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