an eBay for the legal industry called eLawForum. Clients will post information on their legal needs and solicit bids from competing law firms, which will then have an incentive to offer lower prices to get the work. Preliminary trials of eLawForum have generated an enthusiastic response from participants, and several competing companies, such as iBidLaw.com, are getting ready to launch their own lawyer-brokering ventures. And while some large, established law firms insist their clients would never abandon them for some Web upstart, smaller firms see the online brokerages as a means of entre to clients they could otherwise never hope to snare. "It is very hard to crack the New York market," says C. Boyden Gray, partner in a Washington, DC, law firm. "I think this would actually help us (to compete)."

• Wall Street Journal. 12 Apr 2000

Retribution is the predominant value in the political landscape of criminal justice policy. Punishing criminals as severely as possible remains a persistently popular stand in electoral politics. States build more prisons to house the many offenders who are serving lengthy sentences for possession of small quantities of marijuana and crack cocaine in the much-touted "war on drugs." No politician ever lost an election for supporting the death penalty. This retributive impulse on the part of the public and politicians has only been inflamed in the wake of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The public seems willing to embrace military tribunals-and their promise of swift and severe justice-for those who might have conspired to plan the attacks. Moreover, these unforgiving policies fall most heavily on the shoulders the poor and members of racial minorities who constitute the vast majority of those who are "processed" by the criminal justice system.

In this book, Dennis Sullivan and Larry Tifft challenge the retributive nature of the existing criminal justice system. They argue that the criminal justice system simply inflicts violence on the offender through incarceration or even death, but does nothing to renew the victim's well-being or to relieve the structural inequalities that gave rise to the crime in the first place. Instead, they urge us to reorient our entire system of dealing with social harms. They claim we must move away from seeking vengeance and develop instead a needs-based approach that accounts for the needs of all the parties to a violent act, including not just the victim but also the offender and the community itself. The authors reject the labels of "offender" and "victim." They argue that such labels impose a false identity on individuals. Instead, they refer throughout the book to "the person who was harmed" and "the person who has harmed."

Sullivan and Tifft argue for a program of restorative justice that would be geared towards meeting the needs of everyone in society, including those who did the harm. According to the authors, restorative justice programs have several different elements in common. First, such programs are grounded in a "political economy of relationship" based on needs, rather than desert. This different emphasis makes it important to account for the needs of everyone in society: "Such an approach toward justice puts a great premium on the participation of everyone, and on the expression of the voice of each. In other words, the well-being of everyone involved in a given social situation is taken into account: that is everyone involved is listened to, interacted with, or responded to on the basis of her or his present needs" (p. 113). Second, restorative justice programs reject the violence associated with punishment and focus instead on healing broken relationships. Third, restorative justice requires open communication about the harm caused and public acknowledgment of the victim's pain. But the victim is not the only one doing the talking. The offender must also offer his account of the incident. Finally, the community must take an active role in resolving these problems. They must be present at the restorative process itself, but they must also begin to rebuild their communities.

• Dennis Sullivan and Larry Tifft. Monsey, NY: Willow Tree Press, 2001. Reviewed by Anna Maria Marshall, Department of Sociology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

The notion of Therapeutic Jurisprudence (TJ) has been discussed and developed by legal scholars for over a decade. It concentrates attention on the psychological and emotional impact of law, legal procedures, and legal actors. Recently it has increasingly informed state court practices. Therapeutic Jurisprudence, is "the use of social science to study the extent to which a legal rule or practice promotes the psychological and physical well-being of the people it affects." It is the study of the role of law as a healing agent. As such it is an interdisciplinary science, offering fresh insights into the role of law in society to those who practice law. TJ can be thought of as a "lens" through which we view regulations and laws as well as the roles and behavior of legislators, lawyers, judges, administrators, and educators. It may be used to identify the potential effects of proposed legal arrangements. It is useful to inform and shape policies and procedures in the law. It posits that, when appropriate, the law apply an "ethic of care" to those it affects. Courts are moving toward a problem solving orientation to their responsibilities and forming problem solving partnerships to address complex social evils that have come to dominate their dockets in recent years.

• William Schma

In the celebrated essay, "Violence and the Word," Robert Cover (1986) developed a novel perspective on law captured in the haunting and often quoted opening sentence: "Legal interpretation," he wrote, "plays on a field of pain and death." Cover's suggestion that law, pain and death are intimately related inspired the essays collected in the volume under review, edited by Austin Sarat. Drawing on works in history, philosophy, and literature, and reading and interpreting a range of judicial opinions, these essays explore such relations by focusing on several important areas--how pain and death are constructed in and by law, how specific constructions of pain evolved over time, the consequences of differing conceptions of pain for legal interpretation, and how both pain and death may give meaning to law. Throughout the book, authors' highlight the ways in which judicial decisions portray the human body in pain and the ways in which death and pain are transformed into jurisprudential "facts."

• Austin Sarat (Editor). Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 2001. Reviewed by Mark Kessler, Department of Political Science, Bates College.

The inherent coercive power that every government must lawfully have at its disposal to maintain state functioning, combined with government's inertial legitimacy, has produced the historic truism that greater crimes against humanity have been perpetrated by governments and states than by individuals or private criminal enterprises. The control of criminal behavior by government actors must therefore be a core function of any state that aspires to be called civilized and wishes to be included within the community of nations that measure up to the legal/political criteria of the rule of law. Even states whose adherence to the rule of law is evidenced in may ways (e.g., judicial independence, legislative oversight, a vigorous press, review commissions, prosecution of state actors) nevertheless can expect some level of governmental illegality (e.g., Human Rights Watch 1998). When such illegality is systematic or egregious it may be denominated state crime, a species of political crime whose harm, in Hall's (1960: 212-46) sense, includes the undermining of confidence in a government that is lawful, constitutional, and democratic.

VARIETY OF STATE CRIME AND ITS CONTROL consists of seven separately authored case studies of state crime in advanced democracies and short introductory and concluding chapters by Jeffrey Ross. This book was preceded by another edited volume (Ross 1995) addressing definitional, conceptual, theoretical and methodological issues about state (or governmental) crime, making the present volume a part of a long range exploration of the issue: Ross, Jeffrey Ian. 1995. CONTROLLING STATE CRIME: AN INTRODUCTION. New York: Garland Publishing.

• Jeffrey Ian Ross (Editor). Monsey, N. Y: Criminal Justice Press, 2000. Reviewed by Marvin Zalman, Department of Criminal Justice, Wayne State University

This is a collection of essays edited by Peter B. Kraska that focus on the "military/criminal justice blur" and the role militarism plays in this development. The ten essays are divided into three categories: Militarized Crime Control in America; The Military Police Blur; and Militarism Comes Home Punishment Feminism and Popular Culture. Topics explored include, inter alia, the growing involvement of military forces in domestic law enforcement, community policing, the patrol of the Mexican-U. S. border, and feminist militarism and popular culture.

The thesis of the work:

I: Traditionally the military handles threats to our nation from outside, while the criminal justice system deals with crime and internal disorder.

II: Historically, a close alliance between the military and domestic law enforcement has been associated with repressive government.

III: The United States is in the middle of a "momentous historical change" that involves blurring this separation and violating a "long standing tenet of democratic governance" (p. 3).

IV: This blurring is aided and abetted by an ideology of militarism defined in one of the essays as "the prevalence of war-like values in society" (p. 123).

• Peter B. Kraska (Editor). Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2001Reviewed by Peter J. Galie, Department of Political Science, Canisius College.

The authors of this text examine the phenomenon of "legalization," which they describe as "a particular form of institutionalization" (p. 2). According to the authors, the need for analysis of this concept stems from the fact that "the world is witnessing a move to law" (p. 1). The last decade in world politics has produced two functioning international criminal tribunals, the World Trade Organization, NAFTA, a strengthened European Union, a soon to be functioning permanent International Criminal Court, and numerous other international legal arrangements. Such events necessitate the type of analysis that this text provides us. Therefore, the major strength of this text is its timeliness. That, along with the quality of international relations and international law scholars that contribute to this dialogue, make this text worth reading.

As these authors describe it, legalization can exist as either hard law, meaning full legalization (high levels of obligation, precision, and delegation) or soft law, meaning anarchy (low levels of all three components). In between these ideal types, we have a mixture of hard and soft law, depending on the levels of the three components. Thus, legalization is not a concept that defines one particular type of institution, but has a range from high to low forms.

Clearly, dispute resolution proceedings of a transnational nature are more "legalized." This is because: 1) adjudicators in a transnational tribunal are more independent in their legal decision-making abilities; 2) a greater number of actors have access to the judicial process; and 3) the implementation of judgments is not dependent on state actors. The implications of this conclusion are that transnational dispute resolution systems tend to increase legalization, while constraining the actions of states. In short, this form of transnational institutions "insulate(s) dispute resolution to some extent from the day-to-day political demands of states" (p. 104). Such a conclusion bodes well for institutions like the newly forming International Criminal Court (ICC).

• Judith Goldstein, Miles Kahler, Robert O. Keohane, and Anne-Marie Slaughter (Editors). Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2001.

"The trend to international recruitment raises questions about how to harmonize training in commercial law."

• Jean Eaglesham. Financial Times. August 24, 2001. p. 12.

Who owns the law? Not the public, at least in the latest court battle over copyright infringement on the Internet. Turns out, the text of the public laws in question belongs to a private, but influential, organization. That's what a federal judge and an appeals court say.

This is one online copyright infringement lawsuit that promises to affect more lives than the record industry's high-profile dispute with Napster's music-sharing service. Government at the local, state and federal levels increasingly is enacting laws that have been written and copyrighted by private entities.

• Kathryn Balint. May 13, 2001.

Michigan is attempting to launch a cutting-edge cyber court to speed business cases through the legal system. Young businesses have died on the vine while waiting for legal disputes to crawl through the courts. "Information technology companies, especially, could be out of business by the time something reaches a jury," said David Zurvalec, an attorney and vice president of industrial relations at the Michigan Manufacturers Association in Lansing, Mich.

Hoping to solve this problem, Michigan lawmakers have proposed a new legal institution that operates at Internet speed -- a "cyber court" that harnesses technology to propel lawsuits to resolution. Michigan's Gov. John Engler unveiled the idea in his State of the State address.

"Our intent would be to create a 'rocket docket' that can move these cases, depending on their complexity, within 90 to 180 days," said Rep. Marc Shulman of West Bloomfield, who introduced the cyber court bill in Michigan's House of Representatives earlier this year. According to the legislation, the cyber court will be available for business disputes involving more than $25,000. The presiding judge will render a decision without a jury. Cases will be argued in the cyber court only if both parties agree to use it rather than the traditional circuit court system.

The bill calls for cyber court cases to be heard via video or audio conferencing, the Internet and possibly other means. When feasible, the court will broadcast its proceedings over the Internet. "The parties would appear from their own remote, camera-equipped computers, or potentially from a public terminal that could be located in a Kinko's or somewhere else," Shulman said. They would use teleconferencing for the initial hearing, any meetings required during the discovery phase, settlement conferences and, if the case went that far, for the trial and to hear the judge's decision. Attorneys could distribute pleadings, exhibits and other documents via e-mail, and witnesses could testify over a video link.

Cases would move quickly because judges wouldn't need to set court dates far in advance to accommodate out-of-town participants with busy schedules. Participants wouldn't have to cool their heels while the judge heard other cases scheduled on the same day. Also, Shulman said, since participation would be voluntary, parties would abide by the rules of the cyber court rather than drag out the proceedings to gain some sort of advantage.

Besides making it easier for companies to settle lawsuits in Michigan, supporters hope the cyber court will send an encouraging message to businesses, especially technology firms, shopping for a home. "We see ourselves as a high-tech state and we want others to see us that way as well. The cyber court shows how seriously Michigan takes its technological infrastructure. "Companies that are comfortable using advanced technologies in business transactions might see the cyber court as a good reason to locate in Michigan.

Michigan may become one of the first states to settle real legal disputes in cyberspace, but the model has already been tested in a laboratory setting -- Courtroom 21, operated by the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Va.

A mock criminal trial conducted in Courtroom 21 last April employed the same kinds of technologies Michigan hopes to employ. The case involved an international terrorist conspiracy, and one of the attorneys on the prosecution team took part in the trial from the United Kingdom. "He was in a 40-inch plasma screen installed in the courtroom at the counsel table, right next to co-counsel," Lederer said. At one point, the onscreen British barrister questioned the government's chief witness, who appeared live from Canberra, Australia, in a 50-inch plasma display set up behind the witness stand.

One question Courtroom 21 has yet to resolve is how to share physical evidence, since scientists have not yet learned how to beam up three-dimensional objects through the Internet. The court recently dealt with that issue in a fictional dispute in which a U.K.-based mineral water company claimed a U.S. firm had copied its bottle and label.

Disputants on both sides of the Atlantic received samples of both bottles, Lederer said. Although this is a low-tech solution, the mock trial also took advantage of images transmitted from a graphics program at the University of Leeds in the U.K. "At one point we actually sank one bottle into the other electronically, so you could see one bottle inside the other," making similarities and differences immediately clear, he said.

As more students graduate from law programs like William and Mary's, the pool of tech-savvy lawyers will gradually increase. Also, attorneys who handle cases in the cyber court will have no choice but to use its equipment.

"Some lawyers are indeed very cautious," Lederer observed. "But many lawyers are surprising pioneers in the area of technology. And others are guided by the duty to the client and the nature of the adversary system. No one likes to lose. If there's a possibility that technology will be a significant factor on the other side, people tend to look at it."

• By Merrill Douglas - October 2001

Michigan Governor John Engler has signed into law a bill to create a virtual state court -- the first to operate in the U.S., according to Matt Resch, an Engler spokesman. A cybercourt exists at the College of William and Mary in Virginia, but isn't operational, says Resch. The court won't have a jury and will handle only business disputes involving at least $25,000. District or circuit court judges will be assigned for three-year terms and will be specially trained to use the system. "In a world where we can go from idea to IPO at warp speed, we need a connected court that can keep up," says Engler. (AP 9 Jan 2002)

In a not-too-distant future, courtrooms could exist only in cyberspace, with crime scenes re-created as holograms and trial participants seeing each other only through virtual reality glasses. That's the kind of magic "Courtroom 21" at the College of William and Mary has a taste of. In a recent demonstration, a judge presided from his home court in Portland, Ore., and a witness testified from Orlando, Fla. On the bench and in the witness box were huge televisions, where they could talk via Internet videoconferencing.

Courtroom 21 director Fred Lederer is working with Michigan to develop a cyber court. In January, Gov. John Engler called for Web-based courtrooms in the state and specially trained judges to quickly resolve intellectual property rights and other cases for high-tech companies. "What used to be purely science fiction just isn't anymore," said Lederer, who recently saw holographic demonstrations at the NASA Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va. "What we can already do is astounding, and what we may be able to do in the next five years is awe-inspiring."

The federal appellate judges hearing the Microsoft antitrust case this week also used quite a bit of new technology befitting the case at hand including computers that allowed them to communicate with their clerks or research legal documents while they listened to arguments. The laptops came with Microsoft's Windows operating system and Internet Explorer browser as well as Netscape's Navigator browser. Those browsers are at the heart of the antitrust battle in which a trial judge ordered the breakup of Microsoft, but court officials would not say which software the appeals judges prefer.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, for the first time, required both the government and Microsoft to submit their court filings on CD-ROMs that could be viewed on the judges' laptops. The CD-ROMs had almost 15,000 links to case law, exhibits, legal motions and even videotaped testimony, all on a total of four disks. "I think it's going to be better justice," said Marty Steinberg, president of Denver-based RealLegal.com, the company contracted by both sides to produce the CD-ROMs. "Everybody has a more precise way to present their arguments, and the courts have a better way to review this information because it's all relevant."

Six of the seven appellate judges used laptops during the oral arguments on Monday and Tuesday. The computers had word processors and access to the Lexis and WestLaw legal databases. The judges could use instant messaging software to "chat" in real-time with their law clerks, who sat on one side of the courtroom. The seventh judge, David Tatel, is blind and does not use a laptop on the bench.

Lederer cautioned that all the new gadgets are prompting policy questions. "You really can come up with a cyber court with no one physically present," he said. "But is it adequate for public attendance to just dial in? Is that what we mean in the Constitution, or do you have to be able to walk in? "Not everything that can be done adds to the process."

• Associated Press. Mar. 1, 2001

What will the world of law be like in 1,000 years? That's right. Not five or 10 or 100 years. But 1,000 years from now? At last month's American Bar Association convention in Chicago, a panel of lawyers, technology experts and one cyberlaw journalist were asked to tackle that intriguing question.

Moderated by Judge Wendell L. Griffen of the Arkansas Court of Appeals, and sponsored by the ABA's section of science and technology law, members of the group -- including Raymond L. Ocampo Jr., former general counsel of Oracle Corporation; Morgan Chu, co-managing partner of Irell & Manella, a Los Angeles-based law firm; Christine Grant, former commissioner of New Jersey's Department of Health and Senior Services; and Roberta Katz, a lawyer, anthropologist and currently chief executive of Flywheel

Communications, a legal computer network -- spoke of anticipated breakthroughs in information technology, biogenetic engineering, nanotechnology and neuroscience. They largely warned that lawyers in the third millennium must meet their obligations to make sure that amid the scientific advances the public interest is served.

• By Carl S. Kaplan

An artificial-intelligence program called the Electronic Judge is dispensing justice on the mean streets of Brazilian cities. The program is installed on a laptop carried by a roaming human judge and helps to assess swiftly and methodically witness reports and forensic evidence at the scene of an incident. It then issues on-the-spot fines and can even recommend jail sentences.

TRANSFORMING THE LAW is a follow up to Richard Susskind's important book on the impact of information technology on legal practice, THE FUTURE OF LAW (1996). In the earlier book, Susskind described his vision of the coming impact of information technology on the delivery of legal services and the practice of law. TRANSFORMING THE LAW is a combination of an updating and extension of the earlier argument, a response to some of the critics of that earlier work, a collection of Susskind's pr