Those whose firms are considering utilizing filtering
software to censor the Internet may want to offer the
possibility of the following fictional scenario to
management.
Below is a paragraph from _Brain Storm_ by Richard Dooling.
If you haven't encountered this author before, he is
formerly a lawyer and a respiratory therapist for ICUs -- at
different times, I'm sure -- ;-). Anyway, he's very
cynical, but in the process, also very funny.
Pay particular attention to the last sentence if you read
this quickly.
The main character is a new lawyer in a huge law firm
(almost 600 lawyers), who describes himself as a Webhead and
Westlaw geek. He does _all_ his research by computer (okay,
that's a topic for another message.). He has been appointed
by Federal District Court to represent an accused hate
murderer. I know this description seems redundant, but in
the setting of the book, federal hate crime laws have been
ruled unconstitutional, so Congress has enacted stiffer
penalties for existing laws for those who commit crimes
based on hate. Government's seeking the death penalty.
Time period seems a few years into the future, although
after 150 pages, the author hasn't actually said the book
takes place in the future.
In the court room, this guy's in way over his head. But on
the computer ....
"He logged on, clicked an icon to dial up the firm's
Internet provider, and summoned two search engines, both of
them at least five times more powerful than the
firm-approved stuff the other lawyers used. They appeared
as graphical renditions of robot spiders, with bellies
containing double rows of blank slots for entering search
terms. He named one spider Rachel and began entering test
strings in the slots: Rachel Palmquist [a neuroscientist,
who wants to prove scientifically that the murderer
committed this crime based on abnormal neural reflexes; no
&%$@, Sherlock!], neuroscience, ..., violence, criminal,
brain, .... He programmed it for a search of the Web, the
WELL, ECHO, Usenet, FidoNet, BITNET, even AOL and
CompuServe. He told them to assimilate and acquire lesser
search engines and in turn dispatch those engine-applets
abroad on the Net to gather and winnow according to the same
subordinate search-term equations. In a few minutes, the
search engines would return with an achieved target number
of hits. He named the other spider Hate, opened its belly
of Skeletal search slots and entered hate speech, free
speech, First Amendment, bias crime, penalty enhance!, case
title(Wisconsin & Mitchell), federal death penalty. He'd
already scoured Westlaw with these terms and found a
boatload of law review topics and cases, the usual heat and
light of an exploding First Amendment issue. Now he needed
to know the media perceptions of these issues, the political
ramifications of laws he had not even known about a week ago
(Dooling, Brain Storm, page 150)."
Genie
-- Genie Tyburski PH: 215-864-8151 Research Librarian FX: 215-864-8999 Ballard Spahr Andrews & Ingersoll tyburski@virtualchase.com 1735 Market St. Philadelphia, PA 19103Editor of The Virtual Chase at http://www.virtualchase.com/
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