Communications
Jan. 28, 2000
Umbilical.com
FORUM Not since the wave's introduction at a Notre Dame-USC football game has the world been so crazed about an invention - until the Internet.
The advent of the Internet has revolutionized society. No aspect of daily life is immune from this radical transformation. The pace of change in our thinking and the sociocultural impacts on our behavior are breathtaking.
The instant information age has overtaken us. For example, the simple pleasure of reading a newspaper with the morning coffee is totally passé. No longer smudging our hands with ink, we dial up our favorite paper, scroll through the pages and "clip" any stories of interest.
The digital economy is here.
This Christmas, all we heard about was e-commerce - shopping on the World Wide Web at one of tens of thousands of "dot.coms," where we can buy anything sold in an old-fashioned store or shopping mall, from clothes to a car, videos to vacations. Shopping on www.amazon.com is less time-consuming and often saves money, not to mention freedom from traffic jams and "Parking Lot Full" signs.
I know a widow in her 40s who has not left her house for four months. She buys groceries through www.greengrocer.com, pays her bills using www.quicken.com and sends e-mails on aol.com to her relatives and friends (including a few without computers!). A subscriber to www.netsex.com, she has abandoned any thought of remarrying.
Another neighbor never goes to work anymore. A former taxidermist, he now works at home buying and selling stocks. This rookie "e-trader" is happy to make an eighth of a point on a trade. The only drawback is his deteriorating eyesight, but he has found a doctor who performs eye surgery over the Internet.
Conventional schools are also anachronisms. We can now obtain our high school, bachelor's and even Ph.D. degrees over the Internet. One college - University of Virtual Reality - offers a crash course covering kindergarten through a Doctor of Medicine degree in only four weeks. (Total cost: $495,000, including diplomas and transcripts.)
Even political elections are being totally reinvented.
Richard Morris - President Clinton's former campaign adviser - has launched www.vote.com. As Morris recounts in his provocative new book by the same title, this interactive service allows people to express their views on dozens of issues ranging from the Panama Canal to gays in the military. Morris electronically forwards your vote to your elected representatives, who in turn send you a form e-mail pretending to care about your opinion.
The Web site www.vote.com is all very instantaneous - and the harbinger of electronic elections for every public office from alderman to U.S. president.
Who would have thought that the impersonal computer could bring people together to vote on zoning laws, state budgets and marijuana legalization? This brings new meaning to the concept of universal suffrage. A representative form of government with elected officials, career politicians and campaign-finance corruption will become a dinosaur in the cyber-era.
Why limit our political revolution to the United States? The Internet has drawn the entire world together into one global forum. Who needs a United Nations when the people of the world can decide directly issues of war and peace? Starbucks could sponsor these weekly referenda and reward voters with a free café latte.
That leads me to wonder why the legal system should be immune from such cosmic changes. Rather than relying on a jury of only 12 men and women, we could televise all criminal trials and let thousands of viewers decide the defendant's fate. To boost ratings, starting with capital cases might be advisable.
Such a radical reform would require some retooling of our judicial system. We should start by upgrading the quality of the judiciary. Most of our jurists are dull, nontelegenic folk. For Internet trials, we will need charismatic judges like Judge Judy or Matt Damon.
Also, court hearings should take place on studio sound stages for the best quality lighting and sound, and Vanna White should be the bailiff whenever possible.
At the risk of appearing precipitous, I have reserved a domain name for this new Web site - www.vigilantejustice.com. Remarkably, none of those opportunists tying up attractive domain names and then hawking them for millions of dollars has reserved this name. I had considered www.justiceforsale.com, but some enterprising lawyer named Dot Com has already glommed onto it.
Potential sponsors will not be in short supply. Nike will outfit the defendants with special warm-ups, while AT&T will provide free lifetime cellular service for anyone acquitted. An offer by Sizzler to feed death-row inmates their last meal was politely declined.
The Internet trials offer attractive content for voracious media companies. A television deal with Rupert Murdoch is being negotiated. The only stumbling block is his insistence that executions be televised exclusively on the Fox Network during NFL football games.
Rumors are rampant that AOL may take over our new service instead of Time-Warner. A preemptive offer from Disney/Capital Cities/ABC/ESPN/Disneyland/Go.com may be in the offing.
The immediate benefits of Cyber Justice are obvious. Abolishing trial by jury would save millions of dollars. The entire community, not just a handful of elite individuals, would be afforded the right to sit in judgment of its peers.
Unpopular defendants like child molesters, tobacco industry executives and HMO officers would be convicted routinely. Now I already can hear the knee-jerk protests of civil libertarians. What about due process of law? Trial by jury is one of our most fundamental liberties. The rich would be able to cheat justice by buying votes.
Such constitutional concerns once may have been legitimate. But the Brave New Digital World brooks no nostalgic adherence to outmoded traditions. We live in a world the size of a computer screen, where everyone's opinion is equal, and justice is a commodity. Virtual reality is the only reality.
The more I think about it, the more I regret that this bold innovation was not available just a few years ago: With trial by Internet, O.J. Simpson would be behind bars for the rest of his life.
Pierce O'Donnell, a trial lawyer in Los Angeles with O'Donnell & Shaeffer, is co-author of "Fatal Subtraction: How Hollywood Really Does Business."
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