“Under this scenario, in sum, we would collectively stumble our way toward a fragmented, parochial, Big Brotherish kind of information system “characterized by supervision, regulation, constraint, and control.” Moreover, given his view of the world in 1979, Lick had to rate this possibility as far more likely than his optimistic projection. An integrated, open, universally accessible Multinet wouldn’t just happen on its own, he pointed out. It would require cooperation and effort on a time scale of decades, “a long, hard process of deliberate study, experiment, analysis, and development.” That process, in turn, could be sustained only by the forging of a collective vision, some rough consensus on the part of thousands or maybe even millions of people that an open electronic commons was worth having. And that, wrote Lick, would require leadership.”