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bad memory
From: David Farber <farber () central cis upenn edu>
Date: Fri, 6 Jan 1995 15:59:57 -0500
Date: Fri, 6 Jan 1995 14:05:22 -0500 From: Charles Brownstein <cbrownst () CNRI Reston VA US> Dave- planning for this "overnight Gingrich innovation" of congress business on line began in 1987 when Gorden Bell participated in laying out an architecture for information systemsfor the House and Senate. It got a big boost last year when many members went on line, and now that most Executive branch agencies and White House have active Web sites, (following years of work by the FNC to legitimize IP over the objections of GSA and NIST, and the push of the National Performance Review report on Reinventing Government With Information Technology). Newt does understand the power of direct access. Next he needs to understand how much more ecomimically sound, and feasible it is to support the R&D that brings the technology into the price range of every American, and the necessity of an assured infrastructure of virtually infinite channel capacity-- ie as opposed to giving everyone a laptop or even a tax credit for one. WASHINGTON (Reuter) - Congress moved further into the
computer age Thursday when House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Librarian of Congress James Billington announced that a new information system called Thomas, after Thomas Jefferson, was now available to people around the world. The database of congressional information, including the full texts of House bills, will be available through Internet. It will vastly expand online information available when it becomes fully operational, the Library of Congress said. Gingrich hailed the new system during an appearance before the House Ways and Means Committee saying that information on the House would now be available in 84 countries. *********** And he gave the committee what he called ``a nutty idea,'' to get members ``thinking beyond the norm.'' ``Maybe we need a tax credit for the poorest Americans to buy a laptop,'' he said. *********** ``Now, maybe that's wrong, maybe it's expensive, maybe we can't do it, but I'll tell you, any signal we can send to the poorest Americans that says, 'We're going into a 21st century, third wave information age, and so are you, and we want to carry you with us,' begins to change the game.''
Charles N. Brownstein Executive Director Cross-Industry Working Team Corporation for National Research Initiatives 1895 Preston White Drive Suite 100 Reston, VA 22091 Tel: (703) 620-8990 Fax: (703) 620-0913 Internet: cbrownst () cnri reston va us On the Web: http://www.cnri.reston.va.us:3000/XIWT/public.html
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