Shimabukuro, 'Internet in Ten Years: What Is Your Prediction?', Arachnet Electronic Journal on Virtual Culture v3n01 (February 5, 1995) URL = http://hegel.lib.ncsu.edu/stacks/serials/aejvc/aejvc-v3n01-shimabukuro-internet Electronic Journal on Virtual Culture ________________________________________________________________ ISSN 1068-5723 February 5, 1995 Volume 3 Number 1 SQARV3N1 FUTURE VIRTUAL SQUARE The Internet in Ten Years: What Is Your Prediction? Toward the end of 1994, we put out a call for papers on the future of the Internet: In the year 2005, how will we be using the Internet? Will it be the super-marketplace instead of the information super-highway? Will it be a multimedia feast, rich with useful information and opportunities for interaction, or a multimedia dump, a chaos of garbage and junk? Will it die a natural death, a victim of its own excesses? Will the government or governments step in and limit the free flow of communication? Will it replace schooling as we know it? Will it change world politics? If dramatic changes are coming, what are they--what are some of the scenarios that we haven't imagined? To ensure a preferred virtual future, what steps must we take today? Enlighten us. Share your visions, predictions, fears, and hopes. We were gratified to receive a large number of submissions and letters, and we take great pleasure in sharing some of them with you. Jim Shimabukuro Editor, Virtual Square JamesS@UHunix.UHcc.Hawaii.edu CONTENTS Virtual Communication in 2004: Caught in the 'Net by Ed Klonoski The Internet in 2005: Freenet or Censornet? by Patrick Bryce Bjork, Ph.D. December 24, 2005--A Virtual Christmas Party by Janice R. Walker The Internet and Classroom-Free Instruction by Dr. Brian R. Shmaefsky Taking the I-Way to the Year 2005 by Marilyn K. Simon Three Previews of Coming Attractions by Storm A. King The Internet in Ten Years: My Predictions by Frank James The Internet As a Tool for Survey Research by Michael N. Bagley Communicating in Cyberspace: Musings on Gender Roles, Intellectual Property Rights, Aesthetics, and Critical Methodologies by Marla Mayerson Vision Direction: Presence and Persistence in a Rampaging Info-Structure by Robert Mason Data Terrorists and Hot Links by Michael Deslippe Total, Global Communication by David Wasserman (Note from the Editor: For ease of formatting as electronic text, spaces within ellipses have been omitted and lines in lists of works cited have not been indented.) VIRTUAL COMMUNICATION IN 2004: CAUGHT IN THE 'NET by Ed Klonoski Assistant Professor, Rhetoric, Language and Culture University of Hartford The next ten years will see an increase in bandwidth, internet users, internet uses, and multimedia home computers.[1] These are the facts of relentless technological innovation. What is not as sure is what use people will make of these vast interactive resources and who, if anyone, will control them. What is sure is that the packet switching communication revolution is proceeding at a faster pace than any previous communication revolution--faster than writing, begun by the Sumerians around 3000 B.C.; faster than Gutenberg's press which got rolling in 1450; and faster than the telegraph-telephone, which evolved during the second half of the nineteenth century. But what use will people make of this sprawling, confusing, evolving world? According to a recent nationwide telephone poll by Lou Harris & Associates: American consumers are more interested in receiving customized news, educational information and communications services than either movies-on-demand or home shopping on their TVs or PCs. This finding was partially corroborated by yet another survey of 16,000 households in the U.S., U.K., France, Germany, and Italy conducted by Inteco Corp. of Norwalk, Conn. Among other things, the Inteco survey found that a statistically significant percentage of U.S. homeowners with personal computers were canceling premium movie channels in order to spend more time using on-line services and CD-ROM software. (Laing, 1994, p. 35) If these polls accurately reflect a trend, in 2004 the Internet will have the traits that already make it distinctive: one-to-one and one-to-many asynchronous communication; synchronous communication; and multimedia data transfer. In addition, the packet switching technology that gave birth to the sprawling 'Net will permit the attachment of an eclectic variety of new 'networks' including Higher Education. Yes, HE will be a vital, profitable part of the 'Net by 2004. Even more importantly, software 'knowbots' will be performing many of the mechanical tasks that now occupy 'Net users including: downloading, organizing, and information searches. Let's take a closer look. ASYNCHRONOUS COMMUNICATION ONE-TO-ONE COMMUNICATION Perhaps the key characteristic of the Internet, and one that will still be going strong in 2004, is one-to-one communication. E-mail returned letter writing to the pre- eminent position it last occupied during the nineteenth century, with one powerful new wrinkle--newsgroups. At its birth, the 'Net arranged itself into newsgroups (Hauben), and that meant that people sharing interests could find each other. The speed of electronic mail is of no great significance without someone to send mail to. Ten years from now, there will be even more newsgroups; they will be easier to find, join, and sample thanks to intelligent knowbots. Ordinary users will have trouble imagining life without newsgroups. The easy availability of groups sharing interests, information, and resources will have revolutionized the way we create communities (see one-to- many communication below). In addition, e-mail will change the way we interact with those larger institutions in our communities. Already national news sources are advertising their e-mail addresses and local sources are following fast behind. Many major news magazines are available from on-line services (e.g., above, I cited a N.Y. Times article I found in America On-line). In ten years we will be using e-mail to contact virtually every major institution in our lives--business, government, education, even religion. But the key development in one-to-one communication will be fully evolved e-mail white pages. Already we can buy CD-ROM's with phone directories from all over the country. In ten years we will be able to find the electronic addresses of people, places, businesses, groups--almost anyone--on-line. Once we can find electronic addresses, e-mail will supplant postal mail-- sell your Postal stock today--and represent a significant improvement on phone messages. Imagine a world without ever being placed on hold! Of course, video conferencing, the most celebrated form of one-to-one communication, will be here, and certainly intimates will seek it out (that translates into fewer "blind" dates I suspect). But such face-to-face communication will be seen as burdensome, requiring as it does pre-arranged times and a prepared "face." Still, we will surely be using the 'Net to send our faces and voices across cyberspace. I hope this doesn't become a tool of the blind sales call--imagine those aggravating interruptions including a beseeching face? The solution to our fears that universal e-mail will bury everyone in an avalanche of computer generated mail will be here by 2004. I have seen demos of software knowbots that sort incoming mail by group, sender, and topic, with a simple tool for deleting junk mail. This last capacity is not minor. How many of us have struggled in vain to reduce the amount of unsolicited postal mail we receive? But worries about cascades of electronic junk mail are unnecessary--software to shunt unrecognized senders into a special folder or directly into the trash will protect us from unsolicited sales. In fact, I predict a change in advertising from general consumption ads of the sort that currently litter TV to ads designed for interested consumers. This trend is already discernible in CD-ROM ads that contain extra product information for a presumably knowledgeable consumer. BTW, our mailbox will also hold our voice mail and incoming video. Ten years from now the distinction between text, voice, and video will be almost gone. The increase in band width and multimedia home computers will make it possible to "send" and "receive" asynchronous text, voice, and/or video across the 'Net. Our current struggles with compression, formats, and compatibility will be solved. The result will be the completion of the multimedia revolution (to which the Internet has been a willing partner). Information deposited into our all-encompassing e-mail account will include text, graphics, audio and video as appropriate. This represents a major change in the primarily text-based 'Net. ONE-TO-MANY COMMUNICATION The backbone of the internet is newsgroups, and that will not change in 10 years. The ability to log onto a group that shares one of your interests and exchange group mail, private mail, graphics, and links to related groups is the most revolutionary internet activity. One-to-many communication has changed the nature of communication by dramatically expanding the ability of individuals to create communities. Many of us who are heavy users of the 'Net have grown familiar with this community building, but new users are always struck by the ease with which they can join or create communities organized around a special interest. And those communities are organized to be inclusive, archived, and flexible (Klonoski). But even here ten years will produce change. As late adopters come aboard, they will be less interested in playful groups (like alt.OJ) and more interested in groups that reflect their serious side (like the Christian Interactive Network on CompuServe). The local PTA will have a newsgroup, as will local political parties, corporations, neighborhoods, even the Boy Scouts will offer a merit badge in this community building activity. Hierarchies of local, regional, national and international chapters will evolve; members input will increase; and leaders will recognize the power of this medium to influence policy. So expect lots of proselytizing as power shifts to electronic media. (Roosevelt's fireside chats will be replicated using IRC.) But the nature of those attempts at persuasion will change because the 'Net will remain an interactive medium, resistant to geographical limitations. Communication will not be one-way, and so I predict a rise in the quality of political discourse. (Won't it be fun to flame politicians when they propose insincere policies?) Plus the ease with which one can join a conversation will guarantee a wider perspective than is currently found in community discourse. At the risk of being repetitive, remember that this communication will be multimedia--text, pictures, audio. Currently, our major medium--television--is visual, but in 10 years the major medium will be the 'Net, and it will fully support multimedia[2]. That actually means that text will again play a central role in the world's discourse. As a rhetorician, I don't bemoan the addition of the visual/audio arts to the 'Net; I celebrate the renewal of text as the primary carrier of meaning. But for those who do worry about the intrusion of the visual/audio arts, I predict that in fifty years it will seem as odd to 'read' text-only documents as it will to view silent graphics. So newsgroups will still be the dominant engine of the 'Net, and the asynchronous communication they empower will reach out to all parts of our lives. SYNCHRONOUS COMMUNICATION Yes, video conferencing will be available from the home. Enough bandwidth will exist that we can share our face and our voice with one another. Interestingly, one- to-one video conferencing will not be the revolution many expect. What 20 years of 'Net experience has taught us is that synchronous communication has definite limits, and adding face and voice to it doesn't change those limitations. One of the most powerful features of e-mail is freedom from ringing phones, and I don't read my messages in chronological order but rather in an order that is meaningful to me. I routinely play music on my CD- ROM as I read my e-mail, and I frequently interrupt a message to turn to another task. All these advantages are surrendered to video conferencing, so I suspect that this development will not seem as attractive once it is actually here. But video conferences will become a powerful part of the business day. I expect a major decrease in business class fliers. Plus, cheap video conferencing will change the logic behind business locations; upper management and creative workers will not need to be "at the office." The 'Net will become a major corporate tool because it reduces costs while increasing communication. These corporate networks have already begun as internal networks, but soon they will explode onto the 'Net as integral parts or side- by-side networks. Either internationally or surreptitiously, the working world will join the 'Net, and no matter how hard the bean counters try, users will blur the distinction between work-related communication and personal communication. Actually we have a pretty good model for how corporate communication will evolve once it enters cyberspace. Academics have been cross-users (business and pleasure) for two decades without anyone in accounting much noticing. Chatting a la Internet Relay Chat or America Online's chat sessions will continue to evolve with the introduction of the first language-sensitive word processors. Within ten years the first computers for the home that can convert the user's voice to on-screen text will become available. Once typing speed is removed as a barrier, the chat flood gates will lower. Multiple user chats are conversational, and using our voice for this sort of talk is natural. (I have typed as my seven year old dictated text at 40 words per minute to the AOL Disney chat, all the while complaining about my typos.) For the serious rhetorician, voice-driven word processing will promote a wholesale change in who "owns" text. The poets will be back in force; text will return to its oral roots, and those of us who specialize in the 31 word sentence will start to sound 'false.' But that is a matter for another paper. TOOLS One of the most powerful changes in network communication will be intelligent software knowbots that can find what you need. I am cheating a little here because I have seen "non-disclosure" trade demonstrations of these tools; suffice it to say that such background searching is already real, although it is currently hard disk intensive. (Remember when everyone worried that graphics would never be ready for prime time for the same reason?) The value of a tool that can look for things like newsgroups, articles or people while the searcher does other things will be one of the key reasons the 'Net grows rather than dies. Such search tools will supply the solution to one of the 'Net's most frustrating problems: organization. Clearly, menus such as those one finds using a gopher are not supple enough to deal with the vast amounts of on-line information, but intelligent knowbots will be. These software tools will be able to travel the 'Net relentlessly, searching, bringing the rich, if chaotic, resources back home, and organizing them into prescribed categories. Of course, this raises an interesting question about how traditional research will be valued in the universities of the near future, but more about that later. The same intelligent agents will bring order to our mailbox. As I mentioned earlier, all communication will be captured in one site. E-mail, voice, mail, graphics, mixed media, advertisements and research citations will all be deposited into what we now call our e-mail account. But that account will be sorted, organized, and managed by intelligent agents that recognize the importance of some messages and the triviality of others. Routine tasks will occur automatically--junk mail dumped, 'old' messages archived, new searches added to older ones, etc. But I suspect that this central communication center will also become our general management center. Our money will be 'attached' here; and we will be able to pay bills, order items, move assets simply by sending messages or by automating the more routine of these (sample: knowbots pay the mortgage the first of every month). Many of these abilities already exist--direct deposit, direct payment, on-line credit cards--but what will be different will be their coordination through the mail account and the introduction of intelligent knowbots to manage this area. What will be different is the addition of dynamic messaging. Currently, information on the 'Net is delivered statically. For example, a WWW home page arrives on your screen as a "stable" resource; it does not change while you view it. But our personal computers already have the capacity to "link" files in such a way that changes in one place create changes in another ("subscribe" and "publish" in Mac lingo). Increases in bandwidth will bring this dynamic capacity to the 'Net. In ten years information will change as you view it if the owners add or subtract data. This means that data bases will publish in real time, increasing their value as information resources. While we are discussing tools, we need to consider just what sort of box we will be using to take advantage of the 'Net. Certainly, this box will need to be a computer, but it will also need to be a video monitor, radio, stereo and speech synthesizer. Since the whole family will use it, it must be centrally located and remotely accessible--but infrared local networks will probably solve this problem within most homes and offices. The box will evolve all the necessary I/O connections currently imagined, plus one more--the home video camera. In ten years we will simple plug our camera into the box, hit play and send home movies to Grandma at UCLA. We will have mastered the digitizing of information and reduced its price, so anything we can currently record will be transmittable across the 'Net. If intelligent knowbots are the first reason the 'Net will last, digital transmission is the second. Our lives are already full of digital potential--phones, computers, cameras, microwaves, stereos, VCR's, etc. In ten years, the 'Net will support digital transmission from any of these devices. (Imagine starting the microwave from the office or downloading a new CD from your home computer to the one at work.) EDUCATION And finally we come to Education--the area that will be most dramatically transformed by the Internet. In ten years consumers will be able to access quality education-- I don't mean videocassettes through the mail--online. Curriculum will be delivered at a distance: asynchronously, so users can fit learning into the rest of their lives; interactively, using mail, newsgroups, and conferences; and on demand, which means no more 14 week semesters divided into 42 classes. Schools themselves will be viewed as resource centers, with their assets of professors, curricula and digital libraries. Residency will continue to be the norm for the 18-22 age group, but with the need to upgrade skills reaching ever deeper into the work force, on-line, on demand, interactive education will be a growth market and the Internet will be the pipeline. This change will even reach into the elementary and high schools. Linkages between schools, classes, and individual students like Odd de Presno's Kidlink will continue to blossom (Presno). Gradually, human resources will become remotely available, not necessarily resident. A quality physics teacher will become an on-line commodity; schools without such a resource will clamor to use the talent that exists at other schools, either in trade or for cash. Either way, the system that sees a school as a group of people surrounded by a building will evolve into a system that sees a school as a set of resources--locality will not limit learning. Ten years won't be enough time to finish this revolution, but it will be enough time to set the wheels in motion--expect local schools to use the 'Net to enrich their curriculum and their diversity. The Home School movement will see such linkages as the opportunity to connect their programs to learning without surrendering control over context. Michigan is already fighting this battle, and I suspect that we will see more growth in the home school movement as the Internet provides educational opportunities at a distance. For scholars, an on-line world will be sea shift. With more and more information digitized--whole text retrieval will be fully in place for new materials by 2004--our profession will change. I have seen the Perseus Project, which is a huge hypertextual data base of Greek materials, including pictures, maps, original texts, translations (Crane). This project sent photographers around the world to create a one-of-a-kind data base. Students can do original research, including etymologies of original Greek, all at a computer terminal. In ten years this same sort of data base research will be available over the 'Net. Information will not be the special province of an intellectual class or a university library; it will be available to many. And that information will be stored as a hypertext using logical links, much like the WWW servers that have exploded in popularity. This means that sophisticated collections of information will be searchable by keyword, and by traveling along existing "link ways." Certainly scholars will be responsible for creating those linkages, but their existence will empower non-initiates to find and employ information that previously was the special property of the knowledge class. For example, currently most listserv newsgroups archive their discussions, and these archives are searchable, thanks to listserv developer Eric Thomas. Sending a search message to the listserv results in the whole text retrieval of those posts that contain the marked word(s). Similarly, the Colorado Association of Research Libraries (CARL) has the capacity to send its articles as e-mail directly to those who order them, but the copyright questions have not yet been resolved. In ten years, even the legal wrangling over copyright will be over, and I suspect we will be paying small fees for access to information rather than for the information itself because access is easier to meter. The scholars will organize information and create meaning from it, but they themselves will no longer own information nor will they be the preferred means of information delivery. A vibrant 'Net, full of complex, searchable data bases in combination with intelligent knowbots that can find and bring back relevant information will re-make scholarship. Once information is readily available, credentialing will begin to fade in importance and utility will increase. Scholarly reputations will be made in new ways, by assembling important data bases and/or by finding new or unexpected wisdom. In the private sector, degrees will not indicate ability as clearly as portfolios. Expect a shift in the "output" expected of Higher Education. The 'Net will figure in all this because novices and experts will have the same information resources available, unlike now when so many resources are the special province of university libraries. This suggests that the providers of education may not be "universities" in our traditional sense of them. If I want to learn about Ancient Greece, I will find my way to the richest data base and learn from it. The owner of that data base may be Bates, or the Athens town council or it may even be CBS. Educators will still be required, but they may no longer work for academies. Ironically, education at a distance will weaken campus life while it strengthens the importance of continued education. COMMERCIAL IMPLICATIONS So the 'Net will be here in ten years, but it will be a marketplace. Already the COM domain is exploding: Worldwide Web data bases are proving fertile repositories of multimedia information, and search tools like the Mosaic family are proving attractive to new users with no patience or interest in learning the UNIX commands associated with File Transfer Protocol. Such graphical user interfaces will proliferate over the next ten years (America Online is already promising Mosaic during 1995), and the result will be a 'Net ready for prime time advertising. But as I argued earlier, that market will not use the mass mailing strategies currently in vogue. Remember, users will be reachable through white page directories; data bases full of biographical data will be for sale; and we will have knowbots to watch our mail for unsolicited junk. I suspect that the advertiser of the future will offer us easy-to-use links to their on-line catalogues. Those catalogues will be rich repositories of product information (unlike the versions currently distributed), including testimonials (ain't e-mail easy), videos of products in action, on-line ordering, and customizing. But as I suggested while discussing changes in education, I suspect that we will be paying for access to information. For example, logging on to the best information servers will probably involve a charge, although once there we will be free to download to our heart's content. The reason for this arrangement is surprisingly simple: no one has invented a metering technology for the 'Net[3]. We suspect that it would cost so much to meter 'Net traffic that most commercial suppliers will settle for a simple entrance charge. I am sure such a suggestion freezes the hearts of copyright lawyers, but already Internet publishers are using the shareware principle of fair return. At 1993's Internet World I heard several discuss how they put their materials out and ask for users to pay if they found the item valuable. Rather than insisting on 100% of their royalties, as do traditional publishers, this new breed will settle for 10%, if it represents a fair profit. This principle of a fair return will infect the 'Net (which is already full of diehard believers that all information should be free). CONCLUSION The Internet will be here in ten years, and it will have evolved into the backbone of our communication system, but I suspect we will not be referring to it by name, any more than we routinely refer to our TV signals as VHF or UHF. The 'Net will simply be part of our communication infrastructure. What will be dramatically clear by 2004 is whether we have supported universal access or not. If we do the right thing and make interactive communication available to everyone, we will see libraries, parks, city halls, schools, rest homes, etc. all offering what we now call FreeNets. Citizens will be able to check their e-mail, send messages, order products from these ubiquitous kiosks. If we have not prepared for the packet switching revolution, we will have significant portions of our culture who are locked out of access. This will compromise political and commercial advertising, so I suspect that either honestly or to simplify advertising, universal access will become a reality. The trickier problem will be the hardware that most families will want in their homes. Prices for such devices will continue to fall, but new features will also arise to keep the costs steep (currently about $2,000 for hardware). The economic sacrifice may be met with the same argument that propelled encyclopedia sales throughout the telephone age--do it for the kids. Certainly ensuring the next generation access to the on-line world will be a powerful middle-class stimulant, as this year's 33% increase in multimedia computer sales indicates. Less affluent families will certainly have trouble keeping up, but I suspect that on-line connectivity will become the equivalent of television. Even in the third world, families that now have satellite dishes set up beside their crumbling houses will have home computers and modems. And who will be the losers in this communication shift? Those industries that transform forests into reading material will be powerfully impacted. The news industry will be busy merging video news with print, with both going on-line. The advertising industry will forgo mass mailing in favor of cheaper, more powerful on- line advertisements. But I don't suspect that books will lose their popularity. This won't happen for another generation when handheld, wireless computers arrive on the scene. Did I hear you drop your mouse? NOTES [1]"Sales of personal computers from mid-November through Christmas were up about 35 percent over the similar period last year. Sales of personal home computers--which typically include high-resolution graphics, a fast microprocessor and CD-ROM drive--were way up, spurred by an increase in the amount of high-quality educational and entertainment CD-ROM software" (Flynn, N.Y. Times News Service, 12/27/94). [2] Here I take a risk and assume that the entertainment industry will recognize the efficiency of adding its offerings--including the various News divisions--to an already vibrant Internet rather than re-inventing such a broadcast medium. [3] The phone company spends enormous amounts of money to meter your phone calls; as much as 50% of your bill supports the elaborate technology necessary to keep track of who called whom and for how long. REFERENCES Crane, Gregory. Department of Classics, Tufts University. Information about The Perseus Project is available by e- mail at CRANE@IKAROS.HARVARD.EDU. Flynn, Laurie. (1994). 12/27: Multimedia helps PC sales jump 33% over '93. N.Y. Times News Service, America Online. Hauben, Rhonda, & Hauben, Michael. (1994). The netizens and the wonderful world of the net: An anthology (available through anonymous FTP at wuarchive.wustl.edu in the directory/doc/misc/acn/netbook). Klonoski, Edward. (1994). Newsgroups on the Internet: ShareCommunities. Under consideration by David Porter for inclusion in an Internet Culture Anthology to be published by Routledge. Laing, Jonathan R. (1994). Proceed with caution. Barron's, October 24, 1994, 31-36. Presno, Odd de. Kidlink is available by e-mail from LISTSERV@VM1.NODAK.EDU by sending GET KIDLINK GENERAL, or by writing to OPRESNO@EXTERN.UIO.NO. (ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Ed Klonoski, Assistant Professor of Rhetoric, Language and Culture, is a rhetorician turned information technologist. He developed his computer skills teaching writing in a networked classroom that he nursed through three upgrades. Recently he branched out into faculty training in information technology. Those efforts have met with some success and he is now directing the University of Hartford's Advanced Educational Computing Project. This program is training faculty from across the university in multimedia authoring and pedagogical innovation. It is funded by a Dept. of Education FIPSE grant and another from the Culpeper Foundation. Email: Ed Klonoski or or ) THE INTERNET IN 2005: FREENET OR CENSORNET? by Patrick Bryce Bjork, Ph.D. Assistant Professor of English Bismarck State College (Author's Note: All research for this essay was generated from and accessed through the Internet. Many thanks to Marlyn Robinson from the Tarlton Law Library, Univ. of Texas-Austin, for researching and forwarding all legal materials.) "But it provides some sort of guidelines for students," a colleague of mine remarked, carefully choosing his words. "It's not as if we're telling them 'No'; we just want them to observe some sort of decorum in the computer labs." My colleague and I were discussing the new computer use policy that had recently been drafted by our campus' Computer Steering Committee and unanimously approved by our Faculty Senate: No material that breaches the Bismarck State College community standards of good taste shall be entered into the computer or sent through any electronic system. I was arguing that the policy was so vague that any challenge to it in the courts would render it unconstitutional. But my colleague insisted that, while the policy appeared to be anti-free speech, it was nonetheless an "honest" attempt to establish some kind of "value system" to what he thought many perceive as an unfamiliar, legally unchartered medium. "Besides," he added, "students have some pretty strange discussions on the Internet." As my colleague spoke, I thought back on the day I was cruising USENET and happened upon a post from "alt.sex.wanted"; it read: "Anyone interested in exchanging hot email on rape & torture of girls drop me a line" (Anonymous 20 Dec. 1994). Now I am not easily shocked, but when I saw this post I wondered how others might perceive it, especially those, like my colleague, more prone to view issues of censorship from a moral perspective. With greater frequency around the country, school authorities are attempting to establish guidelines for Internet use or are simply eliminating certain Internet "activities" altogether. And with increasing frequency, those guidelines and restrictions are being challenged by Internet users as an infringement of First Amendment rights to free speech. One recent case involves a decision by authorities at Carnegie-Mellon University to censor certain electronic newsgroups. According to Gil Citro, a student-advocate at CMU, "The Vice-President for Computing Services [William Arms] apparently took it upon himself to declare a ban on a number of newsgroups, including text based groups such alt.sex.safe and alt.sex.motss..." (English-Server 4 Dec. 1994). CMU administrators supported his decision: "'We don't stop people who go out and buy materials from so- called adult bookstores. But we also don't sell it on campus,'" argued Erwin Steinberg, CMU's Vice-Provost for Education (Kanaley A2). As a result of CMU's actions, students and the ACLU pressured administration officials to lift the restrictions; but while officials reinstated the text newsgroups, those newsgroups that provide downloading of pornographic photos remain absent from USENET. Steinberg asserted, "'If we were taken to court, we would, in effect, have to argue under the First Amendment...for the right to provide to [potential] minors material that by legal definition is pornographic and obscene. That's a rather difficult position to be in'" (A2). In other words, the school's position amounts to establishing guidelines and to outright censorship in an effort to avoid liability. Other schools are either considering implementing such steps or have already done so. A task force at the University of Pittsburgh is currently studying options for guidelines and restrictions, and according to Ken Service, Director of Communications, "'Pitt is primarily sympathetic to CMU's position'" (A2). At Pennsylvania State University, no explicit newsgroups are allowed on USENET; according to university spokeswoman, Christy Rambeau, "'The newsgroups on our system have some remote connection to an academic issue'" (A2). However, critics charge that, considering the complexity of the Internet, no amount of monitoring or restrictions will be foolproof. Thus, says ACLU Assistant Director Barry Steinhardt, the only real way for schools to guarantee complete avoidance of liability is to "'shut down their Internet access altogether'" (A2). Of course, the Internet censorship issue is not limited to Pennsylvania or North Dakota colleges and universities. Across the nation, measures are being taken or being considered that may impact Internet use for years to come. A number of organizations are now involved in either the prosecution, litigation or the examination of online services, including both the commercial servers and the Internet. The most celebrated case thus far has been the U.S. Attorney's and the U.S. Postal Service's successful prosecution of a California couple, Robert and Carleen Thomas, who were each convicted of 11 counts of transmitting obscenity through interstate phone lines via their bulletin board on the Internet. Not coincidentally, perhaps, prosecutors in this Memphis court case based their arguments on the very same "community standards" stricture that, shortly following this case, was instituted at Bismarck State College. According to Penn Jillette of _PC-Computing_, "If this ruling holds up-- and the court's 'community standards'...can be standards of anyplace that gets the Net--we got trouble" (350). The aforementioned concern for liability is also in question. Recently, Prodigy was named in a $200 million defamation suit by the Long Island-based securities firm Stratton Oakmont for its failure to remove a user's message which allegedly accused the company of fraudulent securities offerings. Is Prodigy libel for a user's message? According to legal expert, Edward Cavazos, "It's analogous to someone mailing the company a note that defames someone else and the company photocopies it and posts it all over the building. Arguably, the company is doing the same thing if its server reposts an E-mail message from outside" (Slater 114). In a similar case, David Lamacchia, a student at MIT, was arrested on charges of conspiracy to commit wire fraud. He is accused of using MIT computers to swap pirated software. MIT has not been indicted as a co-conspirator; however, it is conceivable that at some point a host system may be indicted, or as Cavazos argues, "It's just a matter of time before someone drags in an employer, and the law is going to get tested to see just what the limits of liability are for the host system" (114). Other organizations, such as the Simon Wiesenthal Center, have complained that online services, including Prodigy, CompuServe, and the Internet, are increasingly being used by bigots to defame minorities, as well to recruit new members and to spread their propaganda. And while these services provide moderators and, in some cases, computer scanners to block offensive messages, the Center believes that not enough is being done to completely eliminate all white supremacist messages that target minorities. According to Georgia Griffith, a CompuServe sysop, "'We don't block users for what they believe or say, but how they say it. The First Amendment allows people to publish what they choose, but we are not obliged to publish it for them'" (Harmon 1). But again, what continues to be problematic is identifying the online server's role. There persists the assumption, as indicated by Griffith's comments, that online services do act as publishers and therefore must assume a measure of liability; on the other hand, civil libertarians argue that online services act merely as bookstore owners who cannot be held accountable for the contents of the material being displayed. And, indeed, District Court Judge Peter Leisure ruled in 1991 that CompuServe had "little or no editorial control over the publication contents" and "neither knew nor had reason to know of the allegedly defamatory remarks" (Charles 40). But Leisure's ruling appears only to beg the question: Since online services maintain moderators and/or scanners who carefully screen material before it is reproduced or, in effect, republished on bulletin boards and discussion lists, are they not, then, more than merely analogous to bookstores and/or libraries? Are they not, perhaps, more closely linked to the final copy editors of both print and broadcast media, and therefore subject to the same libel laws that protect against a "'reckless disregard for the truth'" or the "'knowledge or reason to know of the defamatory statement'"? (Charles 40). Clear-cut answers to these and many other questions are not immediately forthcoming, but such actions as school policies, restrictions, and increased moderation/scanning are clearly and, for the most part, well-meaning attempts to avoid any further litigation. Unfortunately, such attempts, how ever well-meaning, will most certainly, and most especially in relation to the unwieldy and ubiquitous Internet, appear haphazard at best, and, as a result, according to Robert B. Charles, senior associate at New York's Weil, Gotshal and Manges, "We should expect the words 'computer' and 'libel' to appear more often on our LEXIS and WESTLAW screens" (40). Consider also the gender issue/debate which, as anyone who has spent considerable time on the Net knows, appears prominently on many academic discussion lists. In her studies of the Internet, Susan Herring, a linguist from the University of Texas, has concluded that "the Internet's libertarian survival-of-the-fittest ideals codify men's speech patterns as the norm for Internet discourse" (Wylie 23). She has found that the oftentimes aggressive, more assertive, and more authoritarian style of men's speech is off-putting to many women who prefer more supportive and/or consensus-building conversations. But even when women do participate in conversations, their posts are most often met in variant combinations of either silence, flaming, extended rebuttals, or with a certain authoritarian finality. In short, Herring argues that Internet culture is not free and inclusionary as it is frequently touted by users as being; instead, for most women, it remains an exclusionary and, ultimately, discriminatory space. This appearance of discrimination lends itself to the potential for further guidelines and/or official policies in order to protect groups who are perceived as being systematically disadvantaged. Consider, for example, these "corrective measures" posted by Dan L. Burk, Assistant Professor of Law at George Mason University, on the academic discussion list Cyberia-L: 1. Require list owners/sysops to show on a yearly basis their efforts to recruit women to their discussion groups. 2. Require list owners/sysops to show on a yearly basis their efforts to encourage participation by women in their discussion groups. 3. Require that discussion groups/lists comprise a certain percentage of women. 4. Require that a certain percentage of the traffic on lists come from women. 5. Require that list owners/sysops periodically post to their groups prepared statements of women having alternative views from those posted by men on the group. 6. Require Internet access providers to carry certain lists or newsgroups of interest to women. 7. Require that men wishing access to the [Net] undergo sensitivity training. 8. Penalize, either criminally or civilly, flaming or PBP responses to women that pass a certain threshold of "intimidation" or "harassment." Do any of these strictures sound familiar? They should because, as Burk goes on to point out, "I am not saying any of these should be adopted.... Some might not pass constitutional muster. But...*all* of them have at one time or another been adopted in real space or in other media to correct real or perceived disadvantage to various constituencies" (29 Dec. 1994). Would the adoption of any or all of these "corrective measures" constitute a legal abridgment of one's freedom of speech? Only a test case could provide the potentially definitive answer. Would they actually promote equal participation on the Net? Not according to Mary Kearney, a Ph.D. candidate at USC's School of Cinema-Television: If we're going to change the net, we're going to have to think about the bigger picture. "Encouraging women" to participate on line is not going to do it. Women (and men!!) have to be convinced that they will be respected as an individual who has an independent voice that can make a valuable contribution to a collective discussion. That confidence *has* to come from within a person; there is no way it can be imposed on you. (e-mail communication to bjork@badlands.nodak.edu 5 Jan. 1995) Can we create such a cyberspace, as Kearney suggests, or will further "outside" restrictions, policies, litigation, and even outright elimination of the Internet determine its fate? Clearly, based upon all the current and ongoing restrictions and litigation, outside forces will continue to impinge upon the Net. But can that impingement be forestalled? Remember the USENET message from "alt.sex.wanted"? The one that read: "Anyone interested in exchanging hot email on rape & torture of girls drop me a line"? Someone did reply online to the poster's message; the reply merely read "...or drop you a bomb!" (Anonymous 21 Dec. 1994). In a slightly obverse agreement with Kearney's notion of non-imposition, I believe the most effective measure that, over the next decade, will keep a relatively Freenet from becoming a Censornet is an already ongoing imposition. Imposition, yes, but not from the "outside," not from school officials or governments, but from within cyberspace itself. In fact, self-imposition, or what I prefer to call self-mediation, is, more often than not, the order of any given day on the Internet. To this end, the poster's reply, "or drop you a bomb," speaks volumes as to how the Net should and does currently operate. Amy E. Schwartz, editorial staff writer for _The Washington Post_, observes that "the first oddity to strike this novice on the fringes of the Net...is the amount of time and emotional energy nearly every list seems to spend trying not to let the discussion explode into a full-fledged barroom brawl." But while Schwartz discounts this activity as "the electronic mirror show[ing] a society badly deficient in the basics" (15A), I would argue that this activity--those heated exchanges that, to put it mildly, evolve and resolve into and from self-reflexive discourse--ultimately provides a positive, fail-safe mechanism that undergirds the very perpetuation of the Internet's free space. In her article, Schwartz offers the now, well-known incident of how the majority of listmembers of the discussion list, SCREEN-L, after experiencing one too many flame wars, demanded that the listowner provide full moderation of the list so that only those topics which dealt specifically with television and film were discussed. I am a listmember of SCREEN-L; I watched that entire incident unfold, evolve, and resolve itself into a mutual understanding that, in order to facilitate clearly focused discussions, we needed to impose restrictions upon ourselves. That it required a moderator to step in and make those determinations was our choice. In short, in the interests of preserving the original tenor and civility of the list, we chose to censor ourselves, and thus eliminate the flame wars. SCREEN-L is but one, albeit extreme, example of how self-mediation provides an alternative to "outside" intervention, restriction, and the potential for litigation. Furthermore, there is ample evidence of an adherence to "community standards," but it is exceedingly important to note that those standards are self-imposed and, therefore, no different from any "real" space containing similar characteristics, such as the classroom, the office, the conference workshop, or the board of directors. Some participants, such as H-Net moderator Marlyn Robinson, argue that there is "no difference between refusing someone on a list or at a lunchcounter, most especially when it comes to an academic discussion list supported by university funds" (e-mail communication to bjork@plains.nodak.edu 28 Dec. 1994). While it is certainly true that, in most instances, anyone may join and/or participate at the cyberspace "lunchcounter," what rules should apply when that someone exhibits behavior that is abusive or defamatory? Should those rules policing inappropriate or libelous language/behavior emanate from an outside source, a source, like university officials or like my colleague, who, because of their minimal involvement with the Net, can never hope to grasp the myriad intricacies of each and every academic discussion list or USENET "community"? "The Internet is obviously too large to invite control of content," claims H-Net moderator John Lawrence. "Within the Internet, there will be control at different times and places, some of it censorial in character." But in a given situation, says Lawrence, "groups will work out their own rules of decency and good behavior" (e-mail communication to bjork@badlands.nodak.edu 30 Dec. 1994). Thus, it would appear that self-mediation can and invariably does only develop effectively within each "community" itself; or as Jim Shimabukuro, listowner of the unmoderated list TCC-L, so succinctly puts it, "The beauty of the 'net is that we're truly a government of, by, and for the people. Those who need to be censored will be, by the citizenry.... I believe the majority will dig in and not only extinguish the flames but deal with the offender(s)" (e-mail communication to bjork@badlands.nodak.edu 30 Dec. 1994). Nonetheless, based upon all the aforementioned litigative and policing evidence, "outside" intervention will continue to proliferate. So, too, will restrictions become evident for simple technological reasons, e.g., an overburdened server that will facilitate the need to eliminate certain commands in order to speed up traffic flow. And, of course, some administrators/faculty will continue to argue, as does another of my colleagues, that "the Internet should only be used for academic purposes." Since colleges and universities receive Federal subsidies for the Net, they may, indeed, need to more specifically justify their academic purpose; thus, as Marlyn Robinson points out, "[there] will be a tightening up by universities, perhaps a limitation of passwords to faculty and grad students. If students want to chat or play games, they will have to go to commercial vendors..." (e-mail communication to bjork@badlands.nodak.edu 30 Dec. 1994). In response to such a move, there will be those who cry "elitist," as does listowner Jon Epstein of the unmoderated ROCKLIST, who claims "there is a serious elitism that runs through all of the lists I am on. How can you have a 'freespace' when I, as listowner, can delete [someone] at will?" But even Epstein admits that "on a couple of occasions I have had to send private email to folks to ask them to chill out. This isn't really censorship...stewardship maybe. If they had refused to do so I would have probably let it ride, although the urge to delete them from the list was there" (e-mail communication to bjork@badlands.nodak.edu 4 Jan. 1995). Faced with the futuristic scenario that includes a seemingly staggering array of legal, ethical, and social conundrums, Epstein's very own ROCKLIST provides a realistic example of how the Net may continue to flourish- -relatively unscathed--in spite and, perhaps, because of these pressures. On January 4, 1995, I deliberately attempted to agitate ROCKLIST in response to posts that complained about the list's seemingly unacademic discourse. For several days, listmembers had been posting their favorite Top Ten recordings for 1994, to which Kjell Jonsson commented, "What is academic and what is discussion in 'My top ten for '94.... Someone explain it to me. Please!" Shortly thereafter, Bob Faehnle affirmed Jonsson's query by writing, "Is this the level to which 'Academic' has sunken?" Jonsson's and Faehnle's complaints provided me with an opportunity to prove or disprove how self-mediation works as the primary abutment for sustaining unrestrictive and, ultimately, constructive dialogue on the Net. Thus, to set my agitation in motion, I responded to Faehnle's post: It never ceases to amaze me on all these academic discussion lists how all the whiner-lurkers come out only when they wish to whine about a list's level of productivity; but when push comes to shove, the same whiner-lurkers contribute *nothing* to improve a list's productivity. Put up or shut up! Admittedly, my response was relatively tame, but it produced an avalanche of responses too numerous to publish here. Sufficient to say, Faehnle was displeased: "Oh Lord, here we go...'whiner?' 'lurker?' Read [the] mail...asking about [the] relationship of English/American music. Maybe you'll understand academic discussion/discourse...." To which I replied, "I understand all too well, my friend; now, would you care to contribute something constructive to this list...?" Others soon joined in, most notably Jon Epstein, who wrote, "I had no idea it would turn into an arguement (sic) about THE PURPOSE OF THE LIST.... If it was a mistake, I apologize." But Epstein's attempt at his own brand of "stewardship" did not prevail. (At this point, I sent a note off-list to Epstein indicating my intentions, hoping to quell any of his possible apprehension.) If anything, I suspect his "stewardship" actually increased the potential for the kind of self-reflexive discourse that occurs during what was quickly unfolding as a typical exercise in listmember self-mediation. And, indeed, when Mary Kearney posted her own commentary, I sensed that this discourse would also lead to a typically successful resolution: Patrick, as someone who has many reasons for lurking on this list..., I really find your call to "put up or shut up" offensive.... For instance, in this case, the "whiners/lurkers" have at the very least moved the "top ten" postings...into a possible discussion about why we want to create such lists, why & how we as "academics" participate in reproducing certain taste, cultures, etc. Kearney's post changed the tenor of the discussion and, in effect, redirected it into a metadiscourse that proved both fruitful in the contextual sense and in the mediative sense. In other words, online at least, my "offensive" response had been forgotten, and in its place began an outpouring of commentary from several listmembers. Some were discipline-specific, such as Ray Schuck's question, "Are you sure one is not studying something when he or she compiles a top ten list?" While others were list-specific, such as Jon Epstein's additional commentary: "Topics for discussion don't just appear out of nowhere, someone has to start a thread." Thereafter, the list ignited with an outpouring of various threads in what I believe was a self-conscious effort on the part of listmembers to keep the list from degenerating into a flame war by, like SCREEN-L, choosing instead to focus on the primary role of the discussion list. In a fitting conclusion to this list's effort "to work out their own rules," Jonsson wrote back to me stating that "it wasn't my intention to start a flame thread when I...start[ed] this discussion. But I must say it turned out to be a constructive one, even academic sometimes. So I will stay on the list because...a lot of people [have] something important to say" (all previous quotations from Rocklist 4-5 Jan. 1995). I could have perpetuated the flame war, could have incited listmembers to even greater displeasure but, in the end, the resultant self-mediative efforts, both conscious and non-conscious, would have ultimately been the same. But not necessarily because of this particular list. As a veteran of some 35 academic discussion lists, I can attest to the fact that my experiment with ROCKLIST was but a minor example of what I see occurring on an ongoing basis. Call it self-mediation or "stewardship" or even self-censorship, but the Net has worked and will continue to work most effectively--without "outside" intervention--if listmembers, moderators, and listowners are allowed to collaboratively (re)create, (re)focus, and thus sustain their own communities. WORKS CITED Anonymous. "Girls Wanted." (Two posts). alt.sex.wanted. 20 December 1995. Bjork, Patrick. "Top-Ten--Academic?" (Two posts). ROCKLIST. 4 January 1995. Burk, Dan L. "Sexism in Electronic Conversations." CYBERIA-L. 29 December 1995. Charles, Robert B. "The New World of On-Line Libel." _Manhattan Lawyer_. 1991. 40. Citro, Gil. "Usenet Censorship at Pitt." ENGLISH-SERVER (gopher-online). 4 December 1994. Epstein, Jon. "Top-Ten--Academic?" e-mail communication to bjork@badlands.nodak.edu. 4 January 1995. ----. "Top-Ten--Academic?" (Two posts). ROCKLIST. 4 January 1995. Faehnle, Bob. "Top-Ten--Academic?" (Two posts). ROCKLIST. 4 January 1995. Harmon, Amy. "Bigot's Growing Use of Computer Networks Assailed." _The Los Angeles Times_. 14 December 1994. A1. Jillette, Penn. "I'm Sick of This." _PC-Computing_. November 1994. 350. Jonsson, Kjell. "Top-Ten--Academic?" ROCKLIST. 4 January 1995. ----. "Top-Ten--Academic?" ROCKLIST. 5 January 1995. Kanaley, Reid. "Students Fight for Right to See Computer Porn: University Pulled Plug on Internet." _The Times- Picayune_. 25 December 1994. Kearney, Mary. "Top-Ten--Academic?" 4 January 1995. ----. "Wylie on Herring on Cybergender." e-mail communication to bjork@badlands.nodak.edu. 5 January 1995. Lawrence, John. "Censorship on the Internet." e-mail communication to bjork@badlands.nodak.edu. 30 December 1994. Robinson, Marlyn. "Censorship on the Internet." e-mail communication to bjork@badlands.nodak.edu. 30 December 1994. ----. "Home on the Plains." e-mail communication to bjork@plains.nodak.edu. 28 December 1994. Schwartz, Amy E. "Narrow View of Free Speech Puts Strains on Cyberspace." _Capital Times_. 20 December 1994. 15A. Shimabukuro, James. "Multiculturalism & Merit & Moderators." e-mail communication to bjork@badlands.nodak.edu. 30 December 1994. Slater, Derek. "Cyberspace and the Law." _Computerworld_. 5 December 1994. 114. (ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Patrick Bjork is an assistant professor of English at Bismarck State College. He also directs the multicultural studies program and has published a work on Toni Morrison: _The Novels of Toni Morrison: The Search for Self and Place within the Community_. But mostly he's become a self-proclaimed Internet junkie. A dubious distinction, he admits. email: bjork@badlands.nodak.edu) DECEMBER 24, 2005--A VIRTUAL CHRISTMAS PARTY by Janice R. Walker Graduate Student, Composition and Rhetoric University of South Florida Maxwell wishes everyone a Merry Christmas! Kiwi says, "Merry Christmas! Ho! Ho! Ho!" Shaedow smiles and hugs Kiwi. Kit_Swain says, "It's Christmas Day here!" Kiwi [to Kit_Swain]: "Where are you?" Kit_Swain [to Kiwi]: "I'm in Sydney, Australia. Where are you?" Maxwell [to Kit_Swain]: "Me, too!" Kiwi [to Kit_Swain]: "Florida." Shaedow [to Maxwell]: "What time is it there?" Kiwi offers everyone some egg nog and cookies. Spring is here! Kiwi waves to Spring. Kit_Swain waves to Spring. Maxwell [to Shaedow]: "It's 8am Christmas Day. Where are you?" Shaedow [to Spring]: Hi! Shaedow [to Maxwell]: "I'm in Minnesota." Kiwi [to Maxwell]: "It's 4pm Christmas Eve here in Florida!" Maxwell gives Spring a warm hug. Spring says, "Hi, everybody! Merry Christmas!" Maxwell grins. Maxwell says, "Great! I get another Christmas Eve!" Maxwell, Kiwi, Shaedow, Spring, and Kit_Swain were all in attendance at the Christmas Party at the City Limits of Chiba Sprawl, one of the virtual communities in cyberspace where these settlers, along with hundreds of others, are already homesteading. Why a virtual Christmas party? Well, according to the wizards at World MOO: 1. You can't get drunk on virtual spiked eggnog 2. The MOO is a place where you *can* destroy hideous fruitcake. You know, that stuff that gets passed around the family every year and no one has the guts to throw it out. 3. You can create cool presents without spending a cent. 4. Sending holiday cards requires no paper, and no standing in line forever at the nearest Hallmark. 5. The lights won't burn out on your Christmas tree or candles. 6. You don't need a designated driver. 7. If you like snow and are living in a place without it, it's still possible to have a "white Christmas." 8. Chances are it's warmer inside by the computer than it is outside. 9. You don't have to worry about what to wear. 10. Because it's the MOO. What other possible reason could say it best? (WorldMOO Christmas Party, 12/24/94) Asked about the future of the net, Kit_Swain replied: "I think the day of verbal comms over the net is coming. And visuals, too. With a small camera...you could do that live, too. Just have a window on the screen. I would have an artist design my 'morph'[1] to be as much like me as possible." But, Kiwi says, "A lot of people come here to role play. To fantasize." "Like in Rudy Rucker's novel _The Ants and the Hacker_," replies Kit_Swain. "I know, but somehow I haven't felt a great need for that. I've always wanted to be...as creative as possible. Why leave your imagination in your fantasy?" "It's also a world fraught with pains and perils, though," says Kiwi. What are these virtual worlds, these MOOs? A MOO is defined as a MUD, Object-Oriented, and a MUD is a Multi- User Dungeon or Dimension. It began as a form of the Dungeons and Dragons game designed for multi-users on the net (Burka 1). The MOOs, however, have developed into virtual communities, more social and less game-like than the MUDs. Other forms include MUCKs, MUSHs, MUSEs, and more as the popularity of these game/communities increases. Why the burgeoning growth of these communities in cyberspace? What attracts these player/settlers to take up residence in an electronic, text-based community, attained only via telephone lines and net servers? And what will be the future in these virtual spaces? Richard H. C. Seabrook, posting to the listserv Cybermind, says, "We are people trying to communicate (among other things), mostly with each other, sometimes with ourselves. We've been at it for a long time. This medium is the latest, greatest, fastest-growing, etc.... Where we are going (the collective bunch of 'Net users) implies some idea of the significance of this connectivity, together with new forms (international town meetings, MUDs, etc.) for how we live and relate to each other. Estimates appear to range from more interesting lunch dates to De Chardin's Omega Point" (22 Jan. 1994). "I can imagine," he continues, "future historians looking back at this time as a modern renaissance, an arising from a modern dark age of generations of war, sickness, human indignities (rock and roll :)), provided we arise in fact.... We learn from each new medium. Here is a new learning." PMC-MOO, another of the popular cyberspace communities, heralds itself as "a virtual space designed to promote the exploration of postmodern theory and practice, a place for intellectual meandering. Here, we mix the unstable 'real world' of postmodernity with the solid virtuality of MOOspace. We encourage experimentation, in our state of virtual (dis)embodiment, with alternate, even utopian, knowledges of the body/self, however those selves and bodies might be engendered, performed, or otherwise configured." The purpose? "All in the hope of understanding, among other things, the 'real conditions' of our postmodern existence, but also to play (seriously) with the possibilities of our future" (PMC- MOO). In an e-mail posting to mediamoo@media.mit.edu, Amy Bruckman talks about the forthcoming MOOSE Crossing software (available via anonymous ftp from media.mit.edu in pub/asb/papers/moose-crossing-proposal.{ps,rtf,txt}. The abstract of the paper reads: "MOOSE Crossing is a text-based virtual world (or 'MUD') designed to support the development of a 'constructionist learning culture'" (1). Children from a variety of geographic and cultural backgrounds will connect across the Internet to collaboratively build a virtual world.... The virtual world, MOOSE Crossing, will be opened to 300-1000 children aged twelve and under on the Internet. Through analyzing the children's learning experiences, I will be able to explore the potential of the combination of construction and community.... The goal of the MOOSE Crossing project is to create a new type of constructionist learning culture, and observe that culture to shed light on the power of the combination of construction and community (20 Dec., 1994). In "A New Kind of Addiction," published in the 11/17/94 issue of the _Oracle_ (the student newspaper of the University of South Florida), Ka Vang tells of a student who "found himself spending at least nine hours a day, and up to 12 hours a day during spring quarter, talking on his computer." Further, Vang says, "A check at one university computer lab...showed that there were about 4,000 channels open worldwide. Usually, some 12,000 channels are in use with about 15 people per channel" (13). Clearly, the Internet is taking hold in the lives and minds of millions of people all over the world. Many of us have already taken up residence in cyberspace (yes, I'm Kiwi), and, with programs like MOOSE Crossing introducing children at a younger and younger age to the virtual world, the long-term prospectus for the future of the information super-highway is both optimistic and frightening--optimistic because those of us who now call it home will fight to keep it open for those who follow us, and frightening because, as our numbers grow, so, too, will the numbers of those who will fight to destroy the now free flow of expression, of ideas and information, and the non-commercial nature of the net. The imperative is clear--we must begin now to recognize the forces that will seek to destroy what is being built before it can even be completed, but we must also keep an open mind toward the expansion and extended access that commercialization can engender. New Year's Eve, December 31, 2005, begins in Sydney, Australia, as Maxwell rings in the New Year. Every hour after that we celebrate again, as somewhere else around the globe residents of cyberspace celebrate New Year's in real time. We take a break for a few hours as time traverses the Atlantic Ocean, and then begin again, ringing in the New Year across the continents of the Americas, with Kiwi and Spring in Florida. Nineteen hours later, after downing countless glasses of virtual champagne, the festivities finally begin to draw to a close as California celebrates the beginning of a new year in cyberspace. There are still more New Years to celebrate, however, somewhere on the planet earth, somewhere in the realms of cyberspace, somewhere in the merging of real life and virtual reality.... NOTE [1] Morph--a temporary character change that permanent MOO characters can effect to hide their true virtual identities from the uninitiated. WORKS CITED Bruckman, Amy S. "MOOSE Crossing Proposal." listserv mediamoo@media.mit.edu: 20 Dec. 1994. Burka, Lauren P. "A Hypertext History of Multi-User Dimensions." MUD History. http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/lpb/mud-history.html. Ka Vang. "A New Kind of Addiction." The Oracle 17 Nov., 1994: 13. Kit_Swain. Personal Interview. 12 Dec. 1994. PMC-MOO. hero.village.virginia.edu 7777. Seabrook, Richard H. C. "Community and Progress." listserv cybermind@jefferson.village.virginia.edu: 22 Jan. 1994. WorldMOO Christmas Party. world.sensemedia.net 1234: 24 Dec., 1994. (ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Janice R. Walker, aka Kiwi in cyberspace, is a graduate student in Composition and Rhetoric at the University of South Florida, specializing in the area of Computers and Writing. In addition to teaching Freshman Composition in a computer lab, utilizing internet resources including MOOs and MUDs, she is also working to help organize the Florida Alliance for Computers and Writing [a local affiliate of the national ACW]. Email: jwalker@chuma.cas.usf.edu) THE INTERNET AND CLASSROOM-FREE INSTRUCTION by Dr. Brian R. Shmaefsky Director of Biotechnology Education Kingwood College, Texas (Author's Note: In this essay, I am taking a college administrator's point of view as to the role of Internet in changing education.) Educators are viewing Internet as the upcoming challenge to contemporary pedagogy. Many perceive its role as a novel instructional tool while others view it as a potentially detrimental mode of instruction. Currently, many educators are exploiting Internet as a classroom resource tantamount to the school library. The Internet provides information and resources not normally available through school libraries. Other educators are preparing to use Internet as an alternative to traditional classroom instruction. This first use of Internet is acceptable to most educators and is typical of how new technologies work into education. The second use scares many educators and is reminiscent of televised classroom instruction and fiber optic distance learning courses (example of classroom-free instruction). Many community colleges and rural colleges are seeking classroom-free instruction as a way to distribute their programs to people outside the college's normal service area. This includes students living too far from the college or having jobs that prevent attendance at regularly scheduled times. Classroom-free instruction in effect increases enrollment with a population of students that normally would not attend the institution. Although classroom-free instruction appears to be a simple way to expand a college's boundaries, it has serious technical drawbacks. Televised classroom instruction is limited to certain disciplines and must be broadcast in conjunction with public television stations or local cable network operators. The fiber optic mode of instruction requires viewing centers central to the represented region. In addition, faculty have to be present in a recording room to provide instruction for the fiber optic class. Both methods require scheduled times for viewing the television or fiber optic session. Classroom-free instruction through Internet is advantageous because students can access the material through local libraries or home computers at any time. The benefits of access to computer-based college instruction are already evident. Some colleges are successfully teaching English composition and mathematics courses by modem. Students are given written instructions and submit completed assignments through a bulletin board maintained by the instructor. Students can perform assignments at their pace as long as they stay within the syllabus timelines. Internet will provide new dimensions to the bulletin board approach by supplying color graphics, sound and concurrent access to other resources. In spite of its apparent utility and current successes, classroom-free instruction has many critics. Most critics argue that classroom-free instruction removes the interpersonal interactions needed for meaningful pedagogy. They further argue that students need personal contacts with professors and peers for personal and academic growth. Many undergraduates select career paths based on their encounters with faculty and students majoring in a particular field of study. Other critics argue that it does not adequately satisfy the scholastic needs of auditory and tactile learners. Educational psychology studies of student cognitive styles support this concern. Despite all the criticisms, the popularity of classroom-free instruction will grow in the next ten years as a result of Internet. Ultimately many colleges and high schools will be able to offer whole degree programs through Internet. There will be few barriers to the types of classes being offered. Laboratory courses requiring hands-on experiences will be conducted through computer simulation or through the traditional method of condensing the activities into several scheduled visits to the school or an off-site facility. The pronunciation instruction needed for teaching foreign languages and ESL classes will be mimicked by recording sound into the computer lessons. Internet will not bring death to traditional classroom instruction in the next ten years. However, it will significantly change the way instructors will design classes and evaluate student performance. Instructors have to adapt their course objectives and syllabi to simultaneously satisfy both the needs of traditional and classroom-free instruction. In addition, they will discover that Internet course materials are more difficult to write and update than traditional lecture notes. (ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Brian R. Shmaefsky is currently Director of Biotechnology Education at Kingwood College near Houston, Texas. Formerly, Chair of Biology at Northwestern State University in Oklahoma. Has a Doctorate in science education and an M.S. in biology from Southern Illinois University, doctoral work in plant biochemistry from University of Illinois, and a B.S. in biology from Brooklyn College in New York City. Also worked four years in the chemical industry as a production and Q.C. chemist. Has many publications in science teaching and bioethics in peer reviewed journals. Has given many presentations on science teaching, industrial training and computer applications in the academic environment at national and international professional science education and science meetings. Kingwood College, 20,000 Kingwood Drive Kingwood, TX 77339-3801. E-Mail: bshmaefs@kc.nhmccd.cc.tx.us) TAKING THE I-WAY TO THE YEAR 2005 by Marilyn K. Simon In 1974 when Muhammed Ali fought Joe Frazier in Manila for the heavyweight championship of the world, it was the first time in history that a global event was simultaneously televised live around the world. This broke the dam and released a flood that swept the planet. Distance has virtually disappeared as a limiting factor in business, education, social and political systems. The communication age is dramatically altering our lives while providing us with potent resources to transform the future. Within the next few years our TV will become an interactive delivery system for products and services when fiber optics marries it to our telephone and computer. SLIPP connections now available to the elite of the net will be ubiquitous to all. As any Mac person can attest, icons appearing on a screen make navigating in a technological environment friendly, and often times, addicting. We will soon be able to click on a fastfood restaurant and get their specials, order a movie, make plane reservations, check our finances, simulcast an opera or order a product or service, with the mere pumping of a mouse. By the year 2005, our home will become the Global Mall, and we will be able to virtually shop for any goods or products we desire and take a virtual vacation anywhere we desire over the course of a lunch time or coffee break. Health care will be among the greatest recipients on the I-way. One of the factors driving health care costs higher and higher is the fact that when one hospital gets a new piece of the latest technology every medical center in town feels it must get one. Fiber optics is a perfect way to link all hospitals together and share systems and information and centralize many of the functions like administration, insurance claims, storage of medical records. The experience, the insights, and the skills of the world's finest health professionals will become available to all. This technology promises to have an abstruse impact on the art and science of diagnostics. Emergency rooms have experimented with expert systems in making diagnoses about heart attacks. Within ten years expert systems, available through the superhighway, will be used to initially diagnose all maladies and settle all lawsuits as objectively and fairly as our knowledge base permits. (One can only imagine how that will impact lawyer jokes.) In addition, hospitals will link up with pharmaceutical companies, medical product suppliers, Laundromats, caterers, insurance companies, government agencies, and all of their internal and external customers to increase quality, save money and improve time management. In the commercial sector, new relationships and partnerships between business and customers and between multiple businesses will be established. The knowledge of day-to-day transactions with all customers will cut time, inefficiency and cost by creating a paperless, speed based interchange of digital information. Government agencies will be able to eliminate waste and save money by providing goods and services that are currently needed and not vestiges from former exigencies. To succeed in this communication age requires the belief that fundamental change offers unparalleled opportunities not only to re-invent products and businesses, but in essence a fountain of youth to re- invent ourselves. In reverence to this, education and training will be regarded as investments, and humans will be regarded as infinitely upgradeable. All the rules will be changing, and any person who makes the paradigm shift and keeps pace in the fast lane will be in a position to succeed on the I-way. The major question might be, will Forman take on Ali in 2005? (Note from the Author: This essay is a compilation of lectures I have presented at Walden University. email: 70403.3416@compuserve.com) THREE PREVIEWS OF COMING ATTRACTIONS by Storm A. King Graduate Student in Clinical Psychology Mountain View, California (Author's Note: The essay is composed of three fictitious scenarios that I imagine are very possible for the year 2005.) PREVIEW ONE: A FAMILY GET TOGETHER December 31, 2004, 4 PM, on the West Coast of the USA. The family had gathered in the living room, Mom and Dad on the couch, Cody and Sage sprawled comfortably on pillows, in front of the 6-foot, square wall panel display of the Info Center, purchased with last year's tax return. It was midnight, Greenwich Mean Time, and the first annual World Online new years party had just begun. The screen was split into 9 equal squares, showing scenes of the celebrations from cities around the world. Fireworks mostly, from those cities fortunate enough to be in darkness at this hour; parades and displays of civic landmarks from the daylight side. "Can you show us Paris? I heard they were going to have a fantabulous laser light show there," said Cody, to his dad. "Sure. Nando, hand me the keyboard please." His wife passed over the wireless control panel with 8 inch flat screen display and full keyboard with joy stick and mouse ball built in. Storm clicked on the displayed menu, selecting "other channels of program in progress," found Paris and hit return. Abruptly the room was filled with the reflected patterns of thousands of colored beams dancing around the Eiffel Tower. "Way cool!" exclaimed Sage, with the awestruck inflections unique to a six-year old. A beep sound emanated from the wall mounted speakers, followed by "You have an incoming video call from...a Mr. Paquette." "On screen," shouted Storm, in his best imitation of Captain Picard, from the old Star Trek show. The children giggled, then moved to be closer together, to be in full view of the video camera mounted above the Info screen. The speakers crackled, and the picture changed to show an older couple standing in their living room. The man held a small joystick. "Hi Dad," Storm waved to the camera. "Grandpa, Grandma!" shouted the excited children. "Honey, turn the lights up so they can see us better," Nando said, as she maneuvered the joystick to take control of the video camera mounted in her parents' home and zoomed in on their faces. "Hold on," Grandpa muttered. "I don't seem to have control here..." Moving off screen to type a command, he was back in a second, again moving his joystick, saying, "There, that's it, now you're all in view." Grandma explained, "We're all dressed up because we're on our way out. We are going to New York City tonight, and we just wanted to wish you well before we left." Grandpa added, "We can't really talk very long. We used up most of our ten free video hours that comes with this Netview account each month. Most of it was spent visiting with the Murphy's in Florida. I told you about their new grand child, right?" "Yes, yes, I read all about it in your email," Storm replied. "Sorry I didn't answer. I have been so busy here, with the research and the kids and all..." Cody interrupted, "Grandma, I want to show you the play I wrote that got accepted for next month's Northern California's sixth grader's rebroadcast journal. Can you set your center to display it in a corner? Then you can tell me what you think of it right now!" Grandma, looking a bit puzzled, moved off-screen, muttering "I think I remember how you showed me to do that." Cody went for the keyboard and started tapping furiously. Soon he shouted, "Dad, I can't find it! Help me." "Well," said Storm slowly, trying hard to impose some sense of calm on the scene, "it's supposed to be in your work/school directory. You didn't file it in the root again did you?" "I got it. OK Grandma," he shouted at the screen. "I'm sending it now." Grandma, now quite close to the camera and maneuvering her control panel, said, "This is very nice, honey. Where did you get all these beautiful pictures of the buildings?" "From my net-buddy, the one in Japan that I told you about. He had a whole collection of Frank Lloyd Wright stuff, and he sent it to me." Cody proudly explained. "Well, that's very nice," Grandma replied, looking a bit puzzled again. "And I see you have described the construction of each one. Are you going to be an architect when you grow up?" "Among other things." stated Cody, in an overly smug manner, earning a glance of disapproval from Nando. "Well everybody, this has been fun," Grandpa interjected "but we're going to be into the two-dollars-a- minute surcharge real soon, so we better wrap this up." (Scene fades, with all saying "I love you's" and "good-byes" and throwing kisses at their respective cameras.) PREVIEW TWO: ONLINE THERAPY Sable wrapped her coat tighter against the chill of the cold wind as she wandered aimlessly down Mission Street toward the heart of the city. Mostly deserted at this late hour, the bareness and harsh street lights created a fitting place to be alone and mirrored her depressed mood. Spotting a well lit and open entry hall, she noticed a sign blinking in the window of what seemed to be a church: "Open 24 hours, online counseling. If you need to talk, please come in." Hesitating, Sable thought about the events of the evening and knew from the knot in her stomach that she needed to talk about it now. Climbing the short flight of stairs, she saw the marked door off the entry way labeled "Counseling Room," and the green marker near the doorknob that said "unoccupied." The main door ahead that led into the church was obviously locked for the night. Entering the small anteroom, Sable activated the monitor by pressing the word "start" displayed in its center and sat down facing the mounted camera. The four foot display panel came to life, with a logo of the church. A computer generated voice asked, "Is the nature of your visit an emergency? Please answer yes or no." "No," replied Sable. After a moment, the screen displayed a man, seated behind a desk, viewed from the side, who looked up from the clutter of papers scattered in front of him and swiveled to face the camera and examine the screen in that direction. Bright sunshine streamed in from a window beside him. "Hello," he said, in a thick accent. "My name is Dr. Kerring. May I have your name please?" "Sable." "Well, Ms. Sable, I see you are calling from San Francisco. I am in Stockholm. I am one of the many volunteers that man this help line. We have a completely private connection here, and your confidentiality is protected. It would make things easier if I could see your medical records. Do you know where they are archived?" Sable straightened in her chair, eager now to get the details of establishing a connection over and proud of her knowledge of such matters. "They are at the University Medical Center of Denver. The read-only pass word is 454545." "Thank you. Just a moment." Dr. Kerring typed at and examined a side screen, hidden from Sable's view. "I have them now. So...how may I help you today? I mean, tonight?" "Well, I was walking by, and I saw the sign, and I...I don't know what to do," an increasingly agitated Sable blubbered towards the screen. "Tell me about what has you so troubled," Dr. Kerring said, in a soothing voice. "It's my boyfriend. He..." Sable paused, and then stammered, "we had a fight and, well, he hit me." She started to sob. "That must be very upsetting for you," Dr. Kerring intoned. "Look around. You should find a box of hankies. There usually is one somewhere." "Thank you," said Sable, blowing her nose and sobbing. Dr. Kerring typed at and consulted his side terminal again while Sable composed herself enough to continue the connection. "My records indicate that there is a woman's shelter not far from where you are. Perhaps we should talk a bit about whether or not you think you might want to go there when we are done with this session." PREVIEW THREE: THE WORLD PLAYS TOGETHER A hush fell over the assembled crowd. Play in the final match of the World's first all invitational chess tournament had begun. Sitting on the stage, with a table and board in front of her, was one of the two final contenders. On the 20 foot screen behind her, the opening move had just been displayed, transmitted from China where the other finalist lived. The local chapter of the 18 and under chess players association had been chosen to provide proxies to make the physical moves for the opposing player at this site in Germany. A well-dressed young man, honored to be first, came forward from the side of the stage and carefully moved the pawn to the position indicated on the screen. Play progressed in this manner, while the reporter for the German online live Internet feed typed comments about how the tournament had been organized and how it had all come down to this one match. He told his audience that over 5000 viewers, some of whom had waited days, had completely used up the available video feeds. It was estimated that the text-based live reports were being viewed in real time by nearly a million people, one of the largest audiences for a single event that the Internet had seen so far. He continued his narrative, in-between analysis of the moves in progress, with a description of how this largest ever tournament had been organized. Using the vast interconnections of the Internet, tournament organizers had registered over 90,000 players world wide. A random number generator was used to assign the players to the initial rounds, with no handicapping. This made it possible for anyone, anywhere to end up as the true world champion, for all who wanted to enter could, and all the games were conducted by email. The reporter described the complex software that assigned game times to all participants, based on the best match between their home time zones, and how that same software was used to copy all moves made in all games to a repository accessed only by the tournament referees. At this point, the narrative was interrupted while the reporter described a commotion in the audience. He quoted the live contestant as saying, "I don't think my worthy opponent in China would have made that move." An obviously flustered young man, who had been in the process of leaving the stage, came back and looked at the board. It seems, in his excitement to be involved, that he had placed a knight in the wrong square and not truly replicated the move displayed on the screen. Apologizing profusely, he corrected the mistake, and play resumed. Returning to his narrative, the reporter informed his audience about how it was the role of the referees to assure that only humans participated in the tournament. Many allegations had come up, and claims were made that an artificial intelligence had been used to win one of the games. The referees did in fact find several instances where a contestant had received assistance from a program. They used a special software routine that examined the moves and was able to tell the difference between the styles of human and nonhuman players. As a last reference to the history of the tournament, the reporter explained how all the participants had voted by email as to the time zone in which this final game would be played for the maximum benefit of all. To the surprise of many, the time zone for Eastern Europe won the right to have the game at 8 PM their time. (Storm A. King, Email: stormk@netcom.com) THE INTERNET IN TEN YEARS: MY PREDICTION by Frank James Sacred Heart College South Australia By the year 2005, it's going to be necessary to define our terms and identify what we're talking about when we say INTERNET. The word might still be in use, but maybe no longer to describe where you and I might expect to communicate as we do now. For the time, I'm going to ignore that because it's something we can worry about then. By the year 2005, the sight of a telephone with keyboard and a screen where you would otherwise expect to see a telephone by itself will excite as little comment as an answering machine does now, and Internet type email services will be accessible from any household that has a telephone. So will voice mail and conference calls. On any particular call, you will be charged according to the bandwidth used. If you never use graphic images or conferencing, you'll never be charged for them. I am going to refer here to consumers who subscribe to such services as subscribers, because I expect that telephone companies will want to play a large role in providing such services all over the globe. After a call connection fee, subscribers will be unwilling to pay for 'access' no matter how advanced the services to which competition among providers gives them access. They will be unwilling to pay for silence also. The INTERNET is going to become a good safe place for families--and an affordable place for scholars. Important 'INTERNET' topics will include what and how to communicate using computers. What needs to be communicated will include the models and constructs needed to live a full happy healthy life in the affluent technologically advancing society and how to transmit needed culture to successive generations. Using the screen other than for monitoring progress of the call and dialing, and for a few 'no-charge' services like metering or directory assistance, though, will result in the user paying--the charges will be computed and totaled on the subscriber's account, but only by what's actually used. Increasingly, 'subscribers' will want to be able to check financial institution account status and operations and do transactions online with ability to analyze, hard copy, save and archive information. They'll also want services like weather forecasts and news text search and retrieval online, eventually with colour pictures, but they will be unwilling to pay for what they haven't actually used (which is the beginning of the end of charging for silence!). That will go for business, schools, universities and all other users and for overseas callers, too! Everyone will want global access, but only on demand, and only charged as used! This will be true for networks in offices, too. Businesses will be unwilling to pay (money or system capacity or 'overheads' of any kind) for traffic on in-house networks. What's your attitude toward the end of 'fatware'? Workgroup or conference calls, with colour video and data communication and charged by bandwidth used in real time, will become available eventually and by 2005, charge structures will have begun to reflect planning for them. INTERNET, eventually, will be remembered for TCP/IP, and introducing us to the idea of communicating using information 'objects.' In the year 2005, the noise of the age of industry will have started to abate. The INTERNET will be more of a super-marketplace than a multimedia feast, and it'll sound rather like it, but with noise pollution controls and noise abatement strategies, and when our kids can talk confidently to grandparents about very abstract concepts and models like 'a hole in the ozone layer,' it'll be far easier to communicate with them about how we each have a different sounding family name, and to engage them in 'owning' a part of the richly varied human heritage to which we each bring a part of the surface of our planet. Global telecommunications, especially INTERNET type service, will develop in stages. Governments won't try to step in although they'll want to. Schooling will change, as will government and world politics, but not all that much because people don't change that much! Changes seem dramatic when they are coming, but less so in retrospect. Whatever people use in the future, no matter how distant, the distance between earpiece and mouthpiece is going to be about what it is today, and there'll probably be an earpiece and a mouthpiece or you won't be interested in hearing about it! A scenario that we don't want to imagine is 'plus ca change, plus la meme,' in which we become ever more reluctant to spend money on the technology of information, and even more insistent on service for the users of the information. That's change that affects Information Technologists' expectations! Looking back from the year 2005, 1995 might not seem so far. By then, a meteorologist, working from home in Hawaii would be able to collaborate with peers in weather information systems from Australia to North America or further. Such a meteorologist could work cooperatively as a member of a global group of peers in assembling a weather forecast that each member of the global group of cooperating peers could 'own.' Global weather information systems will enable us all to call up onscreen any data or maps or satellite pictures or communicate with other weather information users anywhere in the World. Initiatives like KIDLINK will introduce young people to communicating with peers around the world, so people who have advanced interpersonal communication skills can start to appreciate how we each come to have a different family name and the diversity of cultural heritage that it gives us. It will promote learning about the diversity of our human cultural heritage. While kids around the World would show polite interest in this interactive medium with whose aid they can predict where the best waves in the Pacific will occur, kids everywhere will, nevertheless, be really interested in interactive group conferencing yet again about who is going to be seen where with whom on Saturday evening. The IPCT-L discussion list, where I first heard about this present activity, had a 'teaching critical thinking' thread about the difficulty of teaching about 'grey areas' today. By 2005, you'll be entitled to send a monitor back under warranty if you can't see grey areas clearly on the screen, and this medium will make the point that there's lots to discuss that's not just black or white, and the young people with INTERNET access will know that's not just talking about the weather. (AUTHOR'S BIO: I joined Sacred Heart College in the '60s. In the '60s, I had worked for what became Australia's Telecom. I have taught mainly Math, Science and Religious Education, and have been involved extensively in professional development and curriculum development activities and in developing educational technology at the College. Following a stroke in 1976, I have worked progressively less in the classroom, and more in administration and computing. In that time, I have also served terms on the state Education Broadcasts advisory committee of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation [SAEBAC] and the South Australian R-12 Media Studies Curriculum Committee. I have had a continuing interest in using telecommunications in teaching. Publications include a re-posting k12admin, 04-Oct-94, 'Telephone Lines in Classrooms? YES!', Texas Center for Educational Technology conference presentations include a poster session 'Using Videotex' at ACEC87 demonstrating online interactive editing of 'home' pages with chunky colour graphics ACEC87 was the Australian Computers in Education Conference [ACEC87] held in the Adelaide Convention Centre in 1987. One of these early videotex systems [ICL Bulletin] provided online interactive editing of 'home' pages with chunky colour graphics. They all operated over telephone lines and gave access to global email. Sacred Heart College Senior School, 195-239 Brighton Road, Somerton Park, South Australia 5044. Email: fjames@nexus.edu.au) THE INTERNET AS A TOOL FOR SURVEY RESEARCH by Michael N. Bagley Graduate Student, Civil and Environmental Engineering University of California at Davis Survey research, briefly defined as the collection of information through questionnaires, has grown at a quick pace over the past twenty years. The importance of survey research has also grown leaps and bounds, as today's researchers have obtained most of their knowledge of societal trends and lifestyles from it. Both the private and public sector are using survey research methods to find answers. Common examples of each are: 1) a marketing firm developing surveys to find automobile preferences among the elderly population, and 2) an academic institution creating questionnaires to measure the communication and travel impacts on a city from a community-based computer network. The question here is not the need for survey research (that is obvious), but instead, it is how can researchers meet the growing demand for access to information in a more complex and challenging world. One of the most important answers to this question lies in the Internet. In the future, smart researchers will be using the Internet and its many resources in numerous ways to collect data. The following are some very realistic scenarios of how the Internet may be commonly used to conduct survey research in the year 2005. USENETS WITH ELECTRONIC MAIL There are thousands of newsgroups and they cover just about any topic a person can imagine. A collection of such newsgroups comprise a Usenet. Ten years from now, there will probably be ten times as many Usenets. What this means is that there will be an easy way to locate and communicate with many different types of people, from people who enjoy electric vehicles more than traditional automobiles to people who are under the age of ten and love sorcery video games. This is an ideal situation for a researcher who wants to collect the ideas or opinions of a particular segment of the Internet population (which will be defined as a majority of the people living in industrialized countries' in the year 2005) and doesn't want to waste time filtering through the rest of the population to get to them. For instance, a researcher interested in finding out what types of people are currently telecommuting would to communicate with the members of newsgroups frequented by telecommuters or people interested in telecommuting. A probable methodology for data collection will be to post a set of questions in a particular newsgroup with a set of instructions, showing a newsgroup reader how to complete and send a questionnaire to the researcher. This method will employ the use of electronic mail since an easy way for a reader to respond to another person's post is to use the "reply" function. By using the reply function, a reader can edit a post (or in this case, answer some survey questions) and then "send" the completed message to the researcher. Thus, using the Internet, a researcher can gain a vast amount of information from a target population quickly and easily. LISTSERVS WITH ELECTRONIC MAIL Listservs, automated mailing lists in which electronic messages are sent automatically to members, will be abundant in number and diversity in the future (with topics similar to those found on the Usenets). Similar to the newsgroups in the Usenets, listservs will be another popular and convenient way to collect data from a particular portion of the Internet population. Researchers in the future will find ways to discover various listservs which have a high probability of containing members with similar interests. Furthermore, if researchers want to survey the "general" population to measure opinions of society as a whole, they would solicit a listserv known to have a large and varied group of subscribers. This method, as in the Usenet, will employ electronic mail. The researcher would send an electronic message through the listserv and it would automatically go into the electronic mailbox of every subscriber on a list. This is an obvious advantage to the Usenet method of data collection in that everyone gets a survey, not just the ones who choose to view a researcher's post in a newsgroup. Thus, listservs on the Internet will be a powerful way of connecting researchers to their data sources, people. WORLD WIDE WEB Another common method of survey research in the future will be the World Wide Web (WWW). This method will not allow researchers to reach nearly as many people as the Usenet and listserv methods because it requires people to go to the survey, instead of the survey coming to them from a listserv or a Usenet. However, creative researchers will use advanced graphics and sounds available in a WWW setting to make it fun for people to fill out surveys; furthermore, once subjects finish a survey on the WWW, they don't have to send it through electronic mail. Thus, the Internet's WWW sites will be a place for researchers to cleverly access peoples' views and opinions through the creation of elaborate surveys hidden in various forms which make people think they are playing a game rather than answering a researcher's questions. CONCLUSIONS The Internet will be an essential and powerful tool for survey research in the future. Market researchers and social scientists, among others, will be constantly finding and developing new ways to use the Internet to obtain valuable information. In 2005, there will be other ways of collecting this type of data (such as paper surveys in the mail, which is the traditional way of doing it now), but none will probably be as common as the Internet. The advantages of the Internet are that it will provide access to nearly every person in the world, and the cost and speed of data collection will be low. The Internet will provide researchers an immense wealth of information. Will this be a positive contribution to society? The answer is a big YES for the researchers. But what about the typical Internet person? Is the Internet going to be flooded with questionnaires and bogged down with research projects? If this is the case I have to say that survey research on the Internet will be a negative contribution to the society of the future. But if properly regulated (and I think the typical Internet user's flame thrower is a strong regulator), the surveys will not get out of hand and the contribution will be an overall positive. I hope for the latter scenario, and now it's just a matter of time before we find out. (AUTHOR'S BIO: I am a graduate student at the University of California at Davis in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering with a strong interest in the Internet. I am currently working on a research project involving a Community Computer Network [called the Davis Community Network], where we are trying to measure the impacts on communication and travel that a computer network may have in a city. Part of the inspiration for writing this came from developing a computer survey to issue to the Davis Community Network members about the increasing use of computers in survey research. I then saw a link to how the Internet may be used for survey research and started to notice a few actual examples. I realized that this was only the beginning, that the Internet would be a goldmine for survey researchers in the future-- especially as the number of Internet users grows exponentially, as I am predicting it will. I am also currently involved in a 1 year program called the Program of College Teaching, which is a certified program for students who plan on becoming professors in the future. [I plan on using the Internet in my classrooms!] I am a member of American Society of Civil Engineers [ASCE], American Society for Engineering Education [ASEE], Institute of Transportation Engineers, and Big Brothers/Big Sisters Organization [a big brother]. Email: szbagley@chip.ucdavis.edu) COMMUNICATING IN CYBERSPACE: MUSINGS ON GENDER ROLES, INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS, AESTHETICS, AND CRITICAL METHODOLOGIES by Marla Mayerson Over the past 10 years, I have observed and have been a participant in the evolution of the relationship between visual communications design, the arts, and education. Many fields have undergone revolutionary changes and have evolved. Many people who had expected to continue in their trade and journeyman jobs until retirement have had to undergo specialized training in new areas. In order to meet the changing needs of my chosen field of visual communications and education, I have spent what I feel to be a great deal of worthwhile time in the academy pursuing course work relevant to the newer technologies. This time has proven to be very valuable, opening my eyes to the many possible future trends in communications technology, and to the influences the World Wide Web and other online information services will have on education. These newer forms of multimedia communication open questions regarding the impact of this new technology on gender and social roles and relationships, interpersonal dialogues through email, intellectual property rights, aesthetics, and critical methodologies. I have structured this paper into brief sections that will specifically address these different areas. THOUGHTS ON THE IMPACT OF MULTIMEDIA TECHNOLOGY AND GENDER In the spring of this year, I took an introductory course at the university in Women's Studies. For a final paper, I examined how the media (as represented, for this particular project, by a series of articles in _Newsweek_) presented different gender roles that are developing in the use of computers. The following paragraph is taken from the introduction to my paper, and reflects my initial impression of computers: On Superbowl Sunday 1984, during one of the half-time commercial breaks, a strong, young, muscular woman is depicted running an Orwellian marathon past a crowd of enslaved laborers. Striding forward with a sledgehammer, she is symbolic of a new era, the advent of the new computer age. The powerful stroke of her hammer is meant to announce the liberation of society from tedious tasks and equalize the workplace through a labor-saving, simple-to-use technology, thereby freeing the workers from Big Brother (in this case, IBM). This is the ad which introduced the Apple Macintosh computer and changed the lives of many people--including myself. I could see myself as this strong woman and I couldn't wait to try this new computer out.... Apple Computer's idealized vision of the future world is less than equal when it comes to these devices and the number of women using them.... The facts surrounding the issue are that men outnumber women in the computer field three to one and the ratio is increasing. The _Newsweek_ article, "Men, Women, and Computers," included some very relevant discussions based on the perspectives of differently gendered authors. According to author Barbara Kantrowitz, gendered cultural conditioning is imparted to children from a young age via toys. Boys usually play with Nintendo, and girls, with Barbie. The differences in these toys is readily apparent in their interactiveness. Nintendo is truly interactive, requiring quick decisions in response to the game's progression. The only thing interactive about Barbie is that, in some versions, she has a pull string to vocalize a limited but whiny vocabulary (which, among other things, proclaims a distaste for math and a preference for shopping). New technology-based information resources require one to interact with a machine. If our culture expects to use technology as a key resource in the future, then we must ask ourselves how technology is to be presented to our children. The myth that technology will be the great gender equalizer seems to be merely that--a myth. The relevance of the gender gap to the advent of computer-based resources (like the Internet) as communications and educational tools leads to an even larger question of how and to what extent the gap in computer usage continues to grow. Can our educational system adequately manage the collision between pre- existing social issues (like sexism and racism), the emergence of such powerful forms of communication and the (re)production of newer forms of sociopolitical realities? Do we even address gender as a problem to be considered? The role of gender in technology and education never even entered the discussion in one of my graduate seminars covering the impact of multimedia communications. Does the absence of this discussion, in this graduate seminar and elsewhere, reveal the persistence of the myth that technology will somehow be "the great equalizer" between the genders, rendering gender, race and class "obsolete" when compared to the advances in technology? It is as if we are invested (still) in the myth that "human progress" is the inevitable and given outcome of technological advances, i.e., the more sophisticated the machine, the more civilized the human. Surely the insights of Evelyn Fox Keller, Sandra Harding, Constance Penley, Jenny Terry, Donna Harraway and other feminist cultural critics of science and technology have disabused us of this techno- induced fantasy? THOUGHTS ON E-MAIL AND THE USE OF COMPUTERS FROM A GENDERED PERSPECTIVE (Author's Note: It is important to note that my use of "men" and "women" here, and elsewhere in this discussion, can be easily complicated by current theoretical discussions of "men" and "women," "male" and "female," and "masculine" and "feminine." However, these generalizations--made possible by dominant cultural perceptions and assumptions--are important to consider precisely because of their cultural force in politics and the law, the arts, technology and education.) "Gender Gap in Cyberspace," a _Newsweek_ article by Deborah Tannen, explores how each sex relates to computers. Tannen and her friend Ralph corresponded through email about their perceived differences. In their discussion, they decided that boys are socialized to dominate. If a computer won't do what it is asked, males become angered by the computer's defiance. On the other hand, women who encounter an uncooperative computer will refuse to deal with it. "Women" are also traditionally known as better communicators than men, especially when they are involved in group tasks. According to research done by Susan Herring, a University of Texas professor who has studied women's participation in networks, and fellow linguist Laurel Sutton, men and women do have different conversational styles due to their socialization. In this technological context, for example, the anonymity of networks--information services dominated by men-- facilitates aggressive attacks or power(ful) silences. Women are turned off by "flaming" (being deluged by electronic hate mail) and by sexual advances that the electronic media facilitates. Will these gendered differences be continued on an electronic platform of international scope? How will people of different nationalities and cultures react to other cultures' gender norms and economic class structures? How might this affect the educational situation and access to different types of information for women world-wide, especially given the fact that women comprise the greatest percentages of illiteracy rates worldwide? Will women suffer a similar technological illiteracy in this information age? I can only postulate that access to the technology without too much censorship of content will be a deciding factor in addition to the already existing conditions of poverty and inequality suffered by women worldwide. My experiences with the Internet may serve as an example of how women might effectively integrate the new technology into their lives. I first received my e-mail account this past summer; I quickly went online with the homenet system offered by the university. This year I moved households four times, three of which have occurred since September. I have a cellular phone and several different phone numbers, but people tell me it's difficult to reach me. I tell them the best way to get in touch with me is through e-mail. In the netropolis, it is possible to move without changing your address. People can find you even though they have no idea where you are (Taylor and Saarinen, "Netropolis" 4). My address exists in cyberspace. However, what happens to "the body" in cyberspace? If we all become users of the internet, what new cyborg identities will be policed--and how? How will home and family--and "family values"--be reconfigured in cyberspace at our virtual addresses? Cyberspace opens a new communicative space in which messages can be exchanged at the speed of light. Within this space, the very processes of conceptualization are transformed (Taylor and Saarinen, "Telewriting" 4). Cyberspace is the new global village--a global village free of environmental destruction, economic problems, domestic violence, discrimination....? What escapist desires are produced and fulfilled by the clean surfaces of information technology? Email makes it easier for me to contact my professors and my colleagues. It is definitely creating a new form of dialogue, one that is different from regular letter writing (which I despise). I now converse with a friend who moved to Ann Arbor without the cost of a long distance phone call. I feel that the conversations I have through email are somehow more substantive. They are not exactly the letters I would send through the postal system, but are a cross between conversations and letters. (It is interesting to note that letter writing and conversations have historically been configured as private and domesticated--and therefore feminine--forms of communication. How has--what are the ways that-- information technology transformed this feminine endeavor into a male-dominated enterprise?) The Collage Whiteboard system offers the same type of practice that email does except that it is through a sketchpad format. Perhaps the email of the future will be a combination of the two--or be even more dimensional, incorporating sound and video in the exchange. (This, to me, seems to be the place to investigate and theorize how new technologies are producing new genders--and perhaps reifying the status quo gender system at the same time.) My only regret is that I cannot contact all of my friends through this technology. Only those who have access to computers, a modem, the knowledge of how to use the technology and the ability to access an online service need be my friends anymore. What type of technology can be equal and equalizing if all of us do not have equal access? THE AESTHETICS OF THE HOME PAGE Much time this quarter was spent browsing the Web looking not only for information but for new and unique ways to present that information within the confines of HTML (Hypertext Metalanguage). HTML page designers are a new form of multimedia designer. In my browsing I have come across job openings for people to set up pages on the Web. (It is important to point out the significance of the use of this naturalistic and feminine image--the spider's web--for this technology that originated with scientists. Perhaps we will re-envision nature, i.e., the web as the technology of the spider. What dichotomies will collapse under--or be supported by--the weight of this technology? It is important to consider how Western discourses of "nature" will be transformed in this age of information technologies.) The difference between the World Wide Web and other servers is the ease with which links can be embedded in a document. These links can bring up images, sounds, text and animations. HTML documents allow creative text and image layout designs because they are not confined to any order and are only subject to a few format limitations depending on the capabilities and "look" of the Web browser being used. (My preference is for Netscape over NCSA's Mosaic.) The reality of online catalogs, fully interactive art installations, and brochures are now commonplace on the Web. Virtual shopping malls allow the user to order items without ever leaving home. Because of this interactivity of multimedia resources, a new form of communication has been created. Hypertext has become a televisual collage in cyberspace. The design of a home page rivals other forms of communication design. The aesthetics of the placement of type in relation to images in relation to sound allow for critical inquiry based upon aesthetics just like any other form of art. "What happens to so-called aesthetic and critical norms when the hierarchy of print is displaced by the horizontality of the network" (Taylor and Saarinen, "Neteffect" 11)? New methods of critical inquiry must therefore be developed to address the uniqueness of these forms. Virtual art galleries exist in cyberspace. Artwork is being digitized, exchanged and distributed for online exhibition. Marshall McLuhan's "media is the message" has arrived. Art from museums online makes masterpieces accessible to greater numbers of people even though these works are translated through digital means. How does this digitizing process affect the translation of the image or the interpretation of the image? Digital conversion is allowing delocalization of existing entities. "To digitize is to delocalize. But delocalization is not necessarily universalization." (Taylor and Saarinen, "Gaping" 8-9) There still needs to be understanding of the medium. Can one properly critique a medium presented in another form? This same debate exists with the emergence of photographic forms of reproduction. All forms of reproduction are pseudo-images. All artwork in this medium becomes a simulacrum, but then so does text, so does sound, so does the message itself--so does everything in cyberspace. How do we begin to theorize about cyberspace? THOUGHTS ON COPYRIGHT Copyright laws were established to regulate the exchange of printed material. Copyright laws have been used by artists and writers to protect themselves and their works. Authorship and ownership are bound together in traditional Western culture. The digital revolution allows for the co-optation of just about anything that can be scanned or recorded. The identity of the original author is sometimes obscured on the Web. It is relatively easy to pirate information transferred via this medium. How do we control intellectual property in cyberspace? Does intellectual property exist in virtual form? It seems always to have been easy to raid the work of a writer, but now the digital medium also affects digital artists like myself. If I place an image that I have created on the Web, anyone can capture that image and use it in its "true" format. The technology either has to come up with a way of encrypting images just like credit card numbers, or else we all have to give up the idea of ownership. Can there be property on the net? How will such concepts impact the academy with its production based value system? Can we get virtual tenure with our virtual vitas? With the introduction of any new form of telecommunication comes the debate over how or whether to control its use. The evolution of the Web is worth watching. Tim Berners-Lee, who originally designed the Web for scientists, does not seem to mind that so many users are jumping on to traverse the hypertext highway. "The Web was designed to represent our knowledge and our communication," he says. "It should be as diverse as we are" (Kantrowitz et al. 60). It is important that with the diverse practices of technology, there be diverse theoretical models and political imaginings that narrate the histories of this age--histories that do not forget where we have been and where we are, histories that are written diversely, questioning and narrativizing the silences (gendered, racial and economic) usually glossed by history. BIBLIOGRAPHY Erhard, Jean. "Digital Rights." Internet World, vol 5:8, November/December, 1994. Greenberg, Kenny. "Going Graphical: There's No Place Like Home Page." Internet World, vol 5:8, November/December, 1994. Kantrowitz, Barbara, Rogers, Adam, and Tanaka, Jennifer. "Oh, What a Tangled Web." Newsweek, 31 October 1994. Kantrowitz, Barbara. "Men, Women & Computers." Newsweek, 16 May 1994. Meyer, Mike, and Underwood, Anne. "Crimes of the Net." Newsweek, 14 November 1994. Tannen, Deborah. "Gender Gap in Cyberspace." Newsweek, 16 May 1994. Taylor, Mark C., and Saarinen, Esa. Imagologies: Media Philosophy. Routledge, London, 1994. (ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Marla Mayerson is a professional graphic designer and artist pursuing a terminal degree through The Ohio State University Department of Art Education. She holds an appointment as a Graduate Associate at the Eisenhower National Clearinghouse for Science and Math Education and is a computer graphics instructor at Columbus State Community College. She has four cats and two Macintosh computers [and would welcome an offer of full-time employment in a warm climate]. She can be reached at mayerson.1@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu.) vision DIRECTION: PRESENCE AND PERSISTENCE IN A RAMPAGING INFO-STRUCTURE by Robert Mason The unfortunate public perception of future networks is an abstract representation of information and data, be it video-on-demand, information services or interactive shopping. No one can refute the possibility that these services will in fact gorge liberal amounts of bandwidth in our future systems. The problem is that the great potential inherent in interconnecting people across the globe is being relegated to the sidelines. It is my fervent belief that what the TCIs and Microsofts are building is immaterial to the empowerment of groups and individuals. The key to this burgeoning cyberspace is not within the context of Gibson's vision of "gleaming and glowing pillars of data and information"; the true power and excitement of this infrastructure will come from the fifth-column building the foundations of virtual communities. The corporate giants must be shown a higher plane. One would think that after so many years of trials and experiments the pundits would finally see that the mantra, "If we build it, they will come," is not necessarily true. Only by placing the power of the medium, tools to build and organize virtual communities, in the hands of the people will the global electronic community reach critical mass. Through research and exploration in the conceptual framework of virtual communities important processes can be developed to enhance the productivity, self-reliance and creativity of the users of this new medium. Research efforts should focus on how people of all ages organize, learn, communicate and cooperate within the structure of virtual communities. The dynamics of groups and individuals must be allowed a presence on the Net, and with that a continual persistence. Only with these ideals can we start to break the data-centric view of network usage. As the reality of the information age becomes more focused, people will need to grasp and understand the vast expance of information, but within a shared context. True expressive and educational empowerment occurs when laymen can start building and interacting within their own shared environments. People must begin exploring ways to interact in this new medium. I hope all individuals will become fully integrated into this oncoming digital age. (ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Robert Mason is a recent graduate from Worcester Polytechnic Institute. He is currently having a grand time working at Art Technology Group [www: http://art.redstar.com/] developing interactive media projects; particularly in regards to the World Wide Web and virtual community initiatives. His research interests lie in exploring media rich environments and issues regarding virtual communities. He is always open to discussing the context of on-line shared experiences and interactions.) DATA TERRORISTS AND HOT LINKS by Michael Deslippe The United Free World Press published the following article on January 15, 2005: "Information Highway Full of Potholes: Super-Wide Terminal-Computer Hierarchy (SWITCH) Restores Productivity." The term "Information Highway" was coined by politicians in those days when there were still Governments and Nations. It seems like eons since those humble beginnings. It's still fresh in my memory when the infamous DT's (Data Terrorists) collapsed the network during peak hours and the inevitable bankruptcy of all governments was accelerated. I was one of those people who had to go "outdoors" while the system was down to get to work. Doctors still don't know if the radiation I received through the ozone hole has affected me. Since the network was down for more than two months, I wasn't able to transmit my biostats to the hospital. Without my monitoring device, I didn't even know what or how much to eat (it was nice to just throw food down my throat without having to worry about what tomorrow's nutrition advisory would look like). In any event, we still had a CD player and some old "recorded" music to keep us company. It's sure not the same as being able to select anything you want from the archive, but it's better than nothing. I wish we had one of those old analog monitors (I think it was called television); we had some kind of recorded video and a player, but with the Plasma Screen down we couldn't watch them (I really did miss that video database). Now that the SWITCH is running, many of the post DT problems have been eliminated. Our work assignments are now on a separate channel from our pay data so there'll be no more of our wages accidentally going to our customers. The authorization network is now cryptologically safe so we'll get our prescription drugs mailed just the way our doctor intended. (Did you hear about that lady who was poisoned when she received a wrong prescription that was authorized by an electronic signature from the Environmental Waste Disposal Team?) The WAIS algorithm was also optimized, so when we do a Grocery Search we'll get the locations of the lowest prices for the brands we've selected as well as generic food replacement prices. We'll get two prices: lowest cost in the quantities we've requested and the lowest cost per unit (ml, kg, cm), plus the inventory control program will tell us about product availability. The Environmental Control interface has also been refined and home lighting, as well as heat and humidity, will be regulated in one minute increments adjusting for ambient light, heat, and barometric pressure. SWITCH has many plans for the future. Bill Gates, Chief Executive Officer for IBMS-DOS/2 Corp., stated that the VR feed from Virtual Vacations Inc. will include a motion sensor. Your next trip will include manipulation of motion senses, making your trip physically, as well as mentally, stimulating. With variations of the Alpha Wave manipulator, all bodily sensations can be recreated. When perfected, Mr. Gates states business people who travel will be able to maintain carnal relationships with spouses over great distances on SWITCH (giving a new meaning to "conference calls"). Finally, when voting for corporate officers, you'll get a full background check from puberty to date with complete voting records. Voting records will be displayed with hot links to all media articles dealing with their previous voting records and commitments made on the subject. (ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Michael Deslippe, born January 15, 1954, in Detroit, Michigan, is a Personal Computer Consultant for Patriot Consulting Services in West Chester, Ohio, and runs a PCBoard Bulletin Board System called the Patriot BBS. The board deals in Christian and Conservative Political information with the usual host of PC computer programs. The BBS can be reached at [513] 870- 9604, 14.4 K, 24 hours a day. He can be reached on CompuServe at 73362,546 [73362.546@compuserve.com] or on the InterNet: tensbum@ix.netcom.com. He likes writing and publishes a monthly newsletter called The Christian Advisor, address: P.O. Box 968, West Chester, OH 45071- 0968) TOTAL, GLOBAL COMMUNICATION by David Wasserman I have been traveling the Internet since this past February '94 and not only have thoroughly enjoyed it, but have also been excited by how fast it has grown and is growing. I read an e-mail article that I received in my e- mail box that concerned two different opinions on what the Internet is and where it is going. One opinion was that the Internet will tend toward Interactive TV and Video-On- Demand; an