[11185] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Nonsense (fwd)
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Richard Civille)
Thu Mar 24 10:48:39 1994
Date: Thu, 24 Mar 1994 08:59:27 -0500 (EST)
From: Richard Civille <rciville@civicnet.org>
Apparently-To: <com-priv@psi.com>
I'm taking the liberty of reposting this excellent challenge to the
second panel from a librarian in California who points out that without
adequate attention paid to education and training, the entire idea of
Unversal Service is pointless. Comments?
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Center for Civic Networking Richard Civille
P.O. Box 65272 Washington Director
Washington, DC 20035 rciville@civicnet.org
(202) 362-3831
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---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Thu, 24 Mar 1994 02:12:52 -0800
>From: "S. J. Hernandez" <image-au@garnet.berkeley.edu>
To: summit@tmn.com
Subject: Nonsense
None of this talk about a link to every house
makes any sense unless we educated those who
are wired to EFFECTIVELY use the services they
are being offered.
In California, there is now a resolution before
the State legislature to, in effect, make all
electronically formatted state government in-
formation available in a freely accessible medium,
i.e. e-mail or fax, from any State government
branch, on a State-wide basis.
Nonetheless, we are closing our public libraries.
I happen to live in an area where the local library
is considered an irreplaceable part of the City-wide
education system. In Albany California, we have
recently opened a NEW Alameda County branch library.
None of this would have been possible had it not been
for the foresight of those who recognized the need to
keep abreast of information technologies and literacy
issues. The opportunity was detected before it could
even be effectively acted upon, that's how important
it was AT THE TIME OF CONCEPTION.
Without a clear vision of how information works in a
community or how it is shaped by shifts and develop-
ments in technology, this kind of talk about "link to
every house" is nonsense. Are we to suppose that the
accompanying systems to the "links" are completely self-
explanatory and self-referencing? Do they come from a
vacuum?
How do you educate a community to operate "links" that
have no roots? Can I plop a fiber optic cable in a
government housing unit in some inner city without any
explanation? Can I expect immigrants to be able to use
my system without any training or access to reference
resources (libraries)?
I don't know.
Maybe someone can answer this. What role does education
play BEFORE we wire the Nation?
Salud,
Simon J. Hernandez
School of Library and Information Studies
University of California at Berkeley
shernand@library.berkeley.edu
