                           W. Curtiss Priest, Ph.D.
                             with Kenneth Komoski
                 Center for Information, Technology & Society
                             466 Pleasant Street
                              Melrose, MA  02176
   Internet: bmslib@mitvma.mit.edu, Voice: 617-662-4044, FAX: 617-662-6882

        "Furthering Advances in Communication, Computers, and Networks
                for Improved Education, Health, and Humanity"

                   This document may be distributed freely

                               January 4, 1994

                              An Open Discussion
                         with Al Gore and Mike Nelson

                        The Will to Create the Future:

            Information Highways, Economic Security, and Community

                               Public Issue #4:

                       "Notes from Troops in the Field"


Sometimes it's the little things.  Since Issue #3, the Center has been
involved in various information highway adventures.

There IS a grassroots highway afoot.  Most recently the Corporation for Public
Broadcasting (CPB) has announced the availability of grants in the range of
$100,000 for two years, for electronic "communities of place" .  A startup
business by a millionaire in Houston to provide school - home information
using an unused portion of the TV broadcasting spectrum has found that mixing
business with schools is like mixing oil and water.  The concept of digital
libraries is still alive as the NSF is currently accepting proposals.
 
In helping prepare a response to the CPB RFP in Eastern Long Island we find
that Internet access is expensive enough that no local community bulletin
board system can afford a broadband feed to the Highway.  As a spokesperson
for NYSERNet put it, are you going to look for a "back door" connection?

And if so, one undermines the base for PSI to expand Internet coverage to
Eastern Long Island.

One such back door is Brookhaven National Labs.  Albert Einstein wanted to be
near his summer home, so Roosevelt obliged in placing the lab in Eastern Long
Island.  A T-1 feed thus exists to NYC and provides a route into the Internet.
Nighttime UUCP feeds are commonplace and are usually given out free of charge
since they are at non-peak load times.  So a BBS can send and receive Internet
mail, but it has to put up with delays and uncertainty.  And such a connection
provides only E-mail support -- no gopher, or more sophisticated tools.

The alternative is to go with a major online access system such as the World,
American Online, BIX, etc., but this is unfortunately no longer a community of
"place."  These national systems seldom provide local community
concentrations.

A Freenet based system in Buffalo tied into SUNY recently, only to be
chastised for their backdoor connection, forcing them to switch supplier.

Our Center was recently cited in the National Journal article "Technology:
Dueling Over Data" by Graeme Browning.  The article focused on "A battle
...brewing between the Clinton Administration and some electronic publishers
over whether users of the Internet should have the right to call up electronic
versions of government documents on their computer screens, and how much -- if
anything -- they should pay for that right." (Dec. 4, 1993, p. 2880)

The ideal Internet should not be a "duel over data."  As Al Gore stressed in
his first speech on NII before the National Press Club:

    "The most important step we can take to ensure universal service
     is to adopt policies that result in lower prices for everyone.
     The lower the price the less need for subsidies.  We believe the
     pro-competitive policies we will propose will result in lower
     prices and better service to more Americans." 

But if we look at the prices for useful information we find a checkered
information world.  A premier source of information is Dialog -- the largest
online information provider in the world.  Knight Ridder saw the potential for
profits when they acquired Dialog from Lockheed five years ago.

As we look through the hundreds of databases provided by Dialog, it is indeed
a feast of knowledge.  But as we thumb the price list we also find that this
feast is, indeed, only accessible to the financially well-off.  Two ample
sources of information ERIC (Educational Resources Information Center) and
Medline (the abstracts from the National Library of Medicine) costs $30 and
$36 per hour respectively and each citation printed costs $.15 and $.20
respectively.  This sounds cheap compared to the Freedonia Market database
where each full text citation costs $13, but is still beyond the financial
means of a family in Riverhead, N.Y. interested in having their child access
Medline to do a science paper.  Also, there is a $75 per year charge just to
keep Dialog accessible.

There are alternatives, but scarcely.  Medline and ERIC are available at
"evening rates" through Compuserve.  The cost, however, only drops to $24 per
hour and requires that the potential user maintain a Compuserve account at $9
per month to keep the account accessible.  For Medline there is a direct
alternative, one can open an account and be charged $18 per hour for access.
(Curiously, as the choices per account go up, the prices also go up.  Imagine
a world where, just to save online access charges, you had to subscribe to
every one of five hundred different databases.)

However, there are alternatives for the university elite.  Many campuses have
provided access to "FirstSearch" which is a service of OCLC, Inc.  This is the
"site license" alternative.  The university pays the fee directly to OCLC and
each member of the university may freely access about sixty databases.
However, lacking in most of these databases is the full text of articles,
making article retrieval still necessary.  While universities have "free"
access to interlibrary loan, the actual costs involved are around $10-$15 per
article.

In short, there is no "free lunch" on the Internet.  The mountains of free
archives available through the Internet are not terribly useful knowledge
sources.  The best resource, in our experience, is access to the holdings of
the Library of Congress.  Here is a gem of references to the book world.
Unfortunately the contents of many of them are only available by making a trip
to Washington, D.C.

So as we design a model community BBS for the five townships of Eastern Long
Island, we have little incentive to connect to the Highway.  First, our
connection will be costly if we want to provide high-speed access, and then we
wonder "high-speed access to what?"

What we see evolving is a chicken and egg problem.  The online information
providers have high "hurdle rates" for information and we can see no easy way
of aggregating the "potential future demand" for the information to get them
to lower their costs.  (translated: basis for market failure)

Perhaps the federal government should buy a site license for all Americans
from all of the information providers.   Imagine that.

Post Script:

Why this fixation with online data providers such as Dialog?  Well, it turns
out that while FTP, Archie, Gopher, Veronica, WAIS and WWW are simply very
expensive tools to do very little REAL information gathering.  In a flash we
can tie up hundreds of pathways around the world only to find a bewildering
response of very noisy responses from machines that don't really understand
our true information interest nor are able to respond adequately to it.

In contrast, when we are asked to do some serious information searching we
first go into Dialog's file 411 which is a database of databases at Dialog.
It took Lockheed a while to discover this wonderful addition to online
searching.  With this file we comb the hundreds of possible relevant databases
that have been carefully crafted by abstracting services.  We slowly devise a
search strategy.  We discover ambiguities in our search strategy and gradually
compose strings of terms ANDed and ORed to produce the desired output.  We
then use "onesearch" to more efficiently apply the search strategy to a set of
Dialog databases.  But careful now, an accidental use of the KWC (keyword in
context) search of titles can suddenly produce a $500 charge in a few minutes
if we am not careful of which files charge for "TYPE 6,KWC" that we often use
to further refine the search strategy.

Are we an "overly sophisticated" user?  It depends.  If were're after what is
already in Grolier's encylopedia, the answer is yes.  But then for $50 we just
put the CD-ROM version of Grolier's on our PC and let our children pull up the
usual stuff.

But if I am a true knowledge seeker, I need the assistance, for example, of
Eugene Garfield's wonderful invention of the Social Science Citation Index.
With this online (and paper based) system, I can thread my way forward in time
finding writers who have cited previous writers I know about.  Presto!  I can
"look back into the future."

But is Garfield's ISI going to just put his wonderful index on the Internet
for free?  No way.  And as we gaze over the thousands of journals abstracted
and the care ISI takes in matching obscure citations, etc., we know why it is
$120 per hour -- one of Dialog's most expensive databases.

Perhaps the truth is somewhere muddled in between.  But we suggest that the
truth is really muddled by how much the knowledge seeker takes for granted his
or her own information gathering and accessing abilities.  When our search
systems such as Dialog require "online search professionals" this tells us
something about the problem of "impedance matching" between the inquiring mind
and the information sources.

Back to the teacher?  Perhaps, but more likely on to "computer mediated
communication."  In our CPB proposal we have some of Brookhaven's finest
scientists and mathematicians online in "chat mode" serving as mentors to kids
on Eastern Long Island.  Using the Internet?  Perhaps, but perhaps just by
having the scientist dial into the local BBS.  Are we after gigabits of data
transfer?  Not yet for "learning communities."

***************************************************************************

In the spirit of using the Internet, Internet addresses are provided
for as many participants as we've been able to identify.  Please
inform us of any changes.

We are available for any questions about the Internet, Center reports,
and current information technology events.  Please call 617-662-4044 or
write:
            Dr. W. Curtiss Priest
            Center for Information, Technology and Society (CITS)
            466 Pleassant Street
            Melrose, MA  02176

The following list of recipients has been selected because each of
you understand the power of information technology and, together,
we can make this decade a shining example of using technology to
improve health, learning, welfare, and economic prosperity:

202-395-3261(FAX)             Al Gore, Executive Office of the Vice President,
Vice.President@Whitehouse.gov Washington, DC  20500

202-395-3261(FAX)          Bill Clinton, Executive Office of the President,
President@Whitehouse.gov   Washington, DC  20500

mnelson@ostp.eop.gov   Mike Nelson, Executive Office of the Vice President,
                        Washington, DC  20500

202-395-3261(FAX)      Jack Gibbons, Science Advisor, Assistant to the
                        President for Science and Technology, and Director for
                        the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP)
                        Executive Office of the President
                        Washington, DC  20500

efitzsimmons@eop.gov   Ed Fitzsimmons, Special Assistant for Education &
fitzsimmons@charm.isi.edu    Training, Office of Science and Technology
                             Policy

fletcher@charm.isi.edu Dexter Fletcher, Education & Training, Office of
                        Science and Technology Policy

Mhodge@ostp.eop.gov    David Hodge, White House Computer Coordinator

nii@ntia.doc.gov       Ronald H. Brown, Secretary of Commerce, Chair,
                        Information Infrastructure Task Force, DOC

li@ntia.doc.gov        Larry Irving, Director, National Telecommunications
                        and Information Administration, Chair, IITF
                        Telecommunications Policy Committee, DOC

ddruker@ntia.doc.gov   Don Druker, National Telecommunications and
                        Information Administration, DOC

202-482-2741(FAX)      Rob Stein, Chief of Staff, Department of Commerce, DOC

CHamilton@doc.gov      Carol Hamilton, Deputy Director, Office of Public
                        Affairs, Department of Commerce

202-401-0596(FAX)      Richard Riley, Secretary, Department of Education
                        Goals 2000 Education Project, DOE

mitchell@vdoe386.vak12ed.edu and mitchel@inet.ed.gov
                       James Mitchell, Senior Associate, Office of
                        Educational Research and Improvement (OERI), DOE

202-690-7203(FAX)      Robert Reich, Secretary, Department of Labor
                        Goals 2000 Education Project, DOL

202-690-7203(FAX)      Donna Shalala, Secretary, HHS

lindberg@lhc.nlm.nih.gov Dr. Donald A. B. Lindberg, Director,
lindberg@hpcc.gov       National Library of Medicine, NIH, HHS

202-224-2417(FAX)     Edward M. Kennedy, Committee on Labor and Human
                       Resources

bbunge@bigex.access.com Bob Bunge, Coordinator, NTIS BBS and Gateway

301-402-0244(FAX)      Dr. Thomas Lewis, Information Systems Assoc. Dir.
                        Warren Grant Magnuson Clinical Center, NIH, HHS

komoski@vax86.liunet.edu  Ken Komoski, Executive Director, EPIE (Education
                        Products Information Exchange)

stevens@cc.gatech.edu  Harry Stevens, Pres., Stevens Associates,
                        father of PARTICIPATE and media-based issue ballots

paul@cni.org           Paul Peters, Coalition for Networked Information,
                        American Research Libraries

mylesg@edc.org         Myles Gordon, V.P., Education Development Center

miller@a1.mec.mass.edu Inabeth Miller, Exec. Director, MCET, Massachusetts
                       Corporation for Educational Telecommunications,
                       Cambridge, MA

/g=tommie/s=williams/o=gtees/admd=telemail/c=us/@sprint.com
fwithrow@aol.com       Frank Withrow, Council of Chief School Officers
                        and U.S. Department of Education

vcerf@nri.reston.va.us Vinton Cerf, V.P., Corporation for National
                        Research Initiatives and Pres., Internet Society

geoff_miller@wgbh.org  Geoffrey P. Miller, Director, Interactive Projects
                        WGBH Public Television, Boston, MA

cspp@mcimail.com       Michele Norman, Computer Systems Policy Project

/g=karen/s=gray/o=gtees/admd=telemail/c=us/@sprint.com
                       David Crandall, Exec. Dir., The Regional
                        Laboratory for Education Improvement of the
                        Northeast & Islands

seymour@media.mit.edu  Prof. Seymour Papert, MIT, father of LOGO

ebarrett@athena.mit.edu Edward Barrett, Electronic Classroom
                        Collaboration using writing, Writing Program, MIT

malone@eagle.mit.edu   Prof. Tom Malone, Director, Center for Coordination
                        Sciences, MIT

rrhalp@eagle.mit.edu   Robert Russman Halperin, Executive Director
                        Center for Coordination Science, MIT

schrage@media.mit.edu  Michael Schrage, Research Affiliate/MIT,
schrage@latimes.com     Innovation Writer/Los Angeles Times

psenge@sloan.mit.edu (account not active)
                       Peter Senge, Director, Organizational Learning
                        Center, MIT

groth@mit.edu          George L. Roth, Research Associate, Organizational
                        Learning Center, MIT

rmckersi@sloan.mit.edu Prof. Robert Mc Kersie, Assoc. Dean, Sloan
                        School, MIT

lgarcia@ota.gov        Linda Garcia, Project Director, Telecommunications
                        and Computer Technology Program, OTA, U.S. Congress

jcurlin@ota.gov        James Curlin, Program Manager, Telecommunications
                        and Computing Technology Program, OTA, U.S. Congress

ncarson@ota.gov        Nancy Carson, Program Manager, Science, Education,
                        and Transportation Program, OTA, U.S. Congress

lroberts@inet.ed.gov   Linda G. Roberts, Office of the Deputy Secretary
                       U.S. Department of Education

weingarten@cs.umd.edu  Rick Weingarten, Director, Computer Research
                        Association

lwilliam@nsf.gov       Luther Williams, Assistant Director, Education and
                        Human Resources, National Science Foundation

nsabelli@nsf.gov       Nora H. Sabelli, Application of Advanced
                        Technologies to Education, Education and Human
                        Resources, National Science Foundation

dely@nsf.gov           Don Ely, Program Director, Dissemination
                        National Science Foundation

jwan@nsf.gov           Julia C. Wan, Program Director, Statewide
                        Systemic Initiative, National Science Foundation

richards@bbn.com       John Richards, Director, Educational Technology
                        BBN, Cambridge, MA

bhunter@bbn.com        Bev Hunter, Advanced Technologies, Educational
                        Technology, BBN, Cambridge, MA

jrc@bitnic.bitnet      John Clement, Director, EDUCOM K-12 Networking
cosn@bitnic.bitnet      Project, Director, COSN (Consortium for Schools)

NY0026@mail.nyser.net  Gary Watts, Sr. Dir., National Center for Innovation
                        National Education Association

dmazan@nas.edu         Duffy Mazan, Forum on K-12 Education
                        National Academy of Sciences (NAS)

pdawson@nas.edu        Peg Dawson, Assistant for the Forum on K-12
                        Education, National Academy of Sciences (NAS)

echristi@usgs.gov      Eliot Christian, Management Services,
                        Information Systems, USGS, applications of WAIS

dan@cs.brown.edu       David Niguidula, System Coordinator, Coalition
                        of Essential Schools, Directed by Ted Sizer
                        Brown University

cstout@tenet.edu       Connie Stout, Director, Texas Education Network, TENET

bob_tinker@terc.edu    Bob Tinker, Chief Science Officer, Technical
                        Educational Research Center, TERC

kahin@hulaw1.harvard.edu  Brian Kahin, Director
                        Information Infrastructure Project, Harvard Univ.

zibitm@harvarda.harvard.edu  Melanie Goldman, Office of Information
                        Technology(OIT), Harvard University

neb@mitre.org          Nelson E. Bolen, Associate Technical Director
                        MITRE Corporation

tlbaker@cutcv2.bitnet  Prof. Terry L. Baker, Teacher's College

tmg@nptn.org           Thomas M. Grundner, President
aa001@cleveland.freenet.edu   National Public Telecomputing Network

George.Brett@cnidr.org George H. Brett, II, Clearinghouse for Networked
                        Information and Retrieval, Center for Communications

fullton@concert.net    Jim Fullton, Clearinghouse for Networked
                        Information and Retrieval, Center for Communications

bearman@lis.pitt.edu   Toni Carbo Bearman, Dean and Professor, School of
                        Library and Information Science, Univ. of Pittsburgh

murphy@lis.unt.edu     Prof. Catherine Murphy, Assistant Prof.,School of
                        Library and Info. Services, Univ. of North Texas

smcc@seq1.loc.gov      Sally McCallum, Chief, Network Development and MARC
                        Standards Office, Library of Congress

cch@alawash.org        Carol C. Henderson, Deputy Director, Washington Office,
                        American Library Association

guermanp@kenyon.edu    Paul Gherman, Electronic Village Proj., Blacksburg, VA

mfidelman@civicnet.org Miles R. Fidelman, Executive Director
                       The Center for Civic Networking

Scott_Brim@cornell.edu Scott Brim, Senior Technical Advisor,
                       Information Technologies/ Network Resources,
                       Cornell University
        Je m'en vais chercher un grand peut-etre.
                                                -- Rabelais
        What we are building now is the nervous system of mankind,
        which will link together the whole human race, for better or
        worse, in a unity which no earlier age could have imagined.
                                                -- Arthur C. Clarke
        Roads??  Where we're going we won't need ... roads!!
                                                -- Dr. Emmett L. Brown
        There is no centre because it is all centre.
                                                -- C. S. Lewis

ed_yarrish.inbox@parti.inforum.org
                       Edward Yarrish, Electronic Networking Association,
                        Electronic Teleconferencing using Participate
                        including Foster Parents Plan

bmslib@mitvma.mit.edu  Dr. W. Curtiss Priest, Director, Center for
                        Information, Technology & Society,
                        Melrose, MA

