A-Infos (en) Freedom Press on the net

["Freedom Press" <freedom@tao.ca>]

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      A - I N F O S  N E W S  S E R V I C E
            http://www.ainfos.ca/
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Although this article was written for our (paper) readers about 95% 
of whom do not have access to the internet we feel some readers on 
the a-infos list might also find it interesting.
==================

INTRODUCING FREEDOM PRESS ON THE NET

Speaking on the 'phone the other day to one of our more faithful
readers I was advised that 'Freedom really must get its act together
on the web'. More and more readers (I was informed) were coming on
line and it would be a good idea to bring them all together in some
way. 

This conversation, and I suppose others, brought home to me the fact,
which I was already aware of, that I had to write something for
Freedom telling readers (on and off line) what we have been up to for
the last four years or so using short sentences without too many sub
clauses and commas. 

I am, clearly, a miserable failure.

Firstly, may I atone for some of my guilt by pointing out that the
editorial in The Raven on Communication and Language tells the story
of the early days? Yes. Please. But this is perhaps not good enough
and I must confess that my excuses ring hollow from that point onwards
and given that those who use the net know how fast things can change
in that environment it is simply a truism to say that a lot has
happened since then. Indeed, a lot will have happened since when I
typed this and now, dear reader, when you are reading it.

WORKING WITH OTHERS

We are of course anarchists - social, lifestylist or, in my case,
social-lifestylist - and have this habit of wanting to work with
others of a similar mindset. Unfortunately, some comrades consider
Freedom Press to be 'liberal', 'bourgeois' or 'fascist' and so it is
useful to use a new name sometimes even if we are only doing what we
always do. This was why in the early days we set up the a-infos news
network and a measure of our success was when Black Flag started
carrying advertisements for the service clearly unaware that we had
set it up. 

A-infos today continues to do its work virtually without our input.
There are many reason for this but most importantly we would identify
the issue of quality of material. Back in 1997 we felt that a-infos
was, by then, awash with the digital diarrhoea which the internet
encourages and that there was little point in posting messages to a
list with some 20 pieces a day when one moment you were reading about
a forthcoming meeting of a feminist group in Vancouver, followed
(instantaneously) by the Anti-Fascist Internet Daily, followed (again
instantaneously) by a report about a weird genetic mutation of some
obscure Soya bean in India. Important issues all. But there seemed to
be no planned development of stories and the main message each day was
a simple one: information overload. A-Infos is still a chameleon like
beast. Some days good; some days bad. It really needs someone to love
it and nurture it.

We, at Freedom Press, continued (and continue) to work with others but
at that time we felt it important to establish our own areas of
concern more systematically. This was why we set up fpi.

FPI

We needed our own mailing list and so we asked our good friends in
Toronto (without whom all our activities would have been well nigh
impossible) to set it up for us with a discussion list alongside
called fpi-d. The acronym fpi (lower case please; computers are
stupid) stands for Freedom Press International. Anyone with internet
access can subscribe to the list and currently we have some 250
subscribers. 'Traffic' is low, you are unlikely to receive more than
two e mails a week. So why have we never mentioned it in Freedom
before? The simple reason is that we didn't feel you would be
interested. fpi carries extracts from Freedom Press publications (in
particular the journal you are reading) and it seems unnecessary for
you to read it twice. Sometimes we include extracts from The Raven and
once or twice we have included an extract from a book we have
published (Harold Barclay's Culture and Anarchism was very popular).

However, things are changing and it would now seem appropriate to talk
about the list a little on these pages for two reasons.

Firstly, it is the nature of the internet that any information you
receive via your computer can be forwarded to others. For this reason
it would make sense for folk who read Freedom and have access to the
internet to subscribe to the list and help us make others aware of
what we are doing - Americans call this outreach. Secondly, Freedom
is, of course, a fortnightly. As we have become more sophisticated in
using the internet it is now the case that we can respond more quickly
to events in the world and so now we sometimes include information on
the mailing list that doesn't get into Freedom. Two examples.

Back in 1995 there was what came close to being a general strike in
France. The French are good at blowing up quickly and fading just as
fast. The whole thing was over in the space of a couple of weeks.
Freedom only came out once during this period whereas the a-infos news
service was carrying sometimes some 10 files of information about
events on a daily basis in multiple languages (this was a-infos at its
best). Another, more recent, example was the general strike in Ecuador
in March 1999. We were able to bring information to people about what
was happening as it happened both on our web site and on the mailing
list. By the time it would have been published in Freedom it would
have been archaeology.

NON ACCESS

We can already hear the criticisms from our dear friends Colin Ward
and libertarian. What of those who do not have access to the internet?
As we go into the 'digital age' will there be a social substrata of
information poor citizens who will be ignorant of what their info rich
cousins enjoy? Is the internet responsible for the demise of the biro
and rural postal services?

I think much of this criticism is unfair. For sure these are important
issues and I hope to return to them at some time in the future using
short sentences all will understand (don't hold your breath, as I say
it has taken four years to get around to writing this piece) but for
me the essential is that we cannot forgo this opportunity whilst we
have it. The Freedom Press web site and its parallel mailing lists
allow us to reach out to a large number of people (probably tens of
thousands over the last four years) who would otherwise be happily
ignorant of our activities. In turn if even a small percentage
subscribe to one of our journals, buy a book or visit Angel Alley we
all benefit.

But perhaps ultimately it boils down to a generation divide between
those who have to face the fact that they will be around for a few
years in the forthcoming millennium (whenever it starts) and those
who, sadly, won't. We, the younger ones, have to live with this, for
good or ill, and the only thing we would ask of those who have helped
guide us in the past as we have taken our first tentative steps on a
long road is that they will now encourage us to walk on our own and
write pieces like this in sensible, short sentences and with few sub
clauses.

lingvoj



THE FREEDOM PRESS WEBSITE

The Freedom Press Website now has hundreds of files of information
available to the public. Here is a list of our main indexes.

http://freedom.tao.ca	Our main home page
http://freedom.tao.ca/FIN	International News
http://freedom.tao.ca/Raven	The Raven
http://freedom.tao.ca/Books	Brief extracts from some of our books.
http://freedom.tao.ca/writers.html	Articles indexed by author
http://freedom.tao.ca/topic.html	Articles indexed by theme
http://freedom.tao.ca/Trans	Freedom archive
http://freedom.tao.ca/luddling	Special section on Culture and 
 Technology

GUEST APPEARANCES

http://freedom.tao.ca/ain	Anarchist Information Network
http://freedom.tao.ca/totlib	Total Liberty
http://freedom.tao.ca/NELL	The New English Learning and 
 Languages Review




MAILING LISTS

Anyone who can use e mail can join these. Send a message to:

majordomo@tao.ca

Leave the subject line blank and in the body of the message type

subscribe fpi
subscribe fpi-d

You will then receive instructions asking you to confirm your
subscription. DO AS YOU ARE TOLD - YOU WILL BE TALKING TO A COMPUTER. 

The principle is the same for any list. So, for example, the message
subscribe a-infos will get you on that list. If you send the word help
to the majordomo address you will get... ummmm... 'help'.

If you would prefer to deal with a human being simply send a message
to freedom@tao.ca saying whatever you like. You'll be talking to me
and I'll simply ignore you if you are rude.



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