[Reader-list] cybercafes...

[jeebesh at sarai.net]

The new policing-desire for identity cards, or some form of identification mark 
for access to cyber-cafe is quiet a intriguing phenomenon. 

The very site of the cyber-cafe, its location, its silent acoustics, diverse 
navigational routes, many hands on keyboard, occasional print-outs is giving 
some people cold shivers. 

Was it the same when the cinema hall emerged? Probably yes. The rhetoric of 
`public safety`(around fire), `public health` (around sanitation) and `public 
morality` (around the un-restrained content of the flickering image) was 
mobilised to contain and regulate the cinema exhibition and provide for paths 
for states entry into this space. But the interiority of the spectator inside 
the dark chamber remained unfathomable, an unknown dark world.

Radio made for an possible interesting world of many to many conversations. 
But, with the practice of hard licensing on transmisssion this possibility was 
contained. The radio listener did not quiet carry any aura. 

But with cyber cafes, the dark unfathomable ghosts of the cinema hall and the 
un-realised posssibility of multiple conversation has got overlapped and 
jeopardised the stable consensus of the media-space. (and that too without 
entertainment tax!). This move from stable media to an un-stable media needs to 
be protected. What are people doing inside these spaces? whatever they are 
doing, it is creating quiet a degree of restlessness and panic. and that is 
good for public health and public morality!

The way the stable-media ran a prosecution campaign againist a school kid for 
posting material onto a website was just amazing. This kid was named a `cyber 
criminal`, an attempt was made to create a great moral panic around the 
`pornographic` nature of the kids thoughts. The shrinks joined in, the police 
was giving each other bravery awards, the journalist was busy thinking about 
our great society, the school principal was quick to issuse expulsion orders, 
and the kid was put inside the juvenile delinquent home.  Why this panic and 
then an obsence prosecution of an school kid to create consensus around the 
containment of the un-stable media? Any ideas.