Randy could see where it was going. Kivistik had gone for the usual academicians’s ace in the hole: everything is relative, it’s all just differing perspectives. People had already begun to resume their little side conversations, thinking that the conflict was over, when Randy gave them all a start with: “Who decides what’s bad? I do.”

Even Dr. G. E. B. Kivistik was flustered. He wasn’t sure if Randy was joking. “Excuse me?”

Randy was in no great hurry to answer the question. He took the opportunity to sit back comfortably, stretch, and take a sip of his wine. He was feeling good. “It’s like this,” he said. “I’ve read your book. I’ve seen you on TV. I’ve heard you tonight. I personally typed up a list of your credentials when preparing press materials for this conference. So I know that you’re not qualified to have an opinion about technical issues.”

“Oh,” Kivistik said in mock confusion, “I didn’t realize one had to have qualifications.”

“I think it’s clear,” Randy said, “that if you are ignorant of a particular subject, that your opinion is completely worthless. If I’m sick, I don’t ask a plumber for advice. I go to a doctor. Likewise, if I have questions about the Internet, I will seek opinions from people who know about it.”

“funny how all of the technocrats seem to be in favor of the Internet,” Kivistik said cheerily, milking a few more laughs from the crowd.

“You have just made a statement that is demonstrably not true,” Randy said, pleasantly enough. “A number of Internet experts have written well-reasoned books that are sharply critical of it.”

Kivistik was finally getting pissed off. All the levity was gone.

“So,” Randy continued, “to get back to where we started, the Information Superhighway is a bad metaphor for the Internet, because I say it is. There might be a thousand people on the planet who are as conversant with the Internet as I am. I know most of these people. None of them takes that metaphor seriously. Q.E.D.”

“Oh. I see,” Kivistik said, a little hotly. He had seen an opening. “So we should rely on the technocrats to tell us what to think, and how to think, about this technology.”

The expressions of the others seemed to say that this was a telling blow, righteously struck.

“I’m not sure what a technocrat is,” Randy said. “Am I a technocrat? I’m just a guy who went down to the bookstore and bought a couple of textbooks on TCP/IP, which is the underlying protocal of the Internet, and read them. And then I signed on to a computer, which anyone can do nowadays, and I messed around with it for a few years, and now I know all about it. Does that make me a technocrat?”

“You belonged to the technocratic elite even before you pick up that book,” Kivistik said. “The ability to wade through a technical text, and to understand it, is a privilege. It is a privilige conferred by an education that is available only to members of an elite class. That’s what I meant by a technocrat.”

“I went to a public school,” Randy said. “And then I went to a state university. From that point on, I was self-educated.”

Charlene broke in. [. . .] “And your family?” Charlene asked frostily.

Randy took a deep breath, stifled the urge to sigh. “My father’s an engineer. He teaches at a state college.”

“And his father?”

“A mathemetician.”

Charlene raised her eyebrows. So did nearly everyone else at the table. Case closed.

“I strenuously object to being labeled and pigeonholed and stereotyped as a technocrat,” Randy said, deliberately using oppressed-person’s language[ . . .]. Some of them, out of habit, looked at him soberly, etiqutte dictated that you give all sympathy to the oppressed. Others gasped in outrage to hear these words coming from the lips of a known and convicted white male technocrat. “No one in my family has ever had much money or power,” he said.

“I think the point that Charlene’s making is like this,” said Tomas, [. . .] “Just by virtue of coming from a scientific family, you are a member of a privileged elite. You’re not aware of it—but members of privileged elites are rarely aware of their privileges.”

Randy finished the thought. “Until people like you come along to explain to us how stupid, to say nothing of morally bankrupt, we are.”

“The false consiousness Tomas is speaking of is exactly what makes entrenched power elites so entrenched,” Charlene said.

“Well, I don’t feel very entrenched,” Randy said. “I’ve worked my ass off to get where I’ve gotten.”

“A lot of people work hard all their lives and get nowhere,” someone said accusingly. Look out! The sniping had begun.

“Well, I’m sorry I haven’t had the good grace to get nowhere,” Randy said, now feeling just a bit surly for the first time, “but I have found that if you work hard, educate yourself, and keep your wits about you, you can find your way in this society.”

“But that’s straight out of some nineteenth-century Horatio Alger book,” Thomas sputtered.

“So? Just because it’s an old idea, doesn’t mean it’s wrong,” Randy said.
1999