Proceedings of the May 1994
Ties That Bind: Building Community Networks conference

May 1994
Apple Computer
Cupertino, California

Individual files are located on info.hed.apple.com in the
Apple Library Users Group/Apple Library of Tomorrow/
Community Networks directory.

Inquiries to sac@apple.com

--

Building Community Information Infrastructure:
Universal Service for the Information Age

Richard Civille
Center for Civic Networking
Box 65272
Washington, DC 20035
202-362 3831
rciville@civicnet.org


Thomas "Tip" O'Neill, the late and venerable House Speaker was fond
of saying that "all politics is local."  The vaunted information highway,
more formally appointed by the Clinton Administration as the National
Information Infrastructure (NII) will ultimately be a local issue.  It
presently is not.  Major Congressional legislation under debate will lay
the fundamental policy frameworks for the NII.   Work on this
legislation has moved through the House, with Senate hearings and
debate just now underway as this magazine goes into publication.  How
states, municipalities and local communities will be affected is
completely unknown, and their influence may indeed determine what
the NII finally turns out to be.

There is a critical connection between information infrastructure and
sustainable community and local economic development.  We can call
this Community Information Infrastructure.  There is a "loadbearing"
power of information infrastructure to support and even revitalize civic
institutions and local economies in sustainable ways that replace layers
of bureaucratic hierarchy and deplete fewer natural resources if for no
other reason than through increases in overall operating efficiencies.

Community information infrastructure will be a product of a number of
new factors, all of which policymakers will need to grapple with.  Yet, it
is unlikely that any of them will be dealt with directly in the current
legislation.   They would have to be addressed through federal and state
regulatory proceedings next year and beyond.  These factors are the
wild growth and popularity of the public Internet, local civic networks,
trends towards the electronic dissemination of government information
to the public, the price/performance characteristics of imaging
technology, public electric utilities and community-based strategic
planning.  A brief discussion of each of these factors in turn will provide
an interesting context from which to look at the current debate in
Washington and perhaps gain insight into what lays ahead.

The Public Internet

The Internet is the global web of over two million independent computer
systems, tens upon thousands of separate "internetworks" ranging from
office LAN's to academic research networks spanning continents, to
over 20 million individuals.  The Internet, now over fifty percent
commercialized has burst far beyond the walls of basic research to the
rest of the world.

The Internet has changed the face of the data communications and
information service industries.  Prodigy and CompuServe, once
vertically integrated fortresses now offer Internet access to the outside
world.  Five years ago, a fax number was de rigeur for a business card.
Now, an Internet address is rapidly rising in the pantheon of demigods
worshipped by the well-appointed businessman.

Telephone company lobbyists argued a few years ago that the Internet
was a government subsidized telecommunications system competing
with private industry.  Some of the same lobbyists now clamor to get
into the growing market base the public Internet represents.  Indeed, the
federal government's declining subsidy -- 40 million dollars a year -- is
tiny compared to the private, state, local, and international investment
that represents the overall cost of the Internet.  For the growing
information economy, the public Internet may become the model for the
National Information Infrastructure1.

What is Civic Networking?

Civic networking initiatives are local, generally grassroots efforts to
provide telecommunications and information services to the public.
These initiatives tend to involve a high degree of community planning
and participation, provide free or low-priced services to anyone who
wants them, and serve as test-beds for information infrastructure
development.  Civic networking can often be best understood by
example:

The Blacksburg Electronic Village has begun to link an entire town in
Southwestern Virginia with a 21st Century information infrastructure.
Presently, residents in several Blacksburg  apartment complexes have
high-speed access to the public Internet through the local cable
television system, while others in town have dial-up ISDN access
through the local telephone system.  As the project begins to reach a
"critical mass" of users within the town, there will be important
opportunities to learn how individuals use networked information, and
what skills they need to access electronic government and community
information.

The Grand Rapids Institute for Information Democracy  has turned an
old Carnegie library into a model media center combining public access
to television, radio, film archives, computers and information services,
arts and crafts, education and training.  Everything from satellite
uplinks to film production and desk-top publishing  services to an
Internet node are being provided as public services under one roof.
Importantly, the education and support needed to make effective use of
the technologies -- through workshops, training and consultation --  is
provided as well.  Public access to the technologies alone is not enough.

In England, is a prototype for what the United States Department of
Commerce has begun to call "telecommunications empowerment zone":
the South Bristol Learning Network is funded by a government
program seeking innovative solutions to structural unemployment and
models for economic regeneration.  The project has been funded to
establish a cable based public access learning network, to establish a
partnership, training, education and business information
infrastructure as a new platform for sustainable development in the
city.  Bristol has the highest unemployment rate in the country, and is
similar in many respects to rust-belt communities in the United States
dealing with the loss of an industrial manufacturing base.  Over fifty
previously unemployed persons have been hired by the project, to
undertake a variety of civic networking initiatives. The project is
organizing an educational development resource center, a telework
service and training center, an electronic one-stop-shop business
support center, a community development unit to help local voluntary
organizations make better use of information infrastructure and a
multimedia production team to develop public programming for the
local cable system.

In an Executive Order issued on Sept. 15th, 1993, President Clinton
established a United States Advisory Council on the National
Information Infrastructure (NII) to assist the Secretary of Commerce on
national strategies including "developing and demonstrating
applications in areas such as electronic commerce, agile manufacturing,
life-long learning, health care, government services and civic
networking."  More recently, Vice President Gore included civic
networks among the more traditional local institutions such as schools,
health clinics and libraries that should be connected to the NII by the
year 20002.

Government Information

In July, 1993, an obscure directive from the Office of Management and
Budget, called Circular A-130 was released.  Among other things, A-130
requires federal agencies to exercise an affirmative obligation to
disseminate information to the public at marginal cost of production,
and encourages the use of the Internet as a cost-efficient vehicle for such
dissemination.  Within one year, federal agency information servers on
the Internet have grown from several, to nearly two hundred.  This
policy is rapidly establishing a new role for the public Internet, as the
primary access and source for government documents.  Indeed, one
state, California, has followed suit, passing AB 1624 late in 1993 that
required the assembly's legislative information system to be placed on
the Internet for public access.  As of January, 1994, California's
legislative information system became available to tens of millions of
people worldwide, over the Internet.

Civic network initiatives such as the numerous Free-Nets in many
states often connect to the Internet through arrangements with local
universities.  They have suddenly become public conduits to government
information, often with community libraries serving as intermediaries.
Today, about 20% of all public libraries are connected in some manner to
the Internet, and many of those libraries rely on civic networks for that
connectivity3.

OMB Circular A-130 had been under review for years, after defining
information resource management policy for federal agencies in the
early 1980's.  In those days, it was thought the most appropriate and
cost-efficient manner for government to disseminate information to the
public was through the commercial, private sector.  Rather than develop
electronic information products for the end-user that might compete,
the government's role was to sell large data sets to private enterprises
that had the scope and scale to process them.  These enterprises in turn,
added-value through formatting and providing users means to browse,
search and retrieve records, often for substantial fees.  This limited
access to taxpayers who had already paid for the data.  This policy drew
increasing fire over time, from public interest groups, the research
community and elements within the information industry itself.

The new policy creating an affirmative obligation to disseminate, has
been amplified then by the Internet, and is creating a new market for
analysis and assessment of government information, by making access
to the underlying commodity vastly less expensive and more available
to a wider range of smaller businesses and non-profit organizations.
However, this trend has the effect of increasing the value of Internet
access dramatically, and raises serious questions of equity.  Such
questions were of no concern when the Internet was an academic
research network.  Now, however, the Internet is becoming more firmly
embedded in America's domestic infrastructure.  Yet,  Congress prefers
to keep the Internet within the domain of the science committees where
it has been since the early research networks.  The present legislative
agendas reflect these old traditions.

Imaging Technology

Sometimes necessity is less the mother of invention than simply a
natural outcome of having an affordable and useful tool not previously
available.  Price and performance improvements in imaging
technologies will stimulate much new invention in the development of
community information infrastructure.  Municipal and county
government is rapidly discovering how imaging technologies can be put
to work to increase efficiency and service delivery.  Applications such as
interactive touch-screen kiosks are increasingly common, along with
archiving old printed documents onto compact video disk "jukeboxes"
that hold enormous amounts of data and allow easy and convenient
retrieval.

Performance gains and price drops of computer modems have created
more user-friendly interfaces to online information services as well as
increasing the use of maps and graphics.  In late 1993, a visually
appealing Internet navigational tool called Mosaic was released by the
National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of
Illinois.  Instantly hailed the "killer application" for the Internet Q the
equivalent of the spreadsheet for the personal computer in the early
1980'sQdemand for Mosaic became exponential.  Where previously, the
Internet was arcane and extremely difficult to navigate, suddenly, with
the advent of Mosaic, the ease-of-use issue transformed overnight.

The price/performance curve of imaging technology is suddenly
creating new opportunities.  Indeed, the power of imaging may well
become the basis for community information infrastructure that the
general public will be able and willing to use.  The power in images is
accessibility.  Government use of imaging technologies will make
government more accessible to the public.  This price/performance curve
is kicking in at the same time the Federal government is encouraging
schools, libraries, health clinics and civic networks to connect to the
National Information Infrastructure and while the growing Internet is
increasingly being used to disseminate public information.  These trends
are not well considered in the current legislative debates.

Electric Utilities

The current debate inside the beltway has centered around the notion
that the construction of the National Information Infrastructure
requires the deregulation of telecommunications and media industries.
While there is broad consensus that the communication laws of the past
60 years are well out of date and in need of reform due the convergence
of industries driven by the digitalization of information, debate has
centered on telephone and cable television enterprises.  The assumption
has been that these entities were in the best position to build the
superhighway, if regulators would permit them to pool resources.

However, a new player has quietly arrived upon the scene, one who
may have a substantial role to play in building community information
infrastructure directly to the home.  The problem has always been the
enormous cost of bringing fiber optic cable to the residence.  While fiber
largely connects telephone central offices to each other, and provides
the foundation for long-distance lines across the country already, the
cost of taking fiber the "last mile" to the home is often thought
prohibitive -- hundreds of billions of dollars.  Even if the cost were
justified and amortized over many years, individual ratepayers would
likely bear the burden, creating a regulatory dilemma.

The new player is the electric power utility.  The proposition is simple.
Power utilities have rights of ways to homes all over the country.  New
monitoring systems attached to homes can make energy use more
efficient, reducing power consumption, pollution and natural resource
extraction costs.  Moreover, labor costs would decline as meter readers
would no longer be needed.  One line of fiber to the home would then
pay for itself over time through increased cost efficiencies.  This
economic model is not available to telephone or cable companies.  Once
the fiber is in, it can of course be used for far more than simply providing
utility access to energy monitoring equipment.  However, the legislation
is focused on deregulating the telephone and cable industries so they can
compete as well as form joint ventures, out of which the National
Information Infrastructure is expected to grow.  Yet the most logical,
cost effective solution, may in fact be the electric utilities, in a new role
no one had anticipated.

Community-based Strategic Planning

The National Performance Review recommended designation of pilot
projects under the Government Performance and Results Act of 1993
that provide opportunities for multi-agency efforts that have related
programs and goals.  Local applicants to domestic assistance programs
would have authority to mix funding from different programs when
combining grants under $10 million each.  Moreover, the National
Governor's Association and the National Conference of State
Legislatures have urged the Administration that grant programs in job
training, education, water quality, defense conversion, environmental
management and motor carrier safety be consolidated into six flexible
grants of nearly $13 billion dollars.

In January, the Administration announced an Empowerment
Zone/Enterprise Community initiative, a new program that embodies
these recommendations.  The cornerstone of this program is a
broad-based community-wide strategic planning process, to form the
justification and accountability framework necessary for grant agencies
to waive regulatory guidelines to mix funding for new local initiatives.

Empowerment Zone/ Enterprise Community Principles

%	Economic Opportunity, including job creation within the
community and throughout the region, as well as entrepreneurial
initiatives, small business expansion, and training for jobs that offer
upward mobility

%	Sustainable Community Development, to advance the creation
of livable and vibrant communities through comprehensive approaches
that coordinate economic, physical, environmental, community and
human development;

%	Community-Based Partnerships, involving participation of all
segments of the community, including the  political and governmental
leadership, community groups, health and social service groups,
environmental groups, religious organizations, the private and
non-profit sectors, centers of learning and other community institutions;
and

%	Strategic Vision for Change, which identifies what the
community will become and a strategic map for revitalization.  The
vision should build on assets and coordinate a response to community
needs in a comprehensive fashion.  It should also set goals and
performance benchmarks for measuring progress and establish a
framework for evaluating and adjusting the revitalization plan. 4

While the program emphasizes targeted government investment in
economically distressed areas, the new approach to cut red-tape based
on the community-wide strategic plan could be very comprehensive.
The Administration said:  "Communities with innovative visions for
change will be considered for requested waivers of Federal program
regulations, flexible use of existing program funds, and cooperation in
meeting essential mandates, even if they do not receive a designation"
as an EZ or EC.    Moreover, the White House went on to say that:   "No
applicant will be eligible for a single dollar of federal enterprise support
unless it submits a comprehensive strategic plan that brings together the
community, the private sector and local government and demonstrates
how the community will reform the delivery of government services"5.

Senior staff from the National Economic Council have been on Internet
newsgroups specifically seeking to brainstorm on what role the NII
could play in promoting the goals of this initiative, and have said that:
"Communities could use civic networks to make the process of planning
and implementing community revitalization a more democratic one.
Inspiring examples and pointers to people, information, and resources
would be helpful."6

The Center for Civic Networking is developing a project called the
Sustainable Development Information Network in conjunction with
another project in Cambridge, MA called the Civic Forums.  The Civic
Forums are a community-based strategic planning initiative concerning
the sustainable development of that city.  The forums bring hundreds of
people from around the city to think through the vital signs that need to
be understood and monitored to promote a healthy community.  The
Sustainable Development Information Network develops information
services that will help Cambridge (and eventually many other)
communities monitor their own vital signs.  These information services
will then be provided to the public through the local libraries.  This
should become a powerful tool to promote public participation in
planning.

Sarasota County Foresight 20/20 is a similar initiative.  A different kind
of process, a so-called "design charette" funded by a private foundation
and a local newspaper was held to examine local growth management
issues.  This visioning document takes a snapshot of the future in the
year 20/20 and examines policies and actions that got them there.  The
Sarasota County Design Charette is strong on information
infrastructure and states that the county will "develop coordination
between cities and county and utilize telecommunications, electronic
bulletin boards and teleconferencing to enhance democratic process, and
develop broadband telecommunication network throughout the
county."

A recent Community Development Block Grant application from the
city of Fairfield, CA would help bring full Internet connectivity into
Solano County in conjunction with the state Employment Development
Department.  The block grant funding would help pay for public
terminals in local libraries and provide training.  A  support letter from
Congressional representative Dan Hamburg states:

this regional community network will involve a wide array of public and
private organizations, providing access to information not normally
available or easily obtainable...it can also provide a much-needed
economic stimulus for Solano County, during this difficult period of
transition from a dependency on defense spending to an expanded
economic base.


The Current Debate

The Administration has pledged to pass legislation this year that will
overhaul the 1934 Communications Act.  An Administration initiative
was designed to complement existing proposals by Rep. Markey and
Sen. Hollings and others.

The Administration's Principles  for the National Information
Infrastructure

	%	Encourage private investment in the NII;
	%	Promote and protect competition;
	%	Provide open access to the NII by consumers and
service providers;
	%	Preserve and enhance universal service to avoid
creating a society of information haves and have-nots;
	%	Ensure flexibility so that the newly-adopted
regulatory framework can keep pace with the rapid technological and
market changes that pervade the telecommunications and information
industries.


The Administration has stated a goal that by the year 2000 all the
classrooms, hospitals and clinics in the United States will be connected
to the NII.  The Markey and Hollings bills all call for the preservation
and advancement of Universal Service, and that Universal Service
should become an explicit goal of the Communications Act.

While the Administration has clearly stated its intention to pass such
legislation this year, telecommunications reform is a lower order
priority than health care, or the budget reconciliation.  If the
telecommunications bill becomes a political football with health care
and vote trading becomes an issue, it is very likely that such a bill would
lose much specificity and focus more on findings and statements of
principle -- not necessarily a bad thing.  Legislating to build the
information highway is crafting law by metaphor, perhaps a dubious
pursuit.  Such generality would result in increased work for regulatory
agencies next year, greater chance of disputes with state regulatory
bodies and ultimately much decision making could be deferred to the
courts in the years to come.  It is unlikely that the telecommunication bill
would not pass, otherwise it would have to be reintroduced in a new
Congress next year.  There does seem to be broad consensus that it
would be best to pass even a weakened bill, this session.
 
The final version of H.R. 3636 championed in the House by Rep.
Markey (D. MA) passed in March.  The FCC would be required to
prescribe capacity reservations within one year for public, educational
and governmental and would include  preferential rates on cable
systems and video platforms.  Another amendment would severely limit
the ability of municipalities to negotiate franchise fees from cable
operators, with local franchising authority effectively eliminated in four
years.  Both of these issues, first, provision of capacity or preferential
rates for public institutions and non-profit organizations and second,
phase out of municipal franchising authority are both likely to be hotly
debated with a good possibility that one provision will become the quid
pro quo for the other after the fights have settled down.

Hearings on the Senate companion bill, S 1822 sponsored by Sen.
Hollings,  Inouye and others are now beginning to take place. The
Senate bill would be submitted to a floor vote in late May.  A conference
committee of the two houses would then be organized to work through
differences and accommodations, final votes would take place in both
Houses and the bill would presumably pass in late July or early August
before the budget reconciliation took priority.  It is conceivable that the
telecommunications bill could be delayed until after the budget bill.  If
this happens, politics around the Congressional election could have
unanticipated  consequences particularly to the extent that health care
becomes a factor.

The Senate side will be very different than the process the House has
recently completed.  A broader philosophical debate is likely, with the
prospect that the Republican leadership will begin to think through its
positions on matters concerning civilian research and development.
This matter will be considered in other bills dealing with industrial
policy as well as core domestic application areas of the National
Information Infrastructure.

The Hollings bill would require telecommunications providers to
contribute to the protection and advancement of universal service and
specifically links public rights of way to preferential rates.  The bill
establishes a duty to provide access and preferential rates to schools,
libraries, community newspapers and healthcare providers.  	The bill
would require the FCC to set forth minimum guidelines for the
definition of universal service after receiving comments from the states.
Meanwhile, the FCC has recently commissioned a special task force to
review universal access and universal service definitions.

A universal service fund would be distributed to --  or even collected by
-- the states, which would have the primary responsibility to define and
ensure universal service goals are met.  There is skepticism that any
proposal to create another federal bureaucracy to collect and
redistribute wealth could be enacted at a time of crippling deficits and
efforts to reduce the size of government.  It is more likely that the
financing responsibility would be left to the states -- who may undertake
very different approaches.

States and Communities in '95 and Beyond

Cities where civic networking and community information
infrastructure innovation is taking place could become very influential
next year, when the Universal Service debate becomes far more serious
than it is now.

There will likely be liberal use of joint state board mechanisms to resolve
many issues between federal and state regulators next year.  A number
of joint boards are proposed in the Markey bill.  Joint boards involve
federal agencies such as the FCC and state bodies, such as utility
commissions.  A joint board is a forum to hammer out differences and
accommodations, classically in areas where the federal government
wishes to preempt the states.  These joint boards may also be organized
to define Universal Service.  With state participation, local communities
may have some input into this process.  Cities that are aggressively
innovating and developing community information infrastructure, that
are showing the best practices of delivering government services
electronically are going to be in an excellent position to influence this
process of defining Universal Service for the 21st century.

There are probably many ways of describing the shifts to take place in
government's role in communication policy, particularly at the state
level.  The old state role was regulating behavior by regulating rates.
The new role may be more in measuring sets of performance outcomes
that will lead to economic efficiency, social benefit and market
competition.  Such a role requires far more strategic planning, based on
a vision of the future.  This is a much different regulatory structure than
in the past. Visioning and goal setting processes are going become more
common in the future, and may well become the basis for regulation and
how the role of government is defined.

For example, using a benchmark process, the Oregon Progress Board
shows promise in bringing public accountability to governance by
calculating progress towards specified results, rather than relying on
traditional input/output measures of funds spent and services provided.
In 1988 the State developed a long range plan called "Oregon Shines" to
further a number of social and economic goals for an emerging
information-based society.  The Oregon Progress Board was established
to identify  measurable objectives, or  benchmarks, to help guide State
policy.  These benchmarks are approved by the legislature following
substantial public hearings and input.  The Progress Board assigns
agency responsibility and monitors benchmark status.

Similar kinds of visioning and strategic planning efforts are going to
become commonplace, down to the community level.  As this article
shows, the Federal government is already requiring such
community-based strategic plans to qualify for innovative funding
approaches.   How such plans incorporate information infrastructure
development, and go on to influence development of new state
regulatory policies, universal service definitions and financing
mechanisms remain to be seen.

Future Shock

Fast forward to the future where a new regulatory regime might
measure performance outcomes for information infrastructure.  These
outcomes could be in part established through community-based
strategic planning processes -- the new tool for cutting regulatory
red-tape around domestic assistance grants.   NII connectivity would
reach every school, library and health clinic in the country.  New
Universal Service requirements could go far beyond the traditional
notion of affordable voice telephone service, and include basic adult
literacy skills in using information technology, production of public
programming and marginal cost access to non-profit service entities
such as community networks, that provide free or low-priced access to
the public.  Such new Universal Service requirements, pounded out by
the FCC, state commissions and countless public hearings would be
financed through a percentage of gross receipts from every
telecommunication provider, and perhaps information service provider
in the country.  Indeed, perhaps electric power utilities would be
required to contribute as well.  In an information economy, such a
financing mechanism could generate substantial funding for public use,
through a two to three percent gross revenue assessment distributed
across a large number of commercial entities.

Such a mechanism would maintain a "level playing field" where no
commercial entity was required to contribute at a greater level than any
other, and where the prospect for in-kind contributions based on
marginal costs of certain services made economic sense.  This could
create a sustainable, public financing mechanism that brings state of art
hardware, training and application support where the market is
traditionally deficient in areas such as civic participation, education,
health care, job training and small business development -- directly to
communities.  There is also some promise, that communities that choose
to do so, will have the tools at their disposal to not only define for
themselves how information infrastructure will be deployed locally, but
also how universal service funds could be best allocated to suit specific
community needs.

 

From ct  Wed Aug  3 13:59:36 1994
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From: ct (chris tomer)
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Subject: Com. Information (Doerr 7kb).txt
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Status: O

A Graphical User Interface to Community Information

Paula Busey & Tom Doerr
CARL Corporation
3801 East Florida Ave. Suite 300
Denver, Colorado 80210
303 758-80210
pbusey@carl.org
tdoerr@carl.org

Paula Busey received a B.A. in History from Metropolitan State College in
Denver, and a MLS from Emporia State University in Kansas. She worked nine years
at Denver Public Library in children's and adult reference services. She is
currently a Product Specialist for the Graphical User Interface team at CARL
Corporation. Paula is the graphic artist and content specialist for Kid's
Catalog and Everybody's Catalog.

Tom Doerr received a B.S. from Buffalo State University and an MLS from Emporia
State University in Kansas. He worked at the Vail Public Library, the AMOCO
Corporate Library, and as a reference librarian and Denver Public Library. He is
currently a Product Specialist for the Graphical User Interface team at CARL
Corporation. Tom is a content specialist and headed the research and testing for
Kid's Catalog and Everybody's Catalog.

Introduction:

CARL Corporation is currently designing and testing a new graphical interface
(EverybodyUs Catalog) for online public access catalogs and information
resources. The interface offers a variety of methods and modules for accessing
information. One of the primary information retrieval modules is one designed
for accessing RCommunity Information,S utilizing computer records stored in a
MARC (MachinePReadable Cataloging) format.

Briefly stated, MARC is an international standard for the description and
communication of bibliographic information. It was developed to assist libraries
in the development, use, and maintenance of library databases. Beyond its use as
standard for bibliographic information, MARC is also flexible enough to describe
non-bibliographic information, such as Community Information resources.

Among the kinds of Community Information that can be described in the MARC
record are: individuals with a particular expertise, organizations, groups,
associations, clubs, agencies, programs, services, and community events.  The
data can be accessed by any piece of information found in the record, be it
agency name, address, phone, agency type, contact, days/hours, description,
fees, eligibility, area served, and subjects.

The Community Information database that we are demonstrating was developed by
Baltimore County Public Library. The database contains approximately 2600
records and utilizes a subject authority file originally developed by the
Detroit Public Library.  The subject authority has been modified by Baltimore to
include commonly used natural language headings.

Community Information interface:

The Community Information interface presents multiple search options for
accessing the services, organizations and activities of your library, school,
community or university.   It is designed for workstations within a library, or
for kiosks around the community where people are most likely to use them.

Our design goals for this project are to:  1) create an interface that provides
easy access to community resources for both novice and expert users; 2)  provide
an interface that motivates people to explore the social services, arts
resources, sports and recreation groups, and clubs of their neighborhood and
city; 3) provide tools to customize the search paths, graphics and language that
will work best for the people of a given community.

Home Screen:

Multiple search options allow users to search for Community Information in a
command-line or browsing mode.

                 <image>

Quick Search:

Quick Search provides simple, command-line access to information. Agency names,
keywords, or subjects may be entered for direct access to the database.  Textual
prompts have been minimized and visual cues maximized.
                  
<image>

All searches in the Community Information interface follow the same pathway to a
list of agency names or services, and the corresponding telephone numbers.
Clicking on an entry provides a full description of the agency or service.
               
<image>

Agency Information provides a complete description of the agency or service. The
displayed data includes a name, address, phone, agency type, contact,
days/hours, description, fees, eligibility, area served, and subjects.
          
<image>

Community Explore:

Community Explore provides graphical hierarchies that match images with natural
language headings. It is designed to bring together and make visible resources
that help users ascertain what types of services are available in a variety of
areas.  The user needs only to click on a button to get to a list of agencies or
services. Behind the scenes, we have constructed searches that retrieve
appropriate records.
                <image>

Browse:

Browse provides alphabetical or keyword access to an agency name or subject
index. Clicking on an entry takes the user to the list of Agency Names and then
to Agency Information.
                  <image>

Elected Officials provides access to text files listing the names, phone numbers
and addresses of city, county, state, and federal government officials.

                 <image>

The Community Information module is currently being beta tested on 150
workstations at the Baltimore County Public Library. Over the next three months
we will be working with staff and patrons to refine and improve the interface.
Other database files that we are looking to add to the module are a RCommunity
CalendarS listing community events and a file that provides access to bus
schedules.


CARL Corporation
3801 East Florida Ave.
Suite 300
Denver, CO 80210
(303)758-3030




 

From ct  Wed Aug  3 14:00:29 1994
Received: by coltrane.lis.pitt.edu (5.61/1.34)
	id AA24260; Wed, 3 Aug 94 14:00:29 -0400
Date: Wed, 3 Aug 94 14:00:29 -0400
From: ct (chris tomer)
Message-Id: <9408031800.AA24260@coltrane.lis.pitt.edu>
To: ct@lis.pitt.edu
Subject: CommerceNet (Tenenbaum 20K).txt
X-Status: 
Status: O

CommerceNet 
The First Large-Scale Market Trial of Electronic 
Commerce on the Internet
 
Jay M. Tenenbaum
Enterprise Integration Technologies
459 Hamilton Avenue, Suite 100
Palo Alto, CA 94301
415 617-8006
marty@eit.com

URL (e.g., WWW) Address: http://www.commerce.net/


Jay M. Tenenbaum received the B.S. and M.S. degrees in electrical
engineering from M.I.T. in 1964 and 1966, respectively, and the Ph.D.
degree in electrical engineering and computer science from Stanford
University in 1970. From 1972 to 1980, he led the research program in
computational vision at SRI's Artificial Intelligence Center.  In 1980, he
cofounded the Fairchild Laboratory for Artificial Intelligence Research
(FLAIR), a forerunner of Schlumberger Palo Alto Research, serving as
its director form 1983 to 1986.  In 1986, Dr. Tenenbaum returned to
active research, as a Schlumberger Fellow and Professor of Computer
Science (Consulting) at Stanford University. >From 1988 to 1990, he
also served as Director of Advanced Research Projects for
Schlumberger Technologies.  At Stanford, his research has focused on
applications of AI in design and manufacturing. In January 1990, Dr.
Tenenbaum left Schlumberger to found Enterprise Integration
Technologies Corporation, an R&D and consulting organization
specializing in information technology for electronic commerce,
collaborative engineering and agile manufacturing.  EIT is a recognized
leader in software and services that promote commercial use of the
Internet.

Dr. Tenenbaum is a Fellow and former board member of the American
Association for Artificial Intelligence (AAAI). He has served on the US
Air Force Scientific Advisory Board and numerous other government
and professional committees. He currently serves on the editorial
boards of 4 technical journals dealing with applications of information
technology in design and manufacturing. Dr. Tenenbaum is author or
co-author of over 50 technical papers in leading journals and
conferences, and holds 2 patents.

Electronic Commerce on the Internet

The following is a scenario from the not-too-distant future...

Bill owns a small printed circuit board design company. His
four-engineer design group is located ten miles outside of Boulder
Creek in the Santa Cruz, California mountains. This morning, he
checked his electronic mail box on the Internet and found a message
from Irene, a design engineering manager at a large computer company
in San Jose. She asked him to look at a sensitive request for quotation
(RFQ) she had just posted. The RFQ was only open to three firms, and
the message was encrypted such that only those three firms could read
it.

After analyzing the RFQ, Bill again used the Internet to check for
current prices for the integrated circuits needed to build Irene's board.
He accessed several online catalogs for IC manufacturers and made
rough estimates of the cost of materials. With that finished, there was
one thing left: a sticky design issue he didn't quite understand. He
queried several engineers he knew at Irene's company via the Internet
as well as an engineer in Amsterdam that he had met at COMDEX. The
Amsterdam engineer referred him to an article in a back issue of an
electronics association journal, which he promptly downloaded from
the journal's Internet forum.

After lunch, Bill prepared a quotation and sent it, encrypted, to Irene.
The bid was not only secret PP it was also a legally binding offer. He
mused about how his access to the Internet enabled his company to get
jobs that used to go only to the big boys on the other side of the hill. His
quotations were extremely accurate; he could always look up the most
up-to-date prices and inventories via online catalogs. His designers
were highly efficient; they accessed the latest applications and utilities
from colleagues all over the world. And his cash flow was improved
because he could send invoices and receive remittances via the Internet.

Irene, at the other end of the "electronics food chain," often remarked
about how using the Internet had helped her company's profitability.
The publications group cut printing costs by putting their data sheets,
catalogs and data books online. Her engineering group could take
advantage of independent board designers; the other two firms bidding
on her boards were in Oregon and Taiwan.

The bottom line: for Bill and Irene, the Internet is easy to use and secure.
It provides access to services and information sources around the globe.
It is a commercial tool, as fundamental as a spreadsheet or telephone,
that they both need to stay competitive.

The Internet

An outgrowth of a government research project (ARPANET) begun in
the 1960's, the Internet was originally used by colleges, universities and
the government for research and development purposes. It has since
evolved to become "the network of networks," interconnecting not just
government and education, but a large portion of the commercial
business sector as well. Today, the Internet's 20 million-plus users are
connected by over 20,000 public and private networks reaching more
than 140 countries around the world. And, the Internet is growing at an
average rate of 10% a month.

Businesses run 63% of these networks. They use the Internet mostly for
electronic mail; in January 1994, IBM sent and received over 580,000
e-mail messages with individuals outside the company. To be sure, this
convenient communication via Internet makes doing business easier;
however, e-mail only scratches the surface of the possibilities of
electronic commerce.

Until now, the Internet has been a difficult place to do serious business.
Some of the reasons include: the lack of standard and easy-to-use
interfaces; the lack of secure means for transmitting sensitive data or
identifying users; and the lack of indexing and search mechanisms that
make it easy for users to find information.

A recent development, the World Wide Web (WWW, or "the Web"), and a
program called NCSA Mosaic, have made the Internet much easier to
use and navigate. Groups of Internet users developed WWW as a
general- purpose architecture for information retrieval. It consists of
disparate files and directories spread throughout the Internet and is
connected with hypertext links in a client-server architecture. These
links allow a user to connect directly and transparently to computers
that have needed information.

NCSA Mosaic is the most popular hypermedia browser for accessing
the World Wide Web. Developed by the National Center for
Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign, NCSA Mosaic is available free for UNIX*,
Macintosh( and Windows* platforms, and supports full multimedia
presentations (audio, video, text and graphics) as well as electronic
forms. Some call Mosaic the Internet's "killer application" because of its
sophisticated hyperlink capabilities: users can point and click on
designated words and graphics in a document and transparently, via
the WWW, connect with the computer on which the referenced
information is stored.

For example, a user with a Mosaic interface sees a reference to "Vatican
Library." The user clicks on the name and connects automatically to the
Vatican Library server via WWW. Before the WWW, the user had to type
a myriad of arcane, idiosyncratic Internet addresses and commands.

What is CommerceNet?

CommerceNet is a consortium of Northern California
technology-oriented companies and organizations whose goal is to
create an electronic marketplace where companies transact business
spontaneously over the Internet. CommerceNet will stimulate the
growth of a communications infrastructure that will be easy-to-use,
oriented for commercial use, and ready to expand rapidly. The net
results for businesses in this region will be lower operating costs and a
faster dissemination of technological advancements and their practical
applications.

The CommerceNet marketplace will support all business services that
normally depend on paper-based transactions. Buyers will browse
multimedia catalogs, solicit bids, and place orders. Sellers will respond
to bids, schedule production, and coordinate deliveries. A wide array of
value-added information services will spring up to bring buyers and
sellers together. These services will include specialized directories,
broker and referral services, vendor certification and credit reporting,
network notaries and repositories, and financial and transportation
services.

CommerceNet will provide an integrated set of services from a single
source, including:

%	Affordable, high quality Internet connectivity (through
BARRNet) using a variety of options including T1, 56K, Frame Relay
and ISDN. Many are now available; others will roll out during the
remainder of 1994.

%	Easy access to user interface and networking software and
registration forms for CommerceNet access.

%	Software tools for providers that make it easy to put up
interactive CommerceNet services on any Internet host.

%	Simple point-and-click access to all CommerceNet services,
including a variety of specialized directories, using an enhanced version
of Mosaic.

%	Security mechanisms, including authentication and encryption,
supported within applications, including Mosaic, using RSA public key
cryptography. Public-key certification services will also be provided to
CommerceNet members.

CommerceNet eliminates data and transmission security issues because
there are no remote logins and passwords are not exchanged in the
clear. In addition, authentication, authorization, and data encryption
applications made available on CommerceNet will let buyers and sellers
safely exchange sensitive information such as credit card numbers and
bid amounts, sign legally enforceable contracts, maintain audit trails,
and make or receive network payments through cooperating financial
institutions.

The CommerceNet Consortium

The CommerceNet Consortium is a non-profit corporation operating
under a matching funds grant from the United States government's
Technology Reinvestment Project (TRP). CommerceNet was awarded
$6 million over three years, which is to be matched by contributions from
member companies and state and local agencies.

The TRP was created as part of President Clinton's program to
revitalize the economy, create jobs, and help American industry remain
competitive and on the cutting edge of technology. The TRP is
sponsored by the Defense Department's Advanced Research Projects
Agency (ARPA), the Department of Commerce's National Institute of
Standards and Technology (NIST), the National Science Foundation
(NSF), the Department of Energy (DOE) and the National Aeronautics
and Space Administration (NASA).

CommerceNet was proposed to the TRP council in 1993 by the core
development team of the CommerceNet Consortium, which includes
BARRNet, Enterprise Integration Technologies (EIT) and Stanford
University's Center for Information Technology (CIT). On November
24, 1993, the government announced the award to CommerceNet in the
second round of TRP funding for 55 projects (out of 2,850 submitted) that
promote the commercial use of defense-related technology.
CommerceNet is one of those programs.

The Consortium is comprised of the core development team, sponsoring
organizations, and industry participants. The core team is responsible
for developing and operating CommerceNet and securing its funding,
and oversees the day-to-day management of CommerceNet.

Sponsoring organizations include Smart Valley Inc., Joint
Venture:Silicon Valley Network and the State of California's Office of
Strategic Technology. Initial CommerceNet participants include leading
companies from Silicon Valley's semiconductor, electronics and
computer industries, and their customers and suppliers around the
world.

Under the CommerceNet structure, the Consortium's Board of
Directors subcontracts program management and technical
development to the principal performing organizations: BARRNet, EIT
and Stanford CIT. The Board meets quarterly and works closely with an
Industry Steering Committee that represents the interests of the
Consortium membership.

The Industry Steering Committee sets membership criteria and provides
priorities for development requirements. CommerceNet's executive
director, Cathy J. Medich, reports to the organization's Board of
Directors. Allan M. Schiffman, Chief Technical Officer of EIT, serves as
CommerceNet's Principal Architect.

How CommerceNet Will Benefit Business

CommerceNet's founders and supporters believe that the new
electronic marketplace will dramatically improve the productivity and
competitiveness of its participants. It will provide access to an online
global marketplace with millions of customers and thousands of
products and services; and, it will provide participating companies with
new, more cost- and time-efficient means for working with customers,
suppliers and development partners. CommerceNet will enable
companies to:

%	Shorten procurement cycles through online catalogs, ordering
and payment;

%	Cut costs on both stock and manufactured parts through
competitive bidding;

%	Shrink development cycles and accelerate time-to-market
through collaborative engineering and product implementation.

Participants are likely to use CommerceNet to provide online catalogs
and product literature to customers, suppliers, distributors, and
partners, and to conduct online ordering and product data exchange.
CommerceNet users will also be able to request and provide competitive
solicitations and bids, engage in inter-company collaborative
engineering, and access and integrate product vendors and service
suppliers for faster product time to market.

For information technology providers, CommerceNet is an opportunity
to build Northern California's information infrastructure, to influence
the development of Internet technology and standards for electronic
commerce, and to participate in joint marketing efforts.

How CommerceNet Works

The CommerceNet server, the starting point for participation in
CommerceNet, provides users access to all CommerceNet-related
information and applications via a Mosaic interface as a part of the
World Wide Web. CommerceNet information is also available by
automated response to electronic mail requests.

The CommerceNet server stores information on the CommerceNet
organization; directories to participants, value-added third-party
services and Internet resources; member registration and
communications; and tutorials and examples. The server is also the
distribution center for CommerceNet software.

CommerceNet participants create "home pages," which are located on
each participating company's WWW server, and which serve as each
company's "virtual storefront" on the network. A participant's home
page will typically provide an overview of the organization as well as
point-and-click access to product or service information, access to
online catalogs, product order forms and so on. This company home
page would be reached by users either by name, or more likely via a
'reference' link from the CommerceNet server's directory pages, or
even via a document reference elsewhere in the World Wide Web PP
perhaps from an online magazine article.

The Future of CommerceNet

The CommerceNet core team employs state-of-the-art Internet
technology and intends to stay on the leading edge of development
through an aggressive R&D program at Stanford CIT. Future services
being explored include shopping agents that can search through
catalogs and negotiate deals; collaboration tools for distributed work
teams that support both real-time interaction and videomail; natural
language search and retrieval techniques for large, distributed
information bases; and format translation services that enable
engineering organizations to exchange product data even when they
adhere to different standards.

In five years, organizers hope to achieve the following goals:


%	3,000 organizations using CommerceNet routinely for business
transactions and technical collaboration;

%	300 organizations providing information services through
CommerceNet;

%	30 local, state and federal projects in Northern California
using CommerceNet as a common infrastructure;

%	30 profitable local businesses providing the CommerceNet
infrastructure with computer products, telecommunication services,
software and consulting.

CommerceNet organizers believe that the majority of companies and
organizations in the U.S. may conduct business via the Internet in five
years. CommerceNet is a step towards a de facto National Information
Infrastructure capable of linking up with other electronic commerce
projects in places such as Boston, Austin, and the University of Illinois.
Potentially, a CommerceNet-like infrastructure could support other
national efforts in the areas of education, health care and digital
libraries.

Key Participants in CommerceNet

BARRNet

Founded in 1987 as an original component of the National Science
Foundation Network (NSFNET), BARRNet provides the information
infrastructure supporting research, education and economic
development in Northern California. As a founding partner of
CommerceNet, BARRNet offers its suite of premier Internet services as
the basis for CommerceNet connectivity.

BARRNet has points of presence spanning Northern California, with
additional POPs planned for Southern California and Nevada in the
coming months. The organization's list of offerings includes: A complete
package of Internet connectivity services, from 14.4 kbps IP connections,
either dialup or dedicated line, to 56 kbps and high-speed T1
connections; a low-cost, standalone Iserver* System; and the High
Security Firewall System.

With BARRNet connectivity to the Internet, subscribers make full use of
the expanding suite of TCP/IP protocols, including telnet, ftp, nntp, http
(Mosaic), gopher, wais, archie, POP mail, irc, ntp, etc.

Enterprise Integration Technologies (EIT)

Enterprise Integration Technologies is an R&D and consulting company
specializing in software and services that help companies do business on
the Internet. EIT develops information infrastructures for a broad range
of programs in agile manufacturing, concurrent engineering, and
electronic commerce. EIT is CommerceNet's principal architect,
technology supplier, and integrator. The company will also provide
program management and services to end users.

Stanford Center for Information Technology (CIT)

CIT specializes in the development and deployment of information
infrastructure technology. CIT is operated by Stanford University in
association with affiliated organizations from industry, government
and academia. CIT serves as a venue for pre-competitive collaboration
among its affiliates as well as a nursery for new commercial ventures
based on CIT's technology. CIT focuses its efforts on Silicon Valley to
ensure the continued technological leadership of the region.

The work of CIT is vertically integrated with a significant amount of
effort devoted to each of the following areas: (1) research on the
principles underlying information technology; (2) development of
practical technology based on this research; and (3) demonstrations and
testbeds to illustrate and assess the strength of this technology.

 

From ct  Wed Aug  3 14:00:48 1994
Received: by coltrane.lis.pitt.edu (5.61/1.34)
	id AA24268; Wed, 3 Aug 94 14:00:48 -0400
Date: Wed, 3 Aug 94 14:00:48 -0400
From: ct (chris tomer)
Message-Id: <9408031800.AA24268@coltrane.lis.pitt.edu>
To: ct@lis.pitt.edu
Subject: Community nets (Cisler 23K).txt
X-Status: 
Status: O

Community Networks: Past and Present Thoughts

Steve Cisler
Apple Library of Tomorrow
4 Infinite Loop MS 304-2A
Cupertino, CA 95014
408 974-3258
sac@apple.com

Steve Cisler is  a Senior Scientist in the Apple Library in the Advanced
Technology Group at Apple. He runs the Apple Library of Tomorrow
program and is interested in information policy issues.

Background

One of my current interests is the growth of community computer
networks and how libraries and other institutions participate in
them...or are bypassed by them.  Community computer networks began
in the 1970's with the earliest example being Community Memory which
was a timesharing system with a few terminals placed in a laundromat,
the Whole Earth Access store, and a community center. in Berkeley,
California.  I was living in Puerto Rico and had heard about the WEC
store when I was visiting my fiance in Berkeley. We stopped in and I
looked at the terminal and poked a few keys but could not make it
display very much. It was another 12 years, in 1984, before I used a
computer again.

An LSCA grant allowed my branch library to get the first Macintosh in a
public library setting; we had one before the Apple Library did, and it
was used by the public and the staff almost all the hours we were open.
In 1985 I heard Clifford Lynch of the University of California give a
speech about telecommunications, and it opened my eyes to a world that
seemed to offer me and our profession a chance to change, to make a
real difference in our impact on the people we served. It is probably
about like the effect some of you have felt after getting a really good
introduction to the Internet. It was an intellectual rush, and it slowly
changed my life.  I heard about a community system starting up in
Sausalito, California. It was called The WELL, and the Point
Foundation had installed some computer conferencing software on a
DEC VAX 11/780. It was grossly underpowered even at the outset, but it
did heat the office of the WELL and the Whole Earth Review. Like a lot
of big computing iron that is put out to pasture, someone was paid to
haul it off, and a Sequent took its place. Last year a Sun workstation
replaced the Sequent. What was important to me was not the hardware,
nor the hideous interface (which partly accounts for the 90% turnover
rate in subscribers), but the people and the synergy of this system which
was comprised mainly of Northern Californians.

The WELL was a place where I met a lot of people who became my
friends and many others with whom I shared ideas, gossip, and news. I
ran a conference for librarians, but there were so few librarians at that
time who were talking to each other online rather than to commercial
databases like Dialog or BRS, that my conference was populated by
WELL subscribers who used itlike a library: they discussed their favorite
mystery books, they asked me reference questions, and they talked about
what they liked and did not like in traditional libraries--if they even used
them.  It was here I realized there are a lot of literate, well-read people
who don't use libraries. they may have support services at work, but
more often they would buy books at a bookstore and not want to wait
for them at the public library. Yet, they were supportive of what I stood
for, and 9 years later I'm still running a conference on information
which shares a lot of discussions with the telecomms and Internet
conferences.

 While there was a lot of continuity in my WELL involvement, another
event was even more of a watershed for me. In 1986 Pacific Bell started
a telecomms trial to test a technology called Project Victoria in one of
the towns served by my county library.

Project Victoria used the exisitng wiring to provide two voice lines and
five data lines that could be used for information services, mail, alarm
sensing, and home energy monitoring. The phone company lined up
various information providers including Dow Jones, MCI Mail, a local
videotex service and a multi-line electronic bulletin board that used the
metaphor of an electronic city with different buildings for different
services: school, community center, chamber of commerce, social service
agency, and city government. I was amazed to find that nobody had
considered including the library. Neither my administration nor Pacific
Bell nor the city of Danville had included the county library in the
planning. That was recitified, and we began holding meetings to discuss
how the system might look. Here's where I like to use the term:
electronic barn raising. There were many groups sitting down together
for the first time and deciding what information they wanted to put up,
and most learned a lot about the mission of the other groups in town.
The technology was secondary to the spirit of cooperation among the
civic institutions as well as newcomers such as the computer enthusaists
and the telephone company people, many of whom lived in the town.
Project Victoria only lasted a few months; after the phone company got
its statistics, the plug was pulled, and we began to think about how to
duplicate that system which had been running on a $50,000
minicomputer with $30,000 software and a phone system that had no
price on the advanced technology equipment that facilitated access to
the network.

Our library was taking bids on a new automation system, and CSLI was
quite open to working with us to develop some modules that would
duplicate the civic network Pacific Bell had run for a short time. I put in
for another LSCA grant, but it did not make the first cut at the State
Library in early 1988, and I was offered my current job at Apple, to start
the ALOT program.

At the same time I was following the campaign of a faculty member at
Case Western Reserve University Medical School in Cleveland.  Dr.
Tom Grundner was pitching his new Unix-based system, the Cleveland
Free-Net, and he was attracting a fair amount of grass roots attention
but little money after the initial grant from AT&T.

Another city system was in the planning about the time I left for Apple.
Ken Phillips of Santa Monica's city information services and I spent
hours discussing how a city system should work and what sort of
software we should use. He had a good rapport with vendors, with the
library, and with the community. Donations from HP and Meta-systems
Design Group allowed Santa Monica to set up the Public Electronic
Network that became the focus of International attention for a number
of reasons. It was city supported, had buy-in from the town residents,
and there were numerous public access terminals in the libraries to
provide connections for those without computers. In some cases, it
served people without a place to live, but the city officials were reluctant
to provide any sort of moderators for the discussion groups (for first
amendment reasons), and the conferences came to be dominated by
long-winded, abrasive participants who spent hours online flaming city
officials and each other.  I spoke with Ken Phillips the last day of his job,
and he confessed that there were a number of things that he would do
much differently (moderators and modest fees, among others) when he
built a new system in Marion County, Oregon where he manages the
information services.

One of the interesting things to note is that few of these systems have
been as popular as the backers have predicted. Hewlett-Packard fully
expected more business from cities and counties emulating Santa
Monica, but it did not come to pass. Meta-systems is still trying to sell
Caucus as a basis for communications on municipal and campus
systems, but computer conferencing software has never caught on in the
way its promoters had hoped.

In the 1990's local groups began to organize around the Free-Net model
as promoted by Tom Grundner's National Public Telecomputing
Network. This was and still remains the way many people envision a
community system: a large Unix workstation or cluster connected to
terminal servers and banks of modems to allow computers, usually
emulating a VT100 terminal, to connect  to the host for a variety of
communications and information services, including mail, access to
selected Internet sites, discussion groups, and text files of important
documents from local and national sources. In some cases the user can
connect to a structured database such as a library catalog or a list of
community resources, but generally the search capabilities are not the
primary feature of these systems.

There are other models for community systems, some quite different
from the Free-Net model. These include the tele-cottage, the
cooperative data networks, and the systems that collect, organize, and
mount information for other systems to make available to their own
consituency. In a few cases, a community network tries to provide all of
these models.

The telecottage movement  has grown out of the tele-learning or
distance learning efforts in many countries. The goal of each is to reach
learners that are distant from the source of knowledge through online
courses, satellite television broadcasts, and interactive
telecommunications courses. In Scandanavia in the mid-80's community
teleservice centers were established to provide computing and
telecommunications facilities for all the people in a given remote
community. The components include staff, the building, and the
equipment. which includes but is not limited to video equipment, fax
machines, computers, modems, possibly telex machines, printers, and
even radio and TV broadcasting equipment. Software and services are
provided for a wide range of computing and information retrieval
tasks. The premise is that the individuals will not own the equipment
and will be willing to come into the center to use the gear.  From two
centers in 1985 to 25 in 1989,  the number  grew until in early 1993 there
were about 100 centers in Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden.
These have spread to other countries as well: Great Britain, Australia
(which hosted the 1993 telecottage symposium in Queensland last
November), Ireland, Germany, Canada, and Brazil. Sri Lanka, Bhutan,
Tunisia, and Benin are planning similar centers. What about the United
States? The Kellogg Foundation sponsored an ambitious project in the
Western United States where two centers were set up in each of six
states, but the project, while well-funded, was not very successful, and it
is difficult to find much information about these sites. In a way, these
telecenters or telecottages are the precursors of community networks
and can be established before or after a community system is being built.
Having a training site or a place where individuals can come to learn
about and use the technology is an important but not inexpensive role,
whether it is a library, a social agency, or the local government that is
providing the services.  In some cases, it may be a for profit firm such as
a copy shop like Kinkos, but they are usually established where the
market will support the investment needed for up-to-date equipment. I
just learned that Kinkos will be installing about 150 FirstClass BBSes in
their shops to support their cutomers.

The cooperative communications network is discussed in the Office of
Technology Assessment document on rural networking. They encourage
the diverse elements in a town to join together and try to justify a rural
area network, the widening of the telecommunications path into remote
locations. George Baldwin of American Indian Telecommunications
calls this a Reservation Area Network, but so far none has been built in
the United States, though the Onondaga Nation in New York does have
a connection to the Internet.  In urban areas where many technically
adept users want access to the Internet without a lot of frills or support,
cooperatives and buying clubs have been starting up. The San Francisco
area is served by Little Garden, started by Tom Jennings of Fidonet
fame and Tim Pozar, a Unix/PC hacker who has also been working to
put a gopher up for his FM radio station in San Francisco. Little
Garden's goal  is to provide extremely cheap IP services  through SLIP
or dedicated lines. Frequently they use public domain software, very
basic equipment, and try to keep profit margins low. A SLIP/PPP account
costs $70 per month, and a T1 account costs $800/month. The more
people know technically, the lower their rates can be, unless they are in
areas or countries where the telephone company is government-owned.
Other areas that have embryonic cooperatives are Tampa, Boulder,
Portland, and Seattle, and Austin. Most of the customers are technically
self-sufficient and are interested in getting access to the Internet rather
than participating in a local community of information sharing. There
may be local discussiongroups on Usenet, but the focus on a single
geographic area is not the reason for these services: cheap Internet
connectivity is.

A new sort of role for community systems is the gathering, formatting,
and serving of many different information sources for existing systems.
Information and Referral centers have provided information and advice
about local organizations and services through social service agencies
and libraries. Boulder Community Network started organizing in late
1993 , and their plan is to work with all elements in the community: the
paper, the University of Colorado (which is backing the project now),
local bulletin board systems, design laboratories for Apple and
Knight-Ridder newspapers, the school district, the public library, the
United Way, the Senior center, and the city of Boulder.  They plan to use
Mosaic and touch screen kiosks in public places, but the information can
be fed to the campus information system, the BBSes, and even the
Denver Free-Net which is in the Boulder local calling area. Dialup users
will have access to lynx, a text-based interface to the same World Wide
Web server. The problem for BCN is how to ensure that anyone can
have communications services so they can send comments and feedback
to city officials and participate in local discussions.  BCN will probably
not be maintaining accounts and passwords for those potential users.
There are many sources of accounts, but most cost or only are available
to people with some special affiliation such as student in the school
district, university, or a Colorado SuperNet account. The interesting
challenge will be for BCN to fill this role, while getting cooperation
from the many groups some of who are not sure what their function and
purpose might be, if BCN flourishes. I believe BCN is performing
functions that some libraries could do in 1994 and will have to do by the
turn of the century. The library has a great deal of input into their
technical advisory board.

Silicon Valley Public Access Link in my neck of the woods is also planning
to provide many kinds of information through their text-based system.
They hope to finance their system which is charging $20 per year for
dialup, menu-driven access to the system and the Internet, by mounting
information for different organizations and charging them a fee. The
San Jose Public Library already has a dialup public access system, and
they are not sure what value SV-PAL can provide

On any system the operator and the information provider will debate
which has more value: the information or the distribution. SV-PAL
needs relevant content more than San Jose Public Library needs another
electronic window onto the community.

Value: whether or not a community system operates with no fees for the
user, a small monthly or annual free, or charges by the hour it still must
provide value. There must be compelling reasons to go online and
choose to use that service and not some other. All online systems are
competing for people's time, and each community network must ask
itself over and over "What business are we in? What services do we
provide? What needs do we fill?"  This may be very different from the
reasons why individuals are working on a community system,  Asking a
volunteer group to adjust its goals to answering these questions may be
as hard as shifting the mission of  an organization or agency where
there is no familiarity with the capabilities of electronic networks.

The Community Circle

Each community network has many choices as it shapes the way it
operates. Even individual Free-Nets have some leeway to decide. I have
mapped some of these choices on a circle. Some of these are not
either/or choices, and a system may start with one choice and shift to
another even before they go oline.
 

The Big Challenges Ahead

In a sense, the very goal of equity, of serving everyone with equality is
the very largest challenge of all. The institutions that are having the
hardest time are those trying to address large broad audiences,
customer groups, citizens and taxpayers. This includes newspapers
losing their readership, public schools and libraries, television networks,
local state and federal governments. Those who have carved out a niche
by serving a certain interest group or income group are doing much
better. It is in this shift that community networks are trying to take hold,
to be many things to potentially everyone in the community.

But not everyone has a computer. Not everyone would even use one
whether it was in their home, at a public access site in city hall or a
library or grocery store, and most people's information needs are much
less than some of ours and they are satisfied by asking acquaintances,
not by looking at a reference book or searching a community
information files. Most people don't want to interact by electronic mail,
by MUDs, by mailing lists and Usenet groups. Some people look at the
growth of the Net  and think everyone is going to be online someday and
the bars, clubs, living rooms, conference halls, and salons will be empty.
There will always be very good reasons not to be online. Attaching too
much importance to the community network is a challenge, especially
when you may be spending 60 hours a week running a system, or you
may be volunteering a few hours a week because it's the most
interesting concept you have been involved in over the past few years. I
believe these systems should be viewed as extensions of current
functions in your community, as an adjunct to other ways of meeting, of
disseminating, of archiving information, of communication.

This leads to another challenge, or a question that may be answered
differently for each community and for each user.  Does the community
network really build a sense of community for the geographic entity
where you are located? Is the Indian tribe stronger, are the local
merchants online doing better business, is there more participation in
the local government, do people feel better about the role of the schools
or the jobs the library is doing because both are online,  Or do you and
your users use the online tools  mainly as an onramp to reach the world
and not face local problems and realities? Certainly, the answer is a
mixture.


Support

A great deal of the support of community networks is coming from
outside the community that is setting up the networks. US West and
Annenberg have kept Big Sky Telegraph going; Ameritech has supported
NPTN and the Free-Nets, OCLC, NYSERNet, and Apple have
supported Project GAIN in New York. Some systems are supported by
state and local government. Santa Monica by the city, Hawaii FYI by
the state, and a regional system has recently received 250,000 in state
money to staff and run their new system. Few systems are have firm
financial support. Most are run by volunteers or by low paid directors
and system managers. This is not to denigrate the volunteer skills and
spirit; there would be no community network movement without it, but
I'm reminded of a sign in a non-profit network office: "Strip-mining
idealism since 1985" The org. depended on a chain of energetic,
high-spirited people willing to work for little money, and they
eventually burned out with great regularity. I know one talented
woman who is doing four jobs instead of one. She is fund raising, doing
interface design, directing a cadre of volunteers, and  negotiating
information rights with local organizations. And nobody is doing
membership or support.

Scalability

We need easy to manage systems that can run on a Mac or generic 486
Unix box, and these should scale up to run on PowerPC's, Suns, or even
more powerful systems.The servers should provide some services for
text-based computers, but they should obviously provide hooks for
graphic interfaces to information and communication services.
Software planners should also keep in mind hand-held devices and set
top digital boxes on television sets of the future. Whatever server or
terminal or computer, you should have some functionality.

Undeveloped Market

The reason we don't have this software is that there are few developers
for this kind of system. The current Freeport softwareis needs a
complete re-write, and there are some interesting BBSes that can work
for community sytems,  but the market will have to be clearer before
anyone designs something scalable. Some people are sure this will
develop.

 The Morino Foundation and The Corporation for Open Systems have
formed the Community Technology Assistance Center to fill the need for
a sort of consumer service that will test and recommend certain
commercial products for different community network environments.
Some software will continue to be developed in the Internet culture
where code and programs are shared and enhanced, but other will come
from firms like SoftArc, BBN, Case Western Reserve, and probably
mainstream computer and software companies. And some will come
from community systems themselves. Glendale Public Library is
planning on re-selling LNX; Taos La Plaza TeleCommunity wants to
distribute its software too.


 

From ct  Wed Aug  3 14:01:17 1994
Received: by coltrane.lis.pitt.edu (5.61/1.34)
	id AA24278; Wed, 3 Aug 94 14:01:17 -0400
Date: Wed, 3 Aug 94 14:01:17 -0400
From: ct (chris tomer)
Message-Id: <9408031801.AA24278@coltrane.lis.pitt.edu>
To: ct@lis.pitt.edu
Subject: Eval. Com. Nets (Odasz 20K).txt
X-Status: 
Status: O

THE NEED FOR RIGOROUS EVALUATION OF 
COMMUNITY NETWORKING


by Frank Odasz
Big Sky Telegraph
710 S. Atlantic Ave.
Dillon, MT 53125
406 683 7338
franko@bigsky.dillon.mt.us
Telnet to Big Sky Telegraph 192.231.192.1, type bbs at login

Doug Schuler, from the Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility organization, writes:
Community networks exist to: 
1. foster community spirit and conviviality. 
2. foster democratic participation, 
3. support K-100 lifelong education, 
4. provide health and social services, 
5. foster economic equity and opportunity, 
6. provide information and communications.

However, more than one Montanan would argue: Community
information infrastructures already exist. In addition to many state,
county and city offices, many informal human networks function with
amazing efficiency. These human networks can be very sophisticated.
Just watch the speed at which a hot rumor can travel across town! With
phone, fax, newspaper, radio, and TV, who needs yet another medium?
Particularly at the expense of additional equipment and learning
something new! The question becomes; "Just what niche benefits will
citizens enjoy via an online community network that they could not
more easily have access to via other means?"

RESEARCHING COMMUNITY NETWORKING: How can a
community network be defined, implemented, sustained and evaluated
for effectiveness and efficiency? What amount of time and money should
be spent to access what information or persons? Real benefit for real
people must be measured against cost and accessibility. The challenge
may well be more psychosocial than technical or economic.

The EIES network, the U.S. Army, and others have done studies on
computer mediated communications; counting and charting the number
of interactions, etc., but as with most human activities a numerical
analysis falls short of presenting the whole picture. Attitudes and the
subjective assessment, the quality of the interactions, and the
imagination for what could yet be, do not lend themselves easily to
graphical and numerical representation.

The online environment, structured through software and human
organization, is as customizable as any idea one might imagine. As
successively greater visions for online collaboration evolve, there are
few innate limits to what might be done. Assessment of highest value,
ease of access, and validated benefit to a citizen of both knowledge
access and collaborative activities are needed, but numerical
measurement of imagination will never be ultimately definitive.

PUFFERY VS VISIONING: It is possible to represent an online system
as nearly anything you choose. Very few people will question what you
promote as facts regarding your system. By choosing what data profile
to publicize you can slant the impression of what's happening on a given
network. (You have had an amazing number of first time callers!)
Skeptics can similarly choose those data profiles that, at first glance,
make you look bad. (Most of your first time callers never called back,
and very few users use your databases!)

A major national online utility has touted its number of subscribers, now
over one million, but don't tell that most users don't make much use of
the most of their service offerings. With over 700 different services, they
don't tell that 80% of their usage is only downloading files or realtime
chat.

Though downloading and chat is what most users really do, this may
not necessarily be why they joined this system. The image of an online
emporium is very attractive, even if you don't visit the other areas.
Feeling a part of a major network is a benefit in itself. Most users are
novices not sure how to benefit from most of the other services. Feeling
"connected" to a major network, or Internet, can be quite different from
knowing how to benefit from that connection.

Due to the complexity and variations of individual use on any system, it
is very hard to measure the perceived value individuals might gain from
a system. A sense of belonging, the joy of helping others, or the
impression of being tapping into a flow of important information may
be genuine motivations, and benefits as real as access to.... a great
games library.

A little anecdotal evidence can be very, very significant by subtly
showing attitude changes, progressive learning, conceptual growth, etc.
Community networking is really a complex mosaic of factors,
psychologically, sociologically, and culturally. It represents a group
learning phenomena where new concepts can become a part of the
online cultural behavior very quickly, and begin to suggest yet higher
group organizational constructs.

Vision must lead implementation; you need to present the image of what
you want your system to become such that your users can help you
create that reality. Promoting your system as perhaps more than it
really yet is, then becomes a necessary feature for growing a community
network. Becoming is superior to being. The dynamics for steering
growth of a community network are only beginning to be understood.

Community networking will forever be a very human phenomena with
more variables than can be accounted for in numerical surveys. We still
must find ways of measuring how people benefit and how people can to
be taught more efficient ways of achieving yet greater benefits.

RESEARCHABLE COMPONENTS: Online engagement is
fundamentally an individual issue. One-to-one messages exchanged
toward validated purposes dependent on mutual support. Online
involvement and perception of value progresses through sociocultural
dimensions of engagement as one learns to express personal values
through the online medium and impact the world accordingly. Learning
the skills of online expression of these values provides the key means to
amplify one's impact on the world.

When individuals work together, group dynamics for efficient
decision-making become fundamental. Each of us has different specific
benefits we seek online. There are successive levels of empowerment of
the online medium:

KNOWLEDGE ACCESS SKILLS: With the proper training, many
information searching tools are available on the Internet. Databases
and sophisticated search engines can provide enormous amounts of
specific information for those with the knowledge, skills and patience to
use them effectively. Information access on demand is a learnable set of
skills; teachable online through self-directed, task-based, step- by-small
step, mastery learning lessons. Despite the reality that the range of
software searching tools is rapidly proliferating, online instruction is a
new pedagogy still in its infancy. In our preliterate video culture many
assume interactive text is limited in its usefulness compared to video,
perhaps soon to be obsolete, despite the fact that most information we
need continues to be most efficiently delivered in textual form.

ONE-ON-ONE: Human databases, or human bandwidth, relates to the
ability to ask someone who knows more than you do for a summary of
their knowledge in a specific area by asking a question. Librarians and
individuals with information searching skills can search on behalf of a
less- skilled person, aiding potential have-nots, or those less connected.
Access to expertise is a dynamic of facilitating relationship-building and
mentorship models.

ONE-TO-MANY: Posting a question to a conference, newsgroup or
listserv can result in many responses, but has innate inefficiencies. The
larger the group, the more duplicate responses and the greater the
volume of undesired or irrelevant messages appearing in everyone's
mailbox.

MANY-TO-ONE: If a roster of Internet resource persons willing to
offer their expertise in a number of specific areas were to be available to
a listserv's membership, more efficient targeting of queries would
become available.

MANY-TO-MANY: Multiple listservs serving different information
sharing needs of a single organization must be organizationally defined
so all organizational members know exactly where to post what kind of
general query, and exactly who to send specific queries to.

BBS and/or conferencing software facilitates jumping between archived
transcripts of discussions and the reposting of helpful summaries of
conference activity. Internet BBSes have many roles to play concerning
training, technical support and convenient access to highest value
resources and experts. Big Sky Telegraph continues to develop and
explore those new services with the potential to make the benefits of
telecomputing more comprehensible.

PURPOSEFUL GROUP ACTIVITIES: The effectiveness of any
discussion or action group depends on the quality of its members. The
presence of someone with both relevant topical expertise and the
understanding of how to moderate purposeful activities with a group
through a listserv or newsgroup, is a key requirement to achieve
purposeful outcomes. Defining to the group the timeline, interaction
format, and netiquette rules for that particular group establish the
context for interaction. One sour apple can seriously injure any group
effort. Not all group activities are suitable for online interaction.
Discerning the appropriate use of online group activity is a subtle art
requiring leadership. Group conference moderation has many
challenges.

REDEFINING COMMUNITY NETWORKING: Any community
network can provide access to information and services and to rosters
of resource persons. While it can be difficult to establish participation
with the many communities within a community; health, education,
public service, local government, economic development, etc., it is
possible.

The real heart of the effectiveness of any community network, however,
is the learned ability for any given group to work purposely together
toward a productive end. If the local animal rights group rallies around
the shared goal of fundraising for an animal shelter, the specific
electronic enhancement of their ability to continuously share and
develop information and strategies is not a given. It is this specific set of
learned skills, complemented with the quality of expertise and
understanding of the medium of the participants, that is the yet
undefined dynamic inherent in evaluation of community networking.

EFFECTIVENESS AND GROUP SIZE: We naturally think of our
communities in geographically physical terms, but need to think of
special interest communities independent of location, bound by
commitment to a shared cause. The size of an online community affects
its ability to function as a group in reaching consensus and taking action.
When an online community becomes too large, it naturally breaks into a
community of communities. Small groups can work differently than
large groups and optimal group sizes for different purposes make
critical impacts on what can be accomplished and the various viable
formats for effective interaction.

A small team of leaders may need each member to interact intensively.
In a small group every member must be heard from, or they are not an
active part of the group. A large group may only require members to
browse messages to keep up on current events. In a large group logistics
dictate that everyone cannot regularly participate as the volume of
messages becomes more than members can bear.

Moderators are needed to help steer group activities toward the more
purposeful forms of interaction, and to help decide when smaller
subgroups are needed to achieve consensus and take action. Models for
discussion, voting, and reaching consensus have only begun to emerge.

At the individual and group levels, caring, commitment, and
collaboration must work together. One must genuinely care enough
about a given cause to make the commitment to collaborate toward a
purposeful outcome. There is a specific set of skills and concepts
requisite to effectively working online in an action-group context.

There's a discipline in writing, and thinking that must be learned,
developed, through practice. Interactive group dynamics require
consistency, commitment and the cheerful propensity toward summary
and friendship. Shared learning is a teachable win-win group skill.

The hooks for involving citizens in the online medium are in values and
culture, and their realizing how the power of the medium can be made
tangible. Western individualism and the American action- orientation
appeal to the online developing supraculture. Online group interaction
is literally the creation of culture. Norms and expectations evolve
naturally, but structures like functional democracy must be carefully
taught, and nurtured.

Establishing our sense of beingness through expression of our cultures is
a basic human need. Social support of family and friends is a priority,
enhanceable electronically. Self-discipline motivated by cultural values
and a commitment to improve the world, need to be defined
operationally step-by-step toward provable ends, starting with the
dynamics of our first online group experience.

If the online medium can empower an embattled culture, might it be also
used to initiate a battle? The grassroots groups have more to gain than
the hierarchical establishment. One hard reality is any action-group is
likely to be in opposition to another group, and for purposeful change to
take place, conflict is inevitable. Handling conflict and dissension online
becomes a specific dynamic that if handled badly, limits the effectiveness
of any action- group.

ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT SKILLS: Writing interactively with
multiple action-groups to earn a living is not something we yet know
how to teach. We are most fundamentally motivated when it comes to
making money, whether for our family, community or ourselves. We are
often socially most motivated to work with others when they might help
us achieve economic goals.

The book Nations at Work says small businesses lean enough and
technically-versed enough to innovate quickly need an environment
with the right stresses to make them excel at their mission: competing in
niche global markets.

Big Sky Telegraph's mission is rural networking, and we stay close to
the realities required for excellence in this specific field through our
strategic location at Western Montana College. Hawaii's mission is
multicultural socioeconomic networking and its diverse cultures hold
the potential to help Hawaii excel in this area.

To sit on a Hawaiian beach sunning, with a cellular or packet-radio
laptop, working and earning a lucrative living, and enjoying the
adventure of being free to travel...is a fantasy nearly within grasp for
some of us. Yet can it ever be attainable for all? Perhaps such dreams are
only for a lucky few, with the rest of us struggling to make a living as
relationship have-nots.

Can Hawaii's strategic position regarding Pacific rim online trade
opportunities create opportunities for the average citizen? For
sophisticated businesses to succeed, they require proprietary contacts
not easily available for individuals. More than just training,
relationships are needed that can acculturate newcomers to the support
communities necessary for survival on this new economic frontier. How
to create global relationships with other small businesspersons and
telepreneurs, to generate enough such relationships for all of us, is a key
challenge....how to build a global community we're all a part of.

Perhaps community action-teams, or infoscout troops, need to be
created to seek out and evaluate potential partnerships with sources of
expertise and training. Perhaps a major economic opportunity is
represented by the need for training on how to create and evaluate the
function of these proactive community representatives.

With the previous concepts in mind, what might a community network
do to facilitate the creation of relationships centered on sharing of
expertise? Here's an example posting from our community network:

 A DILEMMA AND A CHALLENGE

The Big Sky Telegraph Community exists only through its users; Caring
people using technologies of freedom to stay on the breaking wavecrest
of the emerging future. Teleliteracy brings freedom of expression and
facility with creating one's own options.

How to leverage the ability of the online medium to connect individuals
to expertise and knowledge greater than their own is key to realizing
optimal benefits. Effective group action is a function of the quality of the
group's participants.

BST has survived over the past six years on $50/year subscriptions and
grant funds won through the innovations of our community members.
Special thanks to the US West Foundation, Western Montana College,
and Annenberg/CPB! Now we risk being unable to answer all the
requests for information assistance. To meet this challenge we now
formally invite *you* to volunteer your particular expertise to assist
teachers, students and citizens in developing their knowledge access
skills.

You may define your own level of commitment without restriction and
can modify it at anytime. Realizing, of course, our community only
grows with your participation. All we need is your Internet address and
your own definition of what expertise and goodwill you offer our
community of learners.

We'll post your name, Internet address and areas of expertise, along
with the filename of a biography detailing who you are and what you're
prepared to offer to our citizens in time and resources.

BIG SKY MENTOR PROGRAM: We have begun a roster of names,
Internet addresses and specialty areas, easily browsable, and
supplemented with short biographies detailing the expertise and extent
of volunteered commitment by the listed Big Sky Mentors. While Big Sky
Mentors can simply respond to Internet messages from our community,
they are invited to connect directly to our community via Internet or
dialup to post their offerings for highest-value resources and interact
directly.

The ideal expertise would be those with innovative ideas relating to K12
science/math/telecomputing reform oriented toward creating
employability skills independent of geographical location.

This is outrightly an experiment in online community building,
conducted in plain sight on full Internet. We build it, will you come?

CONCLUSION: Action-based initiatives are needed to explore the
possibilities of community networking, that will be primarily motivated
by the imaginations of the participants. Non-obtrusive measures of the
many levels of "success" need to be designed and implemented. The
bottom line is that if a community of individuals shares a vision,
commitment and a tangible plan...they can jointly unlock the
unprecedented power of local and global community networking.


 

From ct  Wed Aug  3 14:01:49 1994
Received: by coltrane.lis.pitt.edu (5.61/1.34)
	id AA24289; Wed, 3 Aug 94 14:01:49 -0400
Date: Wed, 3 Aug 94 14:01:49 -0400
From: ct (chris tomer)
Message-Id: <9408031801.AA24289@coltrane.lis.pitt.edu>
To: ct@lis.pitt.edu
Subject: Govt. Access (Warren 14K).txt
X-Status: 
Status: O

Computer-Assisted Government Access


Jim Warren
345 Swett Road
Woodside CA 94062
(415)851-7075
fax/(415)851-2814
jwarren@well.com or
jwarren@autodesk.com

 "Futures" columnist & Contributing Editor, MicroTimes; Public-access
columnist, Government Technology; Government-access columnist,
BoardWatch; Networking columnist, Prize Press (for reporters &
editors); Member, Board of Directors, Autodesk, Inc.; InfoWorld
founder; Computers, Freedom & Privacy conferences founder;
first-year recipient of the Electronic Frontier Foundation Pioneer
Award; 1994 recipient of the Society of Professional Journalists -
Northern California James Madison Freedom-of-Information Award;
and, graduate degrees from Stanford University, University of
California Medical Center - San Francisco and University of
Taxas-Austin.


This talk will present some (1) dimensions of "government access," (2)
issues in government-held public data, (3) benefits, problems and
dangers, (4) predictions of the very near future and how to get "there,"
and (6) mention some California legislation-in-process.  Footnotes
include some interesting online discussion lists, some Internet references
for human use and some noteworthy future events.

[Some] Dimensions of Government Access.
--       Level of government:
                Federal, state, local (and international).
--       Branch of government:
                Legislative, executive, judicial branches.
--       Direction of access:
                To government (citizen, etc., access to government),
                By government (government access to citizen, etc.),
                To citizens, communities, interest groups, businesses
                        (including the body-politic accessing itself).
--       Access to what:
                Information,
                Individuals.
--       Access provider:
                By government,
                By the for-profit private sector,
                By the non-profit private sector, perhaps pro bono,
                By individuals, for profit or without charge.
--       Beneficiaries of the access:
                Government,
                For-profit private sector and businesses,
                Not-for-profit interest groups and community groups,
                Individuals and citizens.
--       Underwriter(s) of the costs of the access:
                Paid for by government - i.e., by tax-payers,
                Paid for by those who receive the access,
                Paid for by both parties.
--       Purpose of access:
                For information,
                For participation in the process of governance.

Concerning Government-Held Public Data.
--       Access to what kinds of information:
                About government,
                About the private-sector (has confidentiality issues),
                About individuals (has personal privacy issues).
--       Format of the information:
                Unstructured text documents,
                Structured text and data (spreadsheets, databases, ...),
                "Other" types of data (images, CAD, GIS, ...).
--       Origin of the information
                Originated by the government,
                Originated outside of government.
--       Permitted uses of the information:
                Unrestricted personal use,
                Unrestricted business use,
                Use restricted by law.

Some Examples, Issues, Benefits, Problems.
--       Vision 2020 recommendations:
                Commission on the Future of the California Courts,
                Proposing a "paperless judiciary,"
                Aid citizen oversight, equalize access to state case law, ...
--       U.S. Department of Justice's JURIS system (how NOT to do it):
                Provided CALR - computer-assisted legal research,
                Based on federal case law, proprietary computer copies,
                And some courts require copyrighted case-citation numbers.
                DoJ now prohibited from using computerized federal case law.
                West Publishing [law-book publishers] holds copyrights.
                Mead Data Central [online data provider] secret permission.
                Matthew Bender [law-book competitor] suing for citation codes.
--       California Legislature's Internet-based public-access:
                Access by  ftp  and  ftpmail via  leginfo.public.ca.gov  .
                But  senate.ca.gov  apparently provides better access, data.
                For-profit providers Legi-Tech (McClatchy), State Net (Mead).
--       Clinton administration's Budget on a CD ROM & online.
--       City of Palo Alto proposed budget of a few years ago.
                Refused to provide it on diskette; "You might modify it."
                But now initiating a local-government civic-net, open access.
--       Agency telephone records.
                (like Proctor & Gamble's pursuit of news leaks via phone logs).
                Perhaps protected by "consultative privilege."
--       Arrest records and rap sheets (criminal histories).
                Don't want closed arrest records; how prisoners get "lost."
                FBI National Crime Information Center (NCIC).
                But the data is being compiled and sold to attorneys, etc.
--       Driver-license records and digitized thumb-prints.
                Provides non-tax-based, off-budget(?) agency revenue stream,
                Anti-stalking legislation (starlette Rebecca Schafer murder),
                Driver-license mag-stripe data; merchants as "clients,"
                AVI - automatic vehicle identification, tracking.
        [Principle at issue:
                "Personal information collected for one purpose shall not be
                used for another purpose without the person's prior consent."]
--       Voter-registration records.
                California judges & police can seal their records, not others.
                Should government decision-makers be hidden?
--       Censorship ("content control").
                Problems with public comments on agency-run public systems.
                Medium dominated by few folks with fleet fingers; aggressors.
                "Offensive" speech; "politically incorrect"; sliber/landel.
                Problems with officials' position-statements vs. campaigning.
                "Nasty" GIF files.
                Amateur Action BBS (local standards, Fremont CA vs. Memphis TN)
                EXXXtasy, scrambled, GTE Spacenet bird (Montgomery AL vs. NYC)

The Future (weeks to a few years from now)
--       For federal and state action, Net Power!
                Information access from anywhere.
                Timely access to information.
                Communities of interest regardless of geographic location.
                Provides fundamental tools for grassroots political action.
                Can halt undesired governmental actions.
                Can provide politically-irresistable grassroots pressure.
--       The nets will play instrumental parts in upcoming elections.
                Build grassroots constituencies
                Facilitate organized action
--       But, beware!
                Posturing politicians pursuing content control.
                Access monopolies by costly RBOCs and cable operators.
                Public-data content monopolies by private companies.
                Public-data profiteering by public agencies.
                Data monopoly by proprietary formats and systems.
                Inaccessability due to comingled public and private data.
                Net-based peeping, snooping, tracking and surveillance of
                        individuals, organizations, corporations, government:
                        [Skipjack (algorithm), Clipper (voice), Capstone (data)].

Hints on how to get "there."
--       Model policies for public access to the public's information:
                OMB Information Management Circular A-130 (June '93).
                Prohibit private and agency information monopolies.
                Prohibit access fees in excess of incremental access costs.
--       If agencies commingle public records with proprietary data,
                require automatic redaction of non-public components.
--       Digital-format access and online access wherever reasonable:
                Online access via nonprofit, nonproprietary, public nets.
                At-cost copies on any magnetic media already in use
                        (but only in formats already in use by the agency).
                Cost-savings and public service outweigh expense.
                Encourage multi-agency public-access host systems.
--       For local action:  Civic networks
                Government operated (problems!).
                Privately operated.
                Remote access to government and for government.
                Different-time, different-place community discussions.
                Access to all the details for informed action.
--       Demand that state candidates file computerized political disclosures.
                Key California Legislation-in-Process,
                Computerized filings now permitted in New Mexico.

Some California Legislation-in-Process:
--       AB 2524 - Expands Public Records Act to make available all
                computerized copies of computerized local-agency records.
                        1. Mandates that they be provided upon request
                        2. Mandates no more than actual cost of copying
                Assembly Member Debra Bowen (aide: Mary Winkley)
                        916-445-8528;    fax/916-327-2201
                        email / bowen@assembly.ca.gov
--       AB 2451 - Makes all computerized state-agency public records
                available via the Internet, without charge by the agencies.
                Assembly Member Tom Bates (aide: Rachel Richman)
                        916-445-7554;    fax/916-445-6434
                        email / rrichman@igc.apc.org
        SB 758 - Mandates [significant] campaign-finance disclosures
                be filed in  & publicly-available in computerized form.
                State Senator Tom Hayden (aide: Darryl Young)
                        916-445-1353;    fax/916-324-4823
                        email / reform94@delphi.com  [campaign e-addr]
--       AB 3575 - Computerized lobbyist disclosures
                Assembly Member Jackie Speier (aide: Elise Thurau)
                        916-445-8020;    fax/916-445-0511;    <no email>

Some [few] Online [Internet] Sources
--       GovAccess distribution list.
                Whatever interests me in this turf; action-oriented.
                Email a request to be added to    jwarren@well.com
--       calgovinfo  distribution list; unmoderated discussion.
                Email to     listserv@cpsr.org
                Message: SUBSCRIBE CALGOVINFO firstname lastname
                For help: Send    HELP    to    listserv@cpsr.org
--       Electronic Frontier Foundation
                Computer-related civil liberties, Washington watchdog.
                Email information request to    ask@eff.org
--       Taxpayer Assets Project, a Ralph Nader group.
                Vigilent advocate of free online federal information.
                Email information request to    tap@essential.org
--       Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility
                Virulent privacy advocates, Washington watchdogs.
                Email information request to    cpsr@cpsr.org
--       The "interesting-people" list (should be interested people).
                Several postings per day; potpourri of juicy net tidbits.
                Email request to be added to    farber@cis.upenn.edu

Recommended Internet References
--       Zen and the Art of the Internet, Brendan Kehoe, Prentice Hall
                (112 pp., a one-evening "read" for intelligent layfolks)
--       The Whole INTERNET: User's Guide & Catalog, Ed Krol,
                O'Reilly & Associates, Sebastopol CA; 800-998-9938
                (376 pp.; may be the standard tutorial and user's reference)

[Some] Future Events of Note
--       Peninsula CivicNet '94 Symposium - June 17 (Friday)
                College of San Mateo, San Mateo
                Ruth Nagler, 415-345-1221 or 415-349-5538
                        email / wslocum@delphi.com    (or me, below)
--       [tentative] Computers, Freedom & Privacy '95 - Spr., 1995 (3-4 days)
                San Francisco Peninsula (probably at the SFO Marriott)
                Carey Heckman, 415-725-7788;    fax/415-323-3362
                        email / ceh@leland.stanford.edu


 

From ct  Wed Aug  3 14:02:18 1994
Received: by coltrane.lis.pitt.edu (5.61/1.34)
	id AA24297; Wed, 3 Aug 94 14:02:18 -0400
Date: Wed, 3 Aug 94 14:02:18 -0400
From: ct (chris tomer)
Message-Id: <9408031802.AA24297@coltrane.lis.pitt.edu>
To: ct@lis.pitt.edu
Subject: NPTN (Grundner 13K)
X-Status: 
Status: OR

Steve,

Here's the written version of pretty much, what I will say in my talk. If you have any questions &etc., let me know. 

----------------


SEIZING THE INFOSPHERE: TOWARD THE FORMATION OF A 
"CORPORATION FOR PUBLIC CYBERCASTING"


T.M. Grundner, Ed.D
President, National Public Telecomputing Network 
Cleveland, Ohio




THE PARABLE OF THE SUPERHIGHWAY

Once upon a time there was a great nation that decided to build a "superhighway" the likes of which had never been seen. 

"It would link everyone with everywhere," they said. "It would be for the peasants as well as the nobles. Corporations could use it. School children could use it. Even the lowliest subjects would be able to travel anywhere in the world to access "IT." ("IT" being whatever their hearts and minds desired)." 

A great cry of support arose from the people, and work began. 

When it was completed, however, there seemed to be a small problem. Across the length and breadth of the superhighway there was only one "off-ramp" for every 10 "on-ramps." Some were perplexed by this and asked the engineers about it. 

"We weren't asked to build OFF-ramps," they said with a look of incredulity. "Our task was to provide ACCESS and that we've done. Building destinations--places worth going to--was someone elses' job. We have build the highway; they will come." 

And come they did.

The people seeing the great superhighway gleaming in the distance entered it by the tens-of-thousands... by the hundreds- of-thousands... by the millions. But as the volume of traffic grew, so did the traffic jams at the off-ramps. There were so few places at which to get off the highway that the lines grew longer, and longer, and longer.

Many of those who were responsible for the towns that existed at the end of those few off-ramps gave up in disgust. "We built a nice little town here;" they said. "But it was never our intention, nor is it our job, to handle the needs of the entire nation. We simply don't have that kind of capacity." And they started closing their towns to travelers. This, of course, increased the load on the off-ramps that remained--making matters even worse.

One proposed solution emerged in the form of commercial off- ramp companies. "We'll provide all the off-ramp usage the people want," they trumpeted; quietly adding "...for a small fee, of course." That was fine--that's what companies do. And so they did.

The fees were no problem for the nobles. The nobles could afford it, plus they well knew the joys of highway travel. But the peasants weren't quite sure. Many genuinely could not afford it; and the others... well, this "highway-travel thing" was something new for them and they were unsure, so they remained well away from the commercial off-ramps.

Another proposed solution emerged when it was discovered that, for a relatively small fee, almost any individual could create their own off-ramp, and a blizzard of these destinations were begun. Some of them led to pots of gold and were a great joy to the traveller. Some led to places that caused the traveler to wonder what had possessed the owners to create them in the first place. And others lead to places that... well, were not exactly recommended destinations for the school busses. 

Over time, the problem resolved itself. The nobles continued to use the highway, further ennobling themselves in the process. The merchant class grew healthier and wealthier by servicing whoever appeared. And the peasants, who once viewed the roadway with such enthusiasm, soon stopped using it at all. 

The highway which began as a means to link everyone to everywhere became a bitter sight to those who were, yet again, forced to pay for something that was of no earthly use to them. 

And a great sadness filled the land.

---

The thrust of my talk can be summed up in one paragraph-- everything else is a footnote:

America's progress toward an equitable Information Age will NOT be measured by the number of people we can make DEPENDENT upon the Internet. Rather, it is the reverse. It will be measured by the number of LOCAL systems we can build, using LOCAL resources, to meet LOCAL needs.

Our progress will not be measured by the number of college educated people we can bring online--but by the number of blue collar workers and farmers and their families we can bring online. 

It will not be measured by the number of people who can access the card catalog at the University of Paris, but by the number of people who can find out what's going on at their kids' school, or get information about the latest flu bug which is going around their community.

A lot has been spoken and written recently about creating an "information superhighway" which will meet the specialized needs of colleges, libraries, corporations, and other institutions throughout the country. Perhaps what is needed, however, is a network with enough "conceptual bandwidth" to include those kinds of functions AND allow the people who are being asked to pay for it--the average taxpayer--to achieve some direct benefit as well. 

Fortunately the United States has led the world in the development of public access networks which do exactly that and you will hear about many of them at this conference. My own organization, the National Public Telecomputing Network, alone has 34 online affiliates with 105 formal organizing committees hard at work to bring even more systems online.

That's the good news.

The bad news is that, to date, this progress has been the product of very difficult non-profit entrepreneurism, and those efforts alone will not bring information equity to this country. We need to do more, and we need to do it at a more organized, more comprehensive, national level.

The hard part has been accomplished. The hardware has been developed; the software has been developed; community organizing procedures have been developed; and the public demand for these services has been enormous wherever it has been tried. 

What is needed now is a way to get this technology to ALL our citizens, not just to a handful of locations. We need to build more than the concrete slabs of an information superhighway, but also the off-ramps and towns that will give that highway meaning. 


TOWARD A CORPORATION FOR PUBLIC CYBERCASTING 

The proposed solution is to create an entity that would be an analog to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. This agency, for purposes of this document called the Corporation for Public Cybercasting (CPC), would be designed to do for this medium what the CPB did for public television and public radio. 

Modeled after the CPB, it would be responsible for: 

1) developing free public access computerized information and communication systems in cities and towns throughout the U.S; 

2) developing and delivering high-quality national information services to these community systems; and 

3) developing special training and other programs to introduce telecomputing to the general public, as well as to special populations such as K-12 schools, senior citizens, the handicapped, women and minority groups, and so forth. 

Like the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the CPC would receive core funding from government, yet it would not be an agency of the government. Instead, it would be a free-standing nonprofit corporation, with a board of trustees selected each year by the President, with no more than half of that board being of any one political party.

To ensure that these community computer systems have access to the network resources they need to perform their functions, CPC systems would be guarenteed lowest feasible cost access to any transmission network funded in whole or in part with federal monies, or which connects to a network which is funded in whole or in part with federal monies.


THE COSTS

The cost of such a program would be borne by a series of 2:1 matching grants at the federal, and state levels so that no one level of government would be expected to carry the full burden. 

For any given community computer system, the CPC would match $2 for every $1 raised at the state or local level, up to a limit of $100,000 per system for core funding and $50,000 for educational and special program development. (For rural systems: $25,000 and 12,500) Thus the maximum public expenditure for any given system would look like this:


MAXIMUM PUBLIC EXPENDITURES
URBAN SYSTEMS

CPC	State/Local	Max. Amt.
per system

Core Support	$100,000	$50,000	$150,000

Special Pgms	50,000	25,000	75,000

Total Expenditure 150,000	75,000	225,000
per system


MAXIMUM PUBLIC EXPENDITURES
RURAL SYSTEMS

CPC	State/Local	Max. Amt.
per system

Core Support	$25,000	$12,500	$37,500

Special Pgms	12,500	6,250	18,750

Total Ependiture 37,500	18,750	56,250
per system



To provide a sense of the financial order of magnitude of this program:

* To establish and/or support a community computer in each of 
100 major cities (the 50 largest cities, plus the 50 state capitals, for example) would entail a maximum federal expenditure of $15 million per year.

* To further extend these benefits to a network of 500 rural 
communities would involve an additional expenditure of $18.7 million.

* Thus, for just over $35 million ($1.5 million is included for 
administration and national-level program development) we would make computerized information and communications services accessible to the bulk of our citizenry, and place us on a path of no return with regard to an equitable Information Age. Moreover, NO CPC monies would be spent without there first being state or local monies in place to match them.

These monies would be used by the local communities to: 

* Purchase the hub computer, modems, software, incoming 
phonelines and/or other appropriate technology (such as ISDN connections, fiber-optic cable, etc.), to bring their community computer online;

* Purchase their connection to the Internet (or its successor) 
from the most appropriate commercial or non-commercial vendor;

* Hire full-time staff to professionally operate the 
installation; and

* Develop programs at the local-level to introduce this 
technology to special populations such as: K-12 schools, senior citizens, the handicapped, women and minority groups, etc.

There is also one additional source of funding. 

To supplement the monies brought in from governmental sources, the CPC will create a national fund to solicit support from America's telecommunications industries. As an industry they will be asked to contribute dollar-for-dollar what the federal government puts into the CPC.

The CPC will be providing several functions which these corporations can not provide (or would be un-economical to provide) themselves. These include the dissemination of this technology to rural America, the introduction of it to socio- economic groups that would not otherwise be exposed, the development of large-scale training programs for the handicapped, senior citizens, women and minorities, and so forth. From that standpoint, the CPC would be one of the best investments they could make; and their sup


 

From ct  Wed Aug  3 14:02:54 1994
Received: by coltrane.lis.pitt.edu (5.61/1.34)
	id AA24310; Wed, 3 Aug 94 14:02:54 -0400
Date: Wed, 3 Aug 94 14:02:54 -0400
From: ct (chris tomer)
Message-Id: <9408031802.AA24310@coltrane.lis.pitt.edu>
To: ct@lis.pitt.edu
Subject: OneNet_(Converse 60K)
X-Status: 
Status: O

The OneNet Member Network

The Birth and growth of a new global online virtual community

Scott Converse
4546 El Camino Real #127
Los Altos, CA 94022
Tel: (415) 948-4775   BBS: (415) 948-1349
converse1@applelink.apple.com

Scott Converse is the head of R&D for Apple Online Services.  His
group created

the eWorld community metaphor, Apple's soon to be released online
service.  He

has been at Apple Computer for the last seven years working in
developing interactive systems such as eWorld and AppleLink, creating
CD-ROM and

multimedia based information products such as the Developer
CD-Series (i.e. Phil & Dave's Excellent CD) and is a member of Apple's
Technical Council, the group that guides Apple's technical directions
companywide.  Before working for Apple he owned his own consulting
company designing large network systems for schools, businesses and
institutions and ran a large multi-store computer retail, direct sales and
service operation in the Colorado/Wyoming region.  He lives in Los
Altos, California with his Wife, Sara, a marketing manager at Apple
and his new son, Gregory, who's job is to get baby spit on everything he
can touch.

The concept of distributed community oriented networks is not a new
one.  There are several very large, very global online communities in
existence today.  The Internet is one.  Fidonet is another.  Both have
been around for at least a decade and products of their original seeds:
text based and difficult to use (although this is changing with the advent
of internet front ends such as Mosaic).

Becoming a member of one of these tribes, and tribe is the correct word,
is still difficult.  It's not something my mother, for instance, would very
likely do.

There is a new distributed community oriented network that, by
comparison, is still very young.  Not much over 1 year old.  It's called the
OneNet Member Network.  From the human side, it's a community in
every aspect of the word.  It encourages all the different aspects of
community such as entertainment, socialization, education, and
commerce.  From the technical side It's a very simple to set up and
simple to operate server and an even easier to use piece of client
software for Macintosh and Windows users as well as regular old
terminal access (ASCII text).  Using a OneNet system (Based on
FirstClass software from a company in Canada called SoftArc Inc.) is a
completely different experience than anything out there today.  Some
have called it the "Internet for the Rest of Us".

It's also unusual in that, the social structure of the OneNet, appears to
be farther up the sociological food chain then other networks.  More on
where later.

Distributed online virtual communities are nothing more then
reflections of society.  Our society has had four distinct area's of growth
over the millennium.  They are, foraging bands, tribes, chiefdoms and
states.

Foraging Bands

The initial computer user, usually on his or her own, was really nothing
more than a member of a foraging band.  People who would, using a 110
or 300 baud modem, cast about the barren landscape of an almost empty
cyberspace.  Even the 'high speed' users on what has become the
internet could only find primarily dry academic or military information
on their networks.  These were the days of foraging bands.

Tribes

The technology advanced, as technology does, and these people found
they could begin to band together.  They set up places where they could
gather and swap stories and opinions and show how wise they were, or
point out how unwise others were.  It's amazingly similar to parts of a
council meeting of a tribe.  These places were what we call BBS's today.
Or, on what has become the Internet, news groups.

There are common groups, or tribes, as well.  There's the Fidonet tribe.
And there's the Internet tribe, and many other tribes.  There are also
subtribes within these tribes.  The social structure, however, is still that
of a tribe.  Highly distributed.  Some degree of leadership at local levels
(BBS sysops and moderators of various news groups) exists, but there
isn't an overarching leader or governing body of any sort.  Everything is
controlled by the nature of the particular local tribes leader (the sysop of
a BBS or moderator of the conference/newsgroup), or the overall peer
pressure on any one member of the tribe by all the other members of the
tribe (the Internet).

Even the 'big' online systems such as CompuServe, America Online and
Prodigy really operate, primarily, as large BBS's controlling them as
sysops control local BBS's.  It's still very much a tribe mentality.  This,
today, is were we are, from a social structure point of view, in the online
world.  The Net, or The Matrix, The Electronic Frontier and
CyberSpace, whatever you choose to call it, is really a collection of
vastly different and highly distributed tribes loosely coupled together.
This is now, and it's the time of the Tribe.

Chiefdoms

The OneNet Member Network appears to have taken some tentative
steps into the next level.  The level of chiefdoms.  A chiefdom (or
kingdom, or benevolent dictatorship, whatever you choose to call it) is
the next historical step in the evolution of a society.  The OneNet
Member Network (ONMN), although highly distributed and, in almost
every other way you can imagine, identical to how the Internet or
fidonet works, has one difference.  It has a 'head'.  A chief, or a
benevolent dictator.  That person for the ONMN is Scott Converse, the
founder and executive director.  He and several other people making up
the ONMN Board of Directors and manage the overall global OneNet.
It currently consists of between 500 and 1000 systems worldwide with
membership of 500,000-1,000,000 users.

He does not operate The OneNet as a you might imagine, but he does
oversee it's overall operations.  It is structured in a star design.  There is
a single dedicated gateway server in Boulder, Colorado.  This server
connects to regional hubs in the USA, Canada, Europe and the Pacific
Rim.  These regional hubs are run by individuals and businesses and are
required to sign an agreement that they will follow the guiding
principles and guidelines of the ONMN as defined by the Board of
Directors.  These regional systems then provide feeds to Metro level
hubs in major population centers of the world.  These Metro hubs then
provide feeds to City hubs who provide feeds to Neighbor hubs.

This single OneNet Prime hub hosts over 500 conferences on a wide
range of topics, much like the Internet, fidonet or other distributed or
centralized systems.  It also provides global multihop email using simple
addressing similar (but slightly easier) then mailing a regular letter (you
simply put the name of the person you want to send a message to, a
comma, and the name of the system they 'live' on.  For instance: Bill
Moore,OneNet Los Altos and the ONMN routes it to him
automatically).

The network was formed in late 1992 by about 15 or so people in the San
Francisco Bay Area.  It started on a hobby oriented system called
OneNet Los Altos in Scott Converse's garage.  From that system, it
grew to 50 systems around the US and Canada.  Then 150, then 300,
now at least 500 and, we suspect closer to 700 to 1000.  It is one of largest
graphical online systems in the world and growing very rapidly.

The guiding principles for the OneNet were originally written by a
group of about 8 or 9 people.