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Report
Networks and Community Compiled 009
NETWORKS AND COMMUNITY : January 17, 1994
Networks and Community is devoted to encouraging
LOCAL resource creation & GLOBAL resource sharing.
compiler : Sam Sternberg samsam@vm1.yorku.ca
This 3rd report of 1994 is the 9th weekly survey.
Coverage includes
ADMINISTRATION POLICY - DISCUSSIONS - NEW SERVICES
FUNDING - TRENDS
-------------------------------------------------------
ADMINISTRATION POLICY
Evidence of the adminstation's interest in the community networking
movement is mounting.
---------------------------------
Vice-President Al Gore accepted an invitation from Dr. Avrum
Bluming to dedicate the Los Angeles Free-Net in March. He did so
in response to an invitation from the floor by Dr. Bluming at the
National Information Infrastructure Summit at UCLA
and before a national audience on C-SPAN.!
--------------------------------
Tom Kalil, <tkalil@arpa.mil> with the White House National
Economic Council posted to the Communet listserve regarding
Monday's adminstration announcement about the application process
for the Empowerment Zone/Enterprise Community initiative.
"After information on the initiative is on the Internet, I would
like to know whether this mailing list would be willing to
"brainstorm" on what role the NII could play in promoting the goals
of the initiative. The Vice President has stated his interest in
exploring this issue. After some period of time, the
list could provide the Administration with an archive of the
discussion and a summary of the points made."
He made several suggestions for possible subjects:
" Different empowerment zones could exchange information on their
goals for community and economic revitalization. The gov't could
streamline the applications process using EDI. Communities could
use "civic networks" to make the process of planning and
implementing community revitalization a more democratic one.
Education and training programs could take advantage
of the Internet or video servers. Local governments could use
information technology to deliver services more efficiently ...
Inspiring examples and pointers to people, information, resources
would also be helpful. Potential roles for grassroots
organizations, gov't at all levels, private sector, and just plain
folks would be helpful."
He went on to say " How do I know anyone will read and take
seriously our proposals? I will personally commit to providing a
summary of any ensuing discussion to the relevant people in the
Administration.
So, YOU ARE INVITED TO PARTICIPATE, I hope many of you will.
--------------------------
The text of all recent speeches and background documents are
available through the gopher server at :
--> ace.esusda.gov
choose 4. Americans Communicating Electronically/
9. National Performance Review Information/
9. Telecommunications Policy Reform Initiative/
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION: If you have questions concerning this
service, please contact: almanac-admin@ace.esusda.gov (almanac
administration)
-------------------------------
DISCUSSION
COMMUNET LISTSERV
Gore's speeches are being discussed on Communet. The attitude is
cautiously favorable. The administration seems to be slowing
convincing many of the participants of its sincerity.
--------------------------------------
The most interesting dissenting voice came from a posting of
the following opinion piece. Reprinted from _The Chronicle of
Higher Education_, vol. 40, no. 19 (12 January 1994), pp. B1-B2:
Democratizing Technology By Richard E. Sclove
The entire article was posted but this part impressed me most
........ " It's a beguiling vision, but it overlooks a major
factor:
democracy. Few citizens, workers, or communities are being
consulted about technology decisions that their taxes will help
support, decisions that will profoundly affect their lives.
It _is_ possible to involve citizens in making technology
policy. Last year, for example, a panel of ordinary Danish
citizens spent several days hearing expert presentations on
genetic manipulation in animal breeding. After cross-examining
the experts and deliberating among themselves, the citizens
decided that it would be "entirely unacceptable" to genetically
ngineer new pets, but ethical to use such methods to develop a
treatment for cancer.
To organize this type of "consensus conference," the Danish
government's Technology Board selects panels of citizens of
varying backgrounds, and then publicizes their judgments through
the news media, local debates, leaflets, and videos. Surveys
show that the Danish public and politicians are better informed
on issues addressed this way than are the citizens of other
countries facing similar questions.
During a recent briefing at the U.S. Office of Technology
Assessment, Norman Vig, a political scientist from Carleton
College argued that consensus conferences represent a promising
model for the United States to use to broaden the range of people
who influence technological decisions. Universities could
contribute substantially to democratizing technology if such a
model were adopted--by helping citizen advisory panels analyze
complex technical issues, by preparing "social impact" statements
on technological proposals, and by creating community-research
centers to help neighborhoods evaluate and influence alternative
strategies for economic development.
Government officials report that today just three groups
dominate technology policy-making: the Pentagon and the national
weapons laboratories, elite academic scientists, and business.
The political scientist Philip Frankenfeld has called the
resulting range of opinion "the sound of one wagon circling."
Public interest groups, grass roots organizations, and ordinary
citizens represent a negligible force."
---------------------
A posting of a proposed new cable regulation policy from Washington
State has generated considerable heated debate. It is intended to
prevent monopoly control over local systems and mandate universal
access. So far debate has divided along traditional lines - free
the marketplace vs protect us against it. The legislation in its
final form should benefit from the comments by an increased
precision of focus and clarified expression of its intent.
The one real benefit to most lurkers has been the posting of very
precise data on the percentage of american households with phone
service.
-----------------------
A provocative posting on problems with the communet movement also
generated a lot of comment. The poster suggested that most effort
at building geographic communities was a waste of time. A few folks
agreed but many respondents strongly disagreed.
" And most computer people are not interested in geographic
community. They use freenets as free (or cheap) on-ramps to the
Internet. [ provocative poster ]
" My personal experience contrasts with this. I *am* a Computer
Person (sounds like the beginnings of a 12 step program). Virtual
community appeals to me. I have made countless friends around the
US and around e world, and have shared joy and sadness with them.
I've gotten incredible advice and support from some of them, and
others have raised my blood pressure to unimaginable levels.
BUT ... although the WELL is not a community net in the sense of
free or low cost access, I am growing a local, geographic community
through the people I have met on this system. We have lunch. We
go to each others houses. I trust them. They hire me. I fall in
love with them. I see and touch them. Geographic, corporeal
community supplements the virtual.
And when I travel, the non-locals show me around, give me shelter,
and enrich my life.
The Internet is a big kick, but ultimately, it's boring. It's the
people who are out there using it that make it interesting. The
bottom line, I think, that computer-mediated communications works
for enough people that our efforts are not wasted."
The most interesting negative comment focused on the need to make
civic nets easy to use if we expect most people to get involved.
---------------------------
Another discussion focused on the question of subsidizing the
community nets and the Internet. Again the usual position were
taken, but the conclusion seemed to be that some form of subsidies
were inevitable. The issue was really how to do an effective job of
using the funding.
--------------------------------------
NPTN LISTSERV
Redefining NPTN is now its major task. 3 areas are being examined.
I. ORGANIZATIONAL ISSUES
How should NPTN define itself as an organization? More
specifically what are the key function(s) it should be playing over
the next three years?
II. COMMUNITY COMPUTING AND ECONOMICS
How do we build a stable economic model that will support the
development of both NPTN and each of the individual affiliate
systems?
III. NPTN AND POLITICAL ACTION
Should NPTN take an active stance in the development of federal.
state, and/or local legislation or regulation to promote the
development of community computing?
---------------------------
Nptn now has 108 affilated networks and organizing commities in 6
countries. All 6 countries - U.S., Canada, Finland, Germany,
Sweden, and New Zealand - have operating networks. With more on the
way.
---------------------------
Academy 1 - Nptn's K-12 program was featured on a recent segment of
the CNN special on the information Superhighway. Scripts can be
viewed on the Well's gopher --> well.nkosi.sf.ca.us
----------------------------
Access for the disabled is made more difficult by graphical
interfaces. Their voice synthesisers can't handle the "decoration".
Discussion emphasised the need to continue text based access even
as more graphical interfaces are introduced.
-----------------------------
The system administrator at the Finland Free-Net site
in Vaasa, Finland informed NPTN that they have changed their
Internet address. If you have Vaasa on your teleport,
please point it to: freeport.uwasa.fi
Remember this is a change in the VAASA site NOT in the Helsinki
site.
-----------------------------
Several Free-nets shared news of funding successes. Including local
alliances with T.V. stations and even army bases.
------------------------------
The collaborative project with the Congressional Office
of Technology Assessment has begun; and the following five
systems will run the "OTA Tele-
forum" feature for the next three weeks:
Buffalo Free-Net
Cleveland Free-Net
Denver Free-Net
Tallahassee Free-Net
Youngstown Free-Net
Over the next five years the Social Security Administration
(SSA) intends to spend about $1.1 billion on information systems
procurement and modernization. Critics of SSA--most notably
the General Accounting Office--say that SSA does not have a
solid justification for this huge investment. That they have not
shown that it will result in improved service delivery, or an
improved work environment.
To help settle this dispute both agencies turned to the
Congressional Office of Technology Assessment (OTA) to do a
study of the issue. The OTA, in turn, has asked the National
Public Telecomputing Network (NPTN) to set-up an electronic
forum which would allow YOU to express your opinions on the
matter.
Here's how it works...
When you enter the TeleForums you will be able to select any
(or all) of four issues to comment upon. The issues have to do
with:
1) SOCIAL SECURITY AND CUSTOMER INTERACTION
2) NETWORK ACCESS TO BENEFIT FILING SERVICES
3) DISTRIBUTION OF BENEFITS
4) YOUR GENERAL SATISFACTION WITH THE SSA
You then choose the issue you want to examine and READ THE FILE
CALLED "README." This file will contain a summary of the issue
and the kind of things we would like the discussions to focus on.
Each of these forums will be running simultaneously on NPTN
affiliates.
NEW SERVICES
===============
KNOWBOTS HAVE APPEARED AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA!
A new command "the update command", enables users of the Library's
MELVYL databases to create a search in a database to be run
automatically on a weekly basis. As new records are added to
the database, with the results are sent to the users e-mail
address. This feature is often called "current awareness" or
"selective dissemination of information" (SDI). It is a convenient
way to stay current with recent journal articles on a particular
topic, the work of a particular author, new books on a topic being
cataloged for the UC collections, or the table of contents of
selected journals. This command may be used in any MELVYL database
except the PE (Periodical Titles) database.
AUTOMATED VERONICA MENU BUILDER
The use of veronica is estimated to be about 1,000,000 searches per
month now. There are only a few well-known sites offering veronica
access menus: Nevada, Minnesota, SUNET, NYSERNET, and a few
others. These access menus are used pretty heavily.
Steven Foster ( foster@nevada.edu ) has written a program which you
may use to create a menu of active veronica servers within your
gopher server menu. This program can be run frequently to ensure
that the menu does not display veronica sites which are down for
maintenance or unavailable because of network problems.
Tentatively it is called "maltshop". Version 0.2 is now
available.
You can fetch the program by gopher or by ftp.
By gopher: Path=0/veronica/maltshop-0.2
Host=veronica.scs.unr.edu
Port=70
Type=0
by ftp:
anonymous ftp to veronica.scs.unr.edu
/veronica-code/menu-builder-0.2
----------------------------
A PLACE TO ANNOUNCE NEW FREE SERVICES & SERVICE IMPROVEMENTS
Richard W. Wiggins <rww@mugwump.cl.msu.edu> announced:
comp.infosystems.announce
"This is to formally announce the creation of a new Usenet group,
comp.infosystems.announce. This news group was created to provide
a single place where Internet information providers can announce
newly-created and significantly-updated resources. The Call
for Votes for creation of this group passed 574:2, which is
believed to be a record ratio of Yes to No votes in a Usenet vote.
The group is moderated. In keeping with the charter, postings
should be announcements of new information resources, or new
releases of Internet navigation/document delivery tools. Followup
discussions should be carried out in other news groups in the
comp.infosystems hierarchy, or other Usenet groups, or mailing
lists, as appropriate. The initial moderator is Rich Wiggins,
[ Wiggins has been a major contributor to the development of the
Internet's cooperative spirit - ed ] He is the campus-wide
information system coordinator at Michigan State University.
Announcements to be posted should be sent via e-mail:
infosys@msu.edu
Administrivia should be sent to: infosys-request@msu.edu
This is a Usenet News group, not a mailing list. Please do not
send requests to subscribe to this news group. Please contact your
Internet service provider for information on how to read Usenet
News if you are not familiar with the options. If you might be
able to offer a mailing list gateway please let Wiggins know at
infosys-request@msu.edu.
To keep this news group useful and manageable, please think of it
as a place to announce new collections of information or
significant new versions of tools. This news group is intended to
primarily announce resources that are freely-available. By
"resources" we mean documents or tools that exist today and are
usable on the Internet. Announcements of conferences, seminars, new
network consulting companies, new print magazines or books, etc.
are best presented elsewhere.
-------------------------------------
FREE OFFER
PeaceNet World News Service (PWN) is a electronic mail delivered
news publication covering either a specific area of the world or an
issue of global importance. Each day, three to ten articles along
with a table of contents is delivered to you as a single e-mail
message.
PeaceNet World News Service brings relevant news not found
elsewhere. PeaceNet World News Service is a non-profit,
non-commercial service dedicated to a free and balanced flow of
multi-sourced news featuring first hand international news about
the environment, human rights, development, the United Nations
process, and the work of non-government organizations.
The anchor of the PeaceNet World News Service is the Inter
Press Service (IPS). IPS is ranked the world's fifth largest in
terms of media clients. Virtually invisible in the United States,
IPS aims to improve South->South and South->North news flows. While
western news agencies tend to focus on political affairs, coups,
crises and conflicts, IPS delivers news that is analytical and
contextualized, newsthat stresses global interdependence. IPS's
writers are all local people covering the areas in which they live.
IPS articles appear three days after copyright. In addition to
IPS, PWN includes sample articles from the PeaceNet and EcoNet
computer networks. Sources include the Pacific News Service, the
United Nation Information Centre, Third World Network Features and
others.
For a complete brochure with a signup form, prices and instructions
on testing out the service e-mail to pwn-info@igc.apc.org.
----------------------------------
ANOTHER EFFORT TO MAKE GOPHER SYSTEMS EASIER TO USE
"The William H. Welch Medical Library has released a new biomedical
gopher, the Welch Medical Library Gopher. The team that has
developed this gopher is taking a somewhat non-traditional approach
to organizing its menus selecting a task organization. We would be
very interested in hearing other developers thoughts about this
design scheme. The idea is that users connecting to the gopher
commonly have a task in mind. For instance they want to find
research supporting resources, or they want to check up on the
news, or they are looking for information on patient care.
To accommodate this desire on the part of users we have created the
following top level menu design.
1. Using this gopher server/
2. Welch Medical Library resources and services/
3. Basic science research resources/
4. Caring for patients/
5. Exploring the Internet/
6. Finding people on the Internet/
7. Funding resources/
8. Health policy resources/
9. Hopkins resources and services/
10. Keeping up with the news/
11. Scientific writing and publishing resources/
12. Teaching, education, and course resources/
One consequence of this design is that many resources are useful
for several tasks and thus there is a lot of redundancy in the
resources listed. We have also had to point to resources
relatively deeply embedded in other gopher servers. Merely
pointing to the NIH gopher is not sufficient, with the funding menu
we have to pinpoint the NIH funding information while we point to
NIH patient care resources under our third menu option." We have
undertaken this level of maintence complexity in the belief that we
are adding a lot of value to these resources by adopting the
task-based organizational scheme."
It can be accessed by gophering to
welchlink.welch.jhu.edu. Specific comments can be sent to
Karla Hahn <khahn@welchlink.welch.jhu.edu>
-----------------------------------------------
Statistics Canada is setting up a Gopher server with a WAIS search
engine. The Gopher will be used to disseminate information about
Statistics Canada, inform users on available reasources and provide
users with information on ordering statistical services and
products. They hope to make the Gopher a user drived service and
will be requesting suggestions and ideas from the user community
In addition, they will set up a LISTSERV. details will be supplied
when available.
I suggest anyone contacting them emphasise the need to place
publicly funded statistical data on the gopher without charge. It
is all to clear that that won't happen without lots of public
demand. STATSCAN is a bastion of the popular Canadian government
attitude - MAKE THEM PAY TWICE.
EVENTS
=============
The eighth annual Canadian Networking Conference will be held at
the University of Saskatchewan at Saskatoon from June 21 to 23,
1994. Networking '94 is held under the auspices of the CA*net,
CANARIE Associates, and NetNorth, and the regional networks across
Canada.
The Program Committee for Net'94 is seeking contributed papers
for this year's conference. The theme of the conference is
THE CANADIAN EXPERIENCE AND VISION
Papers relating to the theme or topics of practical interest to
the participants will be considered including:
o CANARIE projects
o New and interesting network-related applications
o Network management tools and techniques
o The Network as a tool - how networks enable new capabilities
o User experience
o Multimedia
o Network servers and services
o Supporting the Network User
The program will also include updates on networking
The presentation including any desired hand-outs must be
submitted by May 31, 1994.
Please direct other enquiries to:
Heather Friesen - e-mail: Net94@Usask.ca
----------------------------
REPRESENTATIVE SAM COPPERSMITH
announced a gopher server containing his position papers and press
releases. The gopher also has connections to other governmental
servers. To see it, point your gopher to Arizona State University.
Once here, select "Arizona Statewide Information" from the first
menu. Next select "U.S. Rep. Sam Coppersmith."
Rep. Coppersmith may be the first Congressperson to offer such a
service - they checked but did not find anyone else with one. He is
also one of those first 12 members testing e-mail. In addition, he
has a listserv based at ASU.
When asked why do it, Coppersmith said: 1) It is useful as a
learning tool to try out the Internet and see what's out there and;
2) It is a way to re-connect people with the government.
congressman Coppersmith's email address is (samaz01@hr.house.gov)
---------------------------------
Robert Brunwin de Jong, Wassenaar, The Netherlands wrote to inform
us: " yesterday the City of Amsterdam introduced its "digital city"
experiment. During the coming two or three months citizens from
that city and, in fact, from all over the country, as long as they
have a computer, communication software, a phone and a modem, can
phone in, access local government officiers, politicians and
documentation, and try the Internet.
Some free entry terminals have been situated in some public places,
and my evening newspaper tells me that the 20 special phone-lines
are not enough at all and that people were queuing up all day. Most
people do not succeed, they can not come thru because lines are
engaged most of the time.
The experiment was introduced by the deputy mayor of the city in a
short celebration in which he sent a message to vice president
Gore - fortunately nobody in the celebration room witnessed that,
due to a typing error, the message bounced. It went OK the second
time. We"ve not heard about Gore"s reply."
----------------------------
TRENDS
The rate of organization of new civic network commities is growing.
In Canada this week 2 new groups - unaffilated as of yet with any
larger group like NPTN or Telecommunities Canada - made their
existance know. One, HOMEnet, is focusing on several counties in
South Central Ontario; another is located in Winnipeg Manitoba.
-------------------------
The administration's leadership had lead to astonishing growth in
the commitment of new resources for K-12 programs. The major
announcement was from the announced alliance of Bell Atlantic
Corporation and Tele-Communications, Inc. (TCI). They promised the
largest corporate program ever to link classrooms to the NII.
Under the plan, known as the Basic Education Connection,
the more than 26,000 elementary and secondary schools in
areas served by the two companies ultimately will connect
to the national information infrastructure. This
represents about 25% of K-12 schools in the nation.
Bell Atlantic/TCI said they will consult with local
schools,education associations, higher education
authorities, the Congress, government agencies, and other relevant
authorities. They called upon those companies to provide their
services at no charge to K-12 schools, as well.
---------------------------------
Many of the listserves are showing a growing interest in multimedia
or graphics interfaces. These new efforts look more likely to
succeed than prior efforts at the introduction of protocals like
NAPLPS. Why? Because they are based on collectively evolved
standards that remain in the public domain.
Among the growing list of prior failures - Bell Canada has applied
to the CRTC to discontinue Alex (the videotext service). Bell
claims lack of interest among customers and service providers
(indeed, there are very few service providers left, and about the
only thing running is the electronic white pages). Despite the
fanfare of hi-res neato NAPLPS grafix, the gross commercialism of
the service did not hold the public's imagination for long.
---------------------------------
The public debate and industry response to administration efforts
is not all favorable. The following two items reposted from the
EDUCOM bi-weekly service are indications of the kind of obsticles
that lie ahead. We must all be involved in education the general
public on these issues.
BASIC SERVICES ONLY, PLEASE. Consumer groups are pressuring
government officials to ensure protection for people who only want
basic telephone service from the high costs of tomorrow's
electronic superhighway. The groups fear phone companies will
raise rates paid by ordinary phone users to finance high-tech
advancements benefiting mainly business and high-income customers.
(Toronto Globe & Mail, 01/07/94 B2).
BROAD OR NARROW? The Supreme Court is considering whether cable TV
should be given the broad free-speech protection given to
newspapers or the more narrow protection granted to broadcast TV
and sales. Cable companies are arguing that the government is
infringing on their rights by forcing them to local broadcast
stations. (The Trenton Times 1/13/94 D1)
==============================================
NETWORKS and COMMUNITY is a public service of FUTURE DATA; a
partnership of researchers and research system designers. Our
research resources include all commercial and non commercial
nets, along with over 200 cd-rom databases, 50,000 magazines and
more than 30 million books. For commercial services contact
Gwyneth Store - circa@io.org
This newsletter is in the PUBLIC DOMAIN and may be used as you
see fit. To contribute items or enguire about this newsletter
contact Sam Sternberg samsam@vm1.yorku.ca
.
