[9535] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: Advisory committee on the NII
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Thomas A. Kalil)
Sat Jan 8 16:58:34 1994
Date: Sat, 8 Jan 1994 16:56:13 -0500
To: "Carl Briggs, Public Relations" <BRIGGS@AB.WVNET.EDU>, COM-PRIV@psi.com
From: tkalil@arpa.mil (Thomas A. Kalil)
At 12:47 PM 1/8/94 -0500, Carl Briggs, Public Relations wrote:
>After reading the recent e-mail on this topic, I have just one question: just
>how important is this "NII Advisory Council?" Or, to rephrase the question,
>just how important is it _not_?
>
>It seems that we have at least two divisions of work going on: committees that
>meet, and grass-roots people who are doing the heavy lifting.
>
>The initial groundwork for _any_ future NII has already been set down, in part
>due to the fine work of people like Steve Wolff and the National Science
>Foundation. Will future work simply be suspended until some committee makes
>some statement?
>
>I think not. I, myself, have little interest in waiting for some committee to
>come up with something that may or may not have any practical value.
>
>I say this not to criticize the work of committees, the role of democracy, the
>value of citizen input, etc. I say this _only_ to emphasize that someone's
>presence or absence on the committee won't restrict someone's ability to play a
>role in the Information Superhighway.
>
>Just one example: there are, right now, several lists of great gophers that
>have tons of government information. Much of this has happened in just the
>past year. One year from now, regardless of how many NII committee meetings
>are held, dozens of new gophers full of government information could be
>established. These resources are being set up by all sorts of individuals.
>Government information, therefore, is now widely available. Even now.
>
>There are a lot of talented people out there doing a lot of significant work.
>We've had plenty of success so far, and I assume we'll see much more,
>regardless of who gets invited to high-level advisory committee meetings.
>
>I'd rather we spent more money training people to use what we have now, and to
>provide access, rather than create some master-plan architecture that has to
>come from a committee.
>
>Sure, let's have committee meetings, and let's hold more congressional
>hearings, and let's post it on a thousand points of gopher. But let's also put
>some support into ground-level work that is accomplishing an awful lot, today.
>
>Humbly,
>Carl Briggs
>BRIGGS@AB.WVNET.EDU
I agree. The Administration has no intention of having on-going activities
come to a halt while the Advisory Council deliberates.
For example, hundreds of federal employees are being trained to use the
Internet -- including Gopher, Wais, Mosaic, etc.
The gov't is continuing the High Performance Computing and Communications
Program (a Mosaic page is located at www.hpcc.gov).
>From the meetings that were held with the VP this week, however, I can
tell you that there is a real value to bringing together people with
different backgrounds (librarians, educators, labor leaders, Internet
experts, CEOs) to discuss these issues.
****************************************************************************
Thomas Kalil "The NII - just do it!"
tkalil@arpa.mil
National Economic Council
The White House
Washington DC 20500
(p) 202-456-2801
(f) 202-456-2223
"Your taxpayer dollars at work."
****************************************************************************
