Monroe E. Price writes about free expression in the face of new technologies offering a different means of communication than existed before, and he notes that every advancement in this area creates the possibility of altering the infrastructure of discourse, reshaping the ideas of a community. Price wants to add his own view of this matter to earlier analyses by sociologists and others, and he says that in considering the impact of new technologies on freedom of speech, he would like to suggest two fundamental forms of speech patterns in society, the open and closed terrain of speech. These have different functions and require different regulations, and neither form is necessarily more central to a democratic society. A new technology is important because it will cause a significant dynamic shift in the mix of types of speech in society and a shift in the way information is transmitted and distributed among citizens.
Such a shift may be difficult for us to see when we are living in the middle of it, for we are taken more with slogans than with substance. The current slogan is the 500 channel universe promised by cable and satellite television and the personal computer, and this could provide either actual diversity or only the illusion of choice. Such vast changes in technology will have major impacts on the political realm and may decide the nature and role of government and the importance of the marketplace of ideas. Price suggests another framework for analyzing these claims, and he offers to expand on his distinction between the two models of speech and to review instances of speech regulation reinterpreted to fit the model of the open and closed terrain of speech. The open terrain is manifested in a world of channels of communication that are transparent, commonly received, pervasive, and everywhere available. On the other hand, closed terrains are those where channels of communication are reserved and private, encryp...