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         *  C  Y  B  E  R  S  P  A  C  E  *  A  N  D  *  I  T  '  S  *

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            L  E  G  A  L  *  I  M  P  L  I  C  A  T  I  O  N  S  *

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This article originally appeared  in  the  Spring,  1991  issue  of Whole Earth
Review (issue #70)

Whole Earth Review is  a  quarterly  magazine  of  access  to  tools and ideas.
Published by POINT, a  California  nonprofit  corporation. Editorial office: 27
Gate Five Road, Sausalito, CA 94965;  415/332-1716.  Subscriptions $20 per year
for individuals, $28 per year for institutions; single copies $7

e-mail:  wer@well.sf.ca.us

   -------------------------------------------------------------------------


        Highways of the Mind or Toll Roads Between Information Castles?

                               By Roger Karraker
                  Copyright 1991 by POINT and Roger Karraker



This is not an article about  technology.   It's  an article about human needs.
For example:

=>  A doctor telecommunicates a CAT scan from her small hospital to the nearest
    major medical center.

=>  An MIT professor uses his desktop computer in Cambridge to tutor a talented
    young physicist on a reservation in rural Montana.

=>  Biologists scattered around the  world  exchange  data  on an hourly basis,
    coordinating their effort to map the human genetic code.

=>  A grassroots political organization gets the word out about a meeting, just
    in time to mobilize for a municipal legislative session.

=>  Each of these activities, science-fiction as they might sound, actually are
    happening today, courtesy of  computer-mediated telecommunication networks.
    The future  of  this  technology  is  a  matter  of  much behind-the-scenes
    maneuvering.  Roger Karraker,  instructor  in  journalism  and Macintosh at
    Santa Rosa Junior College, has teased out the key issues from a politically
    and technically complex debate.

                               Howard Rheingold


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


A quiet but crucial   debate  now  under  way  in  Congress, in major corporate
boardrooms, and in universities, has  the  potential  to  shape American in the
21st century and beyond. The  outcome  may  determine  where you live, how well
your children are educated, who will blossom  and  who will wither in a society
where national competitiveness and  personal  prosperity  will likely depend on
access to information.

The battle is about who will build,  own,  use  and pay for the high-speed data
highways of the future and whether  their  content will be censored. These vast
data highways, capable of  sending  entire  libraries  coast-to-coast  in a few
seconds  or  sending  crucial  CAT  scans   from  a  remote  village  to  urban
specialists, could be linked in a vast network of "highways of the mind."

The backbone of these communications  networks  will  be built of fiber optics,
hair-thick strands of glass,  transmitting  digital  pulses  thousands of times
faster than ever before. In addition  to  their speed, fiber optics bring  with
them an environmental bonus: fiber optics are made of silicon, the earth's most
common element and the growing use of optical fibers will mean much less demand
for traditional cables composed of copper,  an element whose fabrication causes
much environmental damage.

Futurist Alvin Toffler says the future  of  the  United States depends upon the
creation of these networks. "Because so much of business now depends on getting
and sending information, companies around the  world  have been rushing to link
their employees  through  electronic  networks.  These  networks  form  the key
infrastructure of  the  21st  century,  as  critical  to  business  success and
national economic development as the railroads were in [Samuel] Morse's era."

These data highways connecting schools, colleges, universities, researchers and
industry  could help create high-quality education  in the smallest schools, or
start a society-wide revolution as important as the invention of printing.

Conversely, if access to such  data  networks  is  restricted to only those who
already have money, power and information  then  the highways of the mind might
become nothing more  than  a  classic  case  of  economic imperialism, taxation
without  communication,  that  one  critic   has  dubbed  "toll  roads  between
information castles."

Virtually all sides to the controversy agree that such networks  are essential.
The future belongs to those who have  ready  access to huge amounts of accurate
information. The Japanese government and industry  are actively building such a
network. The Japanese government  estimates  that  in  20  years  35 percent of
Japan's gross national product  will  be  dependent  on  information that flows
across this web.

    In the United States  there  is  only  a  vague  consensus  that this high-
bandwidth network is vital. In place of  the unity of purpose evident in Japan,
there is internecine squabbling  over who has  the right to do what/to where/to
whom.

                                  ___________


                                Four Questions

At issue are vastly different visions of the roles of government, education and
corporations. Four key questions dominate the debate:

1.  Who will  build  the  network?  (Will  the  federal  government  create the
    infrastructure or will it be left to private enterprise?)

2.  Who will have access to network services?  The debate here is between those
    who would restrict the network's services  to the nation's research leaders
    and those who believe in access to anyone with a modem .

3.  Who will pay for all  this?  Everyone  concedes that the federal government
    will pay the lion's share of getting the network underway. But should it do
    so by directly funding the  infrastructure  or  by  paying the user fees of
    just the big research organizations working on federal projects?

4.  What kind of information will  be  allowed  on  the network? If the federal
    government owns the network, the First  Amendment is in place and unpopular
    speech and art will be protected.  If  private enterprise owns and runs the
    network, freedom  of  electronic  speech  is  less  clear.  Conceivably,  a
    corporation  owning  the  network  could  refuse  to  allow  discussion  of
    controversial topics.

So far, two models or metaphor -  "highways" and "railroads" have been proposed
to frame the debate. Both borrow  from transportation examples in U.S. history.
Both, I believe, fall short of the mark.  And we suggest that a little tweaking
of the two, the  best  solution  for  the  U.S.  might  be  found  in a kind of
synthesis of these different visions.

                                  ___________


                         The Interstate Highway Model

One vision, championed most visibly by  U.S.  Sen.  Albert Gore (D-Tenn.) is to
create a National Research  and  Education  Network  (NREN)  that will link the
nation's top  research,  education,  corporate  and  governmental  researchers.
Gore's bill to create NREN  died in  the last Congress but was re-introduced in
January, 1991 with more coordinated  support  among governmental agencies.  The
NREN proposal is just one part  of  the government's five-year, $2 billion High
Performance  Computing  Program,   which   includes  supercomputers,  software,
networking and education.

Gore speaks of  a  "catalyst"  role  for  the  Federal  Government  akin to the
creation of  the  interstate  highway  system  in  the  1950s.  The  interstate
transportation system was seen as a  national  resource and national tax monies
were used to finance the infrastructure,  which benefited all Americans through
more far-flung, decentralized distribution of goods and services.

The  highway   model   -   that   government   recognizes   the  communications
infrastructure as a vital national  resource  -  is  the norm throughout Japan,
Europe and most of the world.

                                  ___________


                              The Railroad Model

IBM, MCI and other private firms  prefer a different model:  private enterprise
and quasi-monopolies such as America's railroads of the 19th century.

The decision in the 19th century  to  give private transportation monopolies to
the railroads and let  them  determine  the  nation's  destiny created the 20th
century landscape of America. Not  surprisingly  towns  and farms accessible to
the railroads prospered and grew. Areas  ignored  by the railroads withered and
died.

Under the railroad model,  the  public  and  the  government weren't consulted;
private interest, not  national interest, determined  who got what. It was pure
free market capitalism with  no  government  regulation, no direct governmental
investment and led to some  ugly  excesses.  Yet  at a time when federal budget
deficits approach $300 billion per year  the idea of letting private enterprise
foot the whole bill is powerfully attractive.

And that is essentially what IBM,  MCI  and  Merit,  an  agency of the state of
Michigan have  proposed.  Last  September  they  formed  ANS  (Advanced Network
Services), a not-for-profit joint venture that proposes to build and maintain a
private network.  But the federal government  would  need to guarantee that the
research institutions would have  annual  budgets  sufficient  to pay their ANS
bills.

                                  ___________


                                Why Decide Now?

The existing national research communication  system  is woefully inadequate to
today's needs and  must  be  updated  soon;  this  technical obsolescence lends
urgency to the need for finding answers to these policy questions.

The question is how best to  modernize  and expand the DARPA/Internet network .
It the late 1960s, the  Defense  Department's Advanced Research Projects Agency
(ARPA) created  a  network  of  telephone  lines  connected  to  large research
institutions in government, education, private  enterprise and the military  to
allow researchers to exchange computerized information.

Over the next decade and a  half  the number of researchers grew significantly.
As computers grew more  powerful  and  easier  to  use, researchers outside the
computer sciences began to use  remote terminals and telecommunication networks
to exchange messages and share  computing  resources from their homes, offices,
and laboratories. Each research center  supported  dozens or hundreds of users,
and each local center was  plugged  into  the  overall  network; thus, both the
number of  nodes  in  the  network  and  the  number  of  users  at  each  node
proliferated. The number  of  regional  networks  in  government,  business and
education  skyrocketed,  as  did  connections   to  ARPANet's  main  lines,  or
"backbone". Most importantly, the type of data exchanged by researchers changed
dramatically. Where  once  simple  electronic  mail  messages  were sufficient,
collaborators across the nation now  needed  to exchange high-density data like
sounds, CAT scans, other graphic images, even video images.

By 1987 the ARPANet suffered data gridlock  and the last of its 1970s state-of-
the-art lines (56,000  digital  "bits"  per  second  -  about  50,000 words per
minute) were laid to rest. ARPANet's successor  is NSFNET, funded until 1993 by
the National Science Foundation,  another  government agency. NSFNET's original
lines were so-called T-1  or  1.544  million  bits  per  second  - 28 times the
capacity of ARPANet. These lines  lasted  just  three  years, and are now being
replaced by a newer T-3 (45 million bits per second) backbone - another 28-fold
increase. No one expects it to last for long.

The growth of the so-called Internet  -  those machines connected to the NSFNET
backbone  -  has been phenomenal. In  1989,  the number of networks attached to
the NSFNET/Internet increased from  346  to  997;  data traffic increased five-
fold. The latest estimate, itself probably  wildly out-of-date, is that 100,000
to 200,000 main computers  are  directly  connected  to  NSFNET, with perhaps a
total of two million individuals able to exchange information.

For example, the  WELL,  Whole  Earth's  computer  conferencing  system, is not
connected directly to either the NSFNET  backbone  or the so-called Internet of
sites on the backbone. But the  WELL's  computer  is linked to Apple Computer's
mainframes, and to Pacific Bell's computers and to the University of California
at Berkeley - all of them on  the  Internet.  So the WELL's 3,500 customers can
send electronic mail to millions  of  other  computer  users around the country
and, via connections between the Internet  and  other countries, all around the
world.

NSFNET's phenomenal growth in 1989 was, evidently,  just a prelude for the data
deluge that is now in full  flood.  Traffic more than doubled between September
1989 and September 1990. It is  projected  to  double again this year. It won't
take too long to exhaust even those T-3 lines that carry 800+ times the data of
the pre-1987 lines.

That's where the NREN proposal comes in.  As  proposed by the Coalition for the
National Research  and  Education  Network  and  championed  by  Senator  Gore,
Congress would authorize the network and  provide  $400 million over five years
to put it  in  place.  The  universities  and  research  centers  would pay the
additional costs for the local area  networks that would connect their scholars
to the network.

When completed in 1995 the network would  have a 3-gigabit backbone - 3 billion
bits per second, a 66-fold increase  over  the  current T-3 capacity, a 50,000-
fold increase over the old ARPA  lines.  That's  about 300 million times faster
than the clattering state-of-the-art teletypes I used at the Associated Press a
quarter-century ago.

                                  ___________


                    From CAT Scans to Instant Encyclopedias

What can you do with 3 billion bits per second? The NREN Coalition likens it to
sending 100 three-dimensional x-rays and CAT  scans every second for 100 cancer
patients, or sending 1,000  satellite  photographs to researchers investigating
agricultural  productivity,  environmental  pollution  or  weather  prediction.
Reduced to just words, it would be  100,000  typed  pages per second, or as the
Coalition dangles tantalizingly before us, "making  it possible to transmit the
entire Encyclopedia Brittanica in a second...."

Now before you begin salivating at  the  thought  of every book, every magazine
article available instantaneously at your  slightest  whim,  here's the rub: as
currently designed, NREN's 3-gigabit data lines aren't coming to your house, or
your kids' school, even your local library.  NREN will connect only the largest
research universities and consortia, at least  one  in every state. From there,
lower-speed regional networks would connect  nearby institutions. At the bottom
of NREN's proposed three-tier system would be local campus networks. There's no
plan or provision for K-12 schools or local libraries in the NREN proposal.

One doesn't need the vast capacity of  NREN to exchange simple electronic mail.
There are  many  alternative,  if  slower,  networks  available.  Using  super-
sophisticated NREN for such mundane tasks might  be  like trying to get a drink
out of a fire hose. And  it's  problematic  whether local schools and libraries
would be able to pay  for  the  equipment  needed  to  exchange items much more
complex than  simple  electronic  mail.  There's  the  potential  here  for the
creation of information  haves  and  information  have-nots.  As Apple Computer
librarian Steve Cisler puts it, "If  this  is  going to be a data superhighway,
how would you like to  have  to  go  to  a  computer company, military base, or
university to find an onramp?"

Dave Hughes, a Colorado telecommunications pioneer,  takes a more cautious view
of the slimmed-down NREN  that  Gore  and  others  are  trying  to push through
Congress. An ex-Army  colonel  and  former  aide  to  Defense  Secretary Robert
McNamara, Hughes  believes  that  NREN's  plan,  with  local  schools  not even
mentioned, could perpetuate educational  elitism,  where the already-prosperous
research universities get additional  taxpayer-paid  subsidized service and the
already-poor local schools get short shrift.

Which doesn't mean that  Dave  Hughes  doesn't  want  to  see a high-speed data
network. To the  contrary,  he  wants  it  to  reach  every  corner of America,
terminating in at least each of the  16,000 local school districts. Such as the
114 one-room school houses  in  Montana  which  he  and  Frank Odasz of Western
Montana College have managed to connect up,  after a fashion, through their Big
Sky Telegraph system, and and from there out to the rest of the world. And over
which a theoretical physicist from MIT has been able to teach a course in chaos
theory mathematics to students in these schools - which the physicist cannot do
through the Internet workstation on his MIT desk, Hughes says. Hughes and Odasz
already have created a grassroots online  culture in the wide-open spaces where
physical isolation reinforces the lack of  ready  access to national sources of
information.

Hughes wants either to flatten  NREN's  three  tiers  of  service into a single
tier, or have guarantees of affordable  access and compatible protocols between
the three tiers to and from every educational/political subdivision in America.
From observing online behavior  nationally  for  the  past  11 years, he thinks
talent will find its own level on the  network, and that those with neither the
talent or motivation will  be  satisfied  with  local bulletin-boards and video
games. He believes all schools in the  country  should have the right of access
under the law, including either affordable rates, or appropriate subsidies down
to the local level.

"The implicit assumptions behind the NREN  proposal," Hughes says, "are that it
will only link large research (which also  may be 'educational' in the sense of
higher education) institutions. As currently conceived  NREN will NOT extend to
the 16,000 K-12 school districts in America,  much  less foster the vision of a
nation of people learning  all  their  lives  by mixing institutional (edifice-
centered) education and training, and  learning,  formally and informally, from
home, library, place of business or study.

"So the metaphor of the need  for  'Highways  of  the Mind' across this land is
very deceptive. It really could  turn  out  to  mean  'Super Toll Roads between
Castles.' That is not my vision of a Network Nation."

                                  ___________


                              The Network Nation

What would a real Network  Nation  be like? Conservative theorist/author George
Gilder, like  Hughes,  foresees  a  renaissance  in  education  caused  by  the
"telecomputer": the merger of fiber optic telephone service to the home and new
ultra-powerful multimedia computers.

"The telecomputer  could  revitalize  public  education  by  bringing  the best
teachers  in  the  country  to   classrooms  everywhere,"  Gilder  says.  "More
important, the telecomputer could encourage  competition  because it could make
home  schooling  both  feasible  and   attractive.   To  learn  social  skills,
neighborhood children could gather in micro-schools run by parents, churches or
other local  institutions.  The  competition  of  home  schooling  would either
destroy the public school system or  force  it to become competitive with rival
systems..."

High-speed data communications to the  home  might also revolutionize where and
how we live. Data communications  could  allow rural tele-commuting, ending two
centuries of "brain drain" from the countryside to the cities.

Gilder says, "Every morning millions  of  commuters  across America sit in cars
inching their way toward cluttered, polluted and crime-ridden cities," he says.

"Or they sit in dilapidated trains  rattling  toward office towers that survive
as business centers chiefly  because  of  their  superior  access to the global
network of computers and telecommunications.  With  telecomputers in every home
attached to global fiber network,  why  would  anyone  commute? People would be
able to see the boss life-size  in  high-definition  video and meet with him as
easily at home as  at  the  office.  They  would  be  able  to reach with equal
immediacy the head of the foreign subsidiary  or the marketing chief across the
country. They would be able to send and receive documents almost instantly from
anywhere."

                                  ___________


                              Who Pays the Bill?

Whether it's the $400 million Gore's NREN bill calls for or the untold billions
required for fiber optics to the home, high-speed data communications will cost
a bundle and the major political battle is over who will pay.

For Gilder and for many of us  who  hope to benefit from fiber-to-the home, the
answer is clear: let the local telephone companies install fiber to every home,
amortize the cost and add it to our monthly telephone bills.

To consumer groups and many  state  public  utilities commissions that reeks of
reverse Robin Hood-ism: stealing from  the  poor,  retired  and elderly who may
never be able to  utilize  the  capabilities  of  the  new  system  in order to
subsidize the  corporations,  universities  and  a  well-educated  few. Indeed,
that's already underway. Much of the  U.S.  telephone system, especially in the
central cities and along corporate "data  corridors" has already been converted
to fiber optic service and the costs rolled into the local telephone rate.

Another option: last September IBM  and  MCI,  who already operate NSFNET under
contract, proposed to build a  "private  Internet"  backbone that would require
less governmental  funding,  but  would  involve  user  fees.  Advanced Network
Services, the IBM/MCI non-profit  joint  venture,  would  build and operate the
network.

The benefit, as IBM exec  Allan  H.  Weis, president/chief executive officer of
ANS puts it, is ""Because we  are  broadening  the community of those using the
network,  the  fixed  costs  of   national   networking  will  be  more  widely
distributed.  This will free up funds  which  could then be allocated to assist
the neediest organizations to connect to  the  national  network, as well as to
continue to support and enable the  national  network to remain in the vanguard
of new technology."

That doesn't sit well with Dave  Hughes.  "With this Administration, the budget
crunch, and general ignorance of the implications, I'm afraid that the decision
makers  - including Congress  -  will  welcome  'private  enterprise' with open
arms. And overlook such minor details as 'equal access.' No, it will be 'if you
got the bucks you can buy it.'  Kiss  off  the  idea that all K-12 schools will
have 'educational' access."

Mitch Kapor, the  co-founder  of  Lotus  Computing  and  the  president  of the
Electronic Frontier Foundation, also believes that universal access should be a
central tenet of any national network policy.

"Whatever infrastructure we create," Kapor  says,  "should incorporate a notion
of 'universal digital service', much  as AT&T pioneered, and which later became
national policy, with respect to  voice  telephony  in  the early 20th century.
Everyone should be able to connect to the net."

Hughes and Kapor approach  the  NREN  controversy  from substantially different
perspectives. Hughes is suspicious of  turning the nation's infrastructure over
to the agendas of private enterprise.

As Hughes terms it,  "I  am  concerned  about  the U.S. mind-set which, without
thinking, says that the 'private  sector'  should provide telecommunications in
the U.S. simply because that is the way  it  always has been, while in a couple
other key areas - sewage, highways, and education - that is not the case.

"If we believe so mightily that our national  future is very much wrapped up in
computing and telecommunications - and that especially 'research and education'
are going to have to be improved mightily for  us to compete - then we ought to
be thinking a lot  more  carefully  than  we  are  now  about  which portion of
telecommunications should be government provided/subsidized/regulated and which
portion pure profit-and-loss commercial."

Kapor, one of the country's most respected entrepreneurs, suggests that one way
to satisfy both Big Scientists  and  Universalists  is  to have, in effect, two
networks, achieved by "overlaying"  lower-bandwidth  networks onto an NREN-like
backbone.

"These high-end and low-end visions of the NREN are strikingly different. There
is no assurance that one size  network  fits  all. Some important public policy
choices will therefore be made, one way or the other," he says.

While he lauds the IBM/MCI/ANS group  for  its donations of millions of dollars
to NSFNET computing,  Kapor  is  concerned  that  ANS  policies  may become, by
default, national polices concerning telecommunications  without the benefit of
public debate. ANS, he  says,  is  already  establishing policies for measuring
network traffic, billing and  accounting,  and  setting  access charges for new
information entrepreneurs, all  without  the  normal  hearing  and rule-setting
process required of public utilities.

"What ANS does in the  way  of  setting  up   commercial access to the national
information infrastructure may well become,  in effect, national policy," Kapor
says. "But there is no guarantee of public accountability.

"We are dependent on the continued good will of ANS in setting its policies. We
don't know, for instance, whether  the  technology  for counting traffic on the
net  that  ANS  develops  will   be   as   enabling  for  would-be  information
entrepreneurs as it will for  big  corporate  information providers. Without an
open public process for  getting  input  in  the  development  of  the net, the
resulting choices are less likely to be in the public interest."

Kapor also sees that a purely private  enterprise  such as ANS may not be fully
in consonance  with  the  goals  of  Electronic  Frontier  Foundation's  goals,
including  First Amendment  guarantees  for  electronic  speech  and guaranteed
access to communications services at fair prices.

EFF's recent newsletter noted that  Prodigy, a national computer communications
system half owned by IBM, has been  embroiled in disputes because of its policy
of reading and censoring postings made to Prodigy's public forums.

"I believe it's important  to  establish  the  legal  principle that businesses
which offer a network service which is  principally  that of a conduit - moving
bits from here to there - may not  restrict the content of the information they
carry. The ability to restrict content,  whether conducted by the government in
the form of censorship, or by  a  private  carrier for whatever reason,  is not
conducive to the free and open flow of information," he says.

                                  ___________


                             So What' the Answer?

Now let's play Chinese menu, taking a  few items from column A (Gore's NREN/Big
Scientists bill) and column B (the Universalists approach).

A workable national network might include the following features:

=>  Built and managed by private enterprise

=>  Federal  start-up  subsidies  for  colleges,  universities,  libraries  and
    schools

=>  First Amendment free speech guarantees

=>  Guaranteed interconnection to  other  data  services  offered  by telephone
    companies and other locally regulated businesses

=>  Guaranteed universal digital access for everyone who wants to connect

=>  Fair rates and policies subject to regulatory review

In short, we'd have a regulated  public  utility: precisely the system that the
U.S. used over the past century to develop the best  -  and cheapest  -  public
telephone system in the world.

The problem, as usual,  is  in  how  one  defines  the  purpose of the national
network. Laura Breeden, a network group  manager  at Bolt Beranek and Newman (a
private research and development company that  was  one of the original ARPAnet
contractors), frames the issues this way:

"If you think of data networking as  a  public utility, then it seems important
to regulate it in some of  the  same  ways  that other utilities are regulated,
i.e. to make  sure  that  basic  services  are  provided  to  everyone  and not
withdrawn unreasonably.

"If  you  think  of  it  as   a  strategic  resource,  important  for  insuring
U.S.competitiveness and technological progress, then you put it where it can do
the most good strategically .

"If you believe that it is important to education generally, then you put it at
as many schools as possible.

"If you think data networking is some of  all of these, you have to balance the
trade-offs among them."

The National Network is a complex  issue.  It's  safe  to say only a handful of
representatives understand the  issue  in  depth.  A  letter  from  you to your
elected representatives asking  for  reasonable  rates,  guaranteed free speech
rights and access for local schools,  libraries  and  homes might make a lot of
difference.

                                 ____________

For more information concerning NREN, consult the following sources:

The WELL, Whole Earth's computer conferencing system, has extensive coverage of
NREN/Internet issues  the  Info,  Telecommunications  and  Electronic  Frontier
Foundation conferences. Call 415/332-4335  (voice)  or 415/332-6106 (modem) for
more information on how to  join  the  WELL.  On  the  WELL you will find: Dave
Hughes (dave@well.sf.ca.us),  Steve  Cisler  (sac@well.sf.ca.us),  Tom  Valovic
(tvacorn@well.sf.ca.us), Mitch Kapor (mkapor@well.sf.ca.us), and Roger Karraker
(roger@well.sf.ca.us)

Mike Nelson, Senate Commerce  Committee,  U.S.  Capitol,  Washington, DC 20510;
202/224-9360.

Sen. Albert Gore, U.S.  Senate,  Washington,  DC  20510  (Gore's office, or the
Senate Commerce Committee, can send you  a  copy of Gore's article, "Networking
the Future," published in the July  15,  1990 Outlook section of the Washington
Post .

Coalition for the National Research  and  Education Network: Mike Roberts, Vice
President/Networking, EDUCOM, 1112 16th Street  NW, #600, Washington, DC 20036;
roberts@educom.edu

Research  &  Education  Networking  ,   a  commercial  publication  devoted  to
developments related to NREN, is published nine  times a year. Volume I, Number
1 is eight pages long.  Institutional  rate  is  $59 annually; personal rate is
$39. Available from Meckler, 11 Ferry  Lane  West, Westport, CT 06880; 203/226-
6967; Fax 203/454-5840

This   version   of   this   document    was   prepared   by   Matisse   Enzer,
matisse@well.sf.ca.us; 415/647-4324  This version  was  prepared  by taking the
ASCII version of Roger Karraker's original  submittal to Whole Earth Review and
manually bringing it into line with the  published version.  Any errors in that
process are the sole responsibility of myself, Matisse Enzer.


