Internet Comertial Future ???

[Dave Farber <farber () central cis upenn edu>]

for academic evaluation


BC-Wiring the Planet III, Adv25,1293<
Adv25<
For release Tuesday, May 25, and thereafter<
Wiring the Planet<

Part III: Ensuring Equal Access to Information in a Brave New World<
With AP Photo, Graphic WIRING LOGO<
           EDITOR'S NOTE _ Long before he became vice president, Al Gore was 
an
zealous proponent of a digitally linked nation. Rural libraries and
inner-city schoolchildren would have the same access to data superhighways
as corporate big-shots. Equal opportunity would color the U.S. charge into
the Information Age. The final installment of the three-part series
``Wiring the Planet'' looks at the promise of equal-opportunity computer
networking.
           ___=
By FRANK BAJAK=
Associated Press Writer=
        NEW YORK (AP) _ The year is 2010. In a New York tenement, three young
children sit transfixed, watching ``Revenge of the Space Creeps'' for the
third time in a week.
   Cockroaches scurry through the kitchen. Paint is peeling off the walls.
The ceiling leaks. But the kids have entertainment.
        Piped in by the ``information company'' is Talkback TV _ the entire
history of television programming on order. Tell the voice box next to the
TV what you want and up it comes on the screen.
        The Information Age may have dawned a decade ago, but Talkback TV is
its only benefit for these kids. Their school has no computers to link them
with the rich, wide world of digital information. Nor does the local
library.
           Not only in the ghetto but also in the suburbs, community 
networking
still is struggling. Information is neither cheap nor easily acessible.
   Computer networking advocates are haunted by this vision of the future.
They fear that without more firm federal support for grass-roots computing,
too many people will get priced out of the information market.
        They also think most political leaders fail to appreciate that, using
existing technologies and for not much money, the nation's schools and
libraries already could be telecommunicating _ sharing ideas and getting
easy access to top-notch educational and scientific resources.
        ``We've not had a leader stand up and advocate a national mission for
citizen teleliteracy, centered on community networks, to regain our
competitiveness in the Information Age,'' says Frank Odasz, a Western
Montana College professor helping lead the crusade.
   Federal dollars built the backbones linking the nation's main computer
networks. But now that big business has awakened to telecomputing's
potential, Washington wants out of the contruction business.
           Fortune 500 companies by the score are opening gateways to the
mega-tendriled Internet, that worldwide web of interconnected computer
networks that began as a tool of scientists and now is used by an estimated
10 million people ranging from schoolkids to President Clinton.
  Even the university-run regional networks that are the Internet's U.S.
hubs, facing funding cuts, are going commercial.
   Once a collegial realm of pure research where software was exchanged as
freely as ideas, the Internet fast is becoming an entrepreneur's dream. Its
successor is expected to create a market worth several trillion dollars.
   The regional Bell companies, long-distance carriers, cable TV and even
cellular and satellite firms all are clamoring for a stake in the
next-generation telecommunications matrix.
   In this atmosphere, and with an eye on the deficit, the Clinton
administration sees its main role as underwriting the development of a
high-speed experimental network linking supercomputer centers.
   ``The private sector is going to connect people to that backbone,''
says Mike Nelson, the White House point man on the issue in the office of
Science and Technology Policy. ``It's like the road system. The federal
government only pays for the interstate highway.''
   ``Unfortunately, there are people out there who would like to see the
government pay for the whole thing and we don't have $50 to $100 billion.''
   Nelson says the administration wants to invest up to $7.5 billion in
the effort through 1997 _ ``and that has to be matched by 10 times the
money from the state, local government and private sector.''
   Funding of grass-roots pilot projects will be secondary.
   In their February technology policy announcement, Clinton and Gore
promised ``to connect university campuses, community colleges, and K-12
schools to a high-speed communications network providing a broad range of
information resources.''
  Their budget calls for some $500 million in Commerce Department grants
through 1997 to help schools, libraries and health care providers get
hooked up to the emerging network.
   Once they get connected, however, the people who set up these pilot
projects will be left to their own devices to maintain the links _ a tough
proposition for many in a time of fiscal uncertainty.
   Odasz fears this will not be enough. His Big Sky Telegraph project has
gotten hundreds of Montanans involved in networking _ but the lobbying can
be exhausting.
   Odasz has testified before Congress and found a key ally in Sen. Bob
Kerrey, D-Neb., who is backing creation of a ``Prairie Fire'' network in
his home state.
   But too many politicians haven't done their homework, Odasz said, and
don't understand that schools and libraries don't need expensive
leased-line links to reach the Internet.
   All a school or library needs to get started is a local computer that
makes a nightly call to a network host computer to exchange electronic
mail.
   In Hobson, Mont., population 200, schoolchildren use this method to
exchange E-mail with children in Australia, Japan and Russia. Monthly
telecommunications costs: $50.
   Colorado telecommunications pioneer Dave Hughes, a sounding board
Nelson has consulted, estimates that the nation's 83,000 public schools
could be connected on such a basis for about $1 billion.
   Hughes and Odasz brand it folly for ordinary Americans to wait for the
broadband fiber-optic networks that the government aims to breed with its
National Research and Education Network initiative.
   ``One does not teach the theory of flight by putting students into an
F-16 the first day,'' Hughes said.
   One bridge technology, called ISDN, for Integrated Services Digital
Network, allows existing copper phone wire to carry separate data and voice
lines into the home. ISDN already is being offered to businesses in
California. But will it get into the home? It has no champions in the
Clinton Administration.
   Marc Rotenberg, Washington director of Computer Professionals for
Social Responsibility, thinks a crucial first step to preventing the
creation of a subclass of information have-nots is getting all public
libraries connected.
  ``I really believe that the key to information equality in the future
will be the strength of the public library,'' Rotenberg said. ``For two
centuries, public libraries have stood as a measure of the nation's
commitment to public access to information, to education, to literacy.
   ``Now we are at the point in time where those three values are most
critical and folks are saying we can't afford it.''
   Only a few hundred U.S. public libraries currently are connected, said
Stephen Wolff, who coordinates development of the next-generation Internet
at the National Science Foundation.
   Hughes, a retired Army colonel, is a tireless advocate of electronic
democracy, which he has fostered successfully in Colorado Springs, Colo., a
thoroughly networked city.
   A man partial to Stetsons and given to roaming the range with a laptop
that connects him to the Internet, Hughes is something of a living legend
among Internet cognoscenti.
   His projects have ranged from getting Native Americans and Hispanics
connected via bulletin-board systems to enlisting Russian programmers to
develop communications software he wants to get into American schools.
   Hughes said it is too early to say whether the Clinton Administration
is doing enough for grass roots U.S. networking.
   ``They are just getting into it,'' he said.
End Adv for Tuesday, May 25

-- 
 un abrazo
 Jose
 ***********************************************************************
 Jose Soriano   - Red Cientifica Peruana - e-mail : js () rcp pe
 Av. Alonso de la Molina 1698 Monterrico - Lima - Peru  
 TE: ( 51 -14) 46 - 16 -95 / 36 89 89 anexo 527 / fax:  36 40 67
 ----------------------------------------------------------------------- 


------ End of Forwarded Message