Topic 26: De Facto Washington Policy By: Dave Hughes (dave) on Sat, Jul 24, '93 1 responses so far When Dr Branscome disagreed with me this morning when I contended that the de-facto Washington policy was to let the private sector build the NII using 'interactive entertainment' as the main value, I said I would put into the Telluride conference the report on a very recent appearance by a lot of Washington notables, including the Vice President and Congressmen where this point was explicitly made. Read it and weep. 1 response total. Topic 26: De Facto Washington Policy # 1: Dave Hughes (dave) Sat, Jul 24, '93 (23:08) 367 lines >From: Paul Evan Peters Subject: VP Gore attends "NII and Democracy" conference at Library of Congress To: cni-announce Date: Mon, 19 Jul 93 0:03:35 EDT Dear cni-announce subscribers: Attached are some of my notes on key moments during the "Delivering Electronic Information in a Knowledge-Based Democracy" conference that VP Gore attended at the Library of Congress last Wednesday July 14. The July 21 issue of the _Chronicle of Higher Education_ also carries an article on this conference, starting on page A17. This seemed like something about which you would like to have some in- formation sooner rather than later. Best. Paul Evan Peters Executive Director Coalition for Networked Information 21 Dupont Circle Washington, DC 20036 Voice: 202-286-5098 Fax: 202-872-0884 Internet: paul@cni.org DELIVERY ELECTRONIC INFORMATION IN A KNOWLEDGE-BASED DEMOCRACY July 14, 1993 Mumford Room, Madison Building, Library of Congress Al Gore, Honorary Chair, Vice President James H. Billington, Chair, The Librarian of Congress See last section for list of attendees. PREFACE The following notes on the subject conference were prepared by Paul Evan Peters, Executive Director, Coalition for Networked Information, to quickly convey some sense of the conference to subscribers to the cni- announce Internet distribution service and to other interested and concerned parties. These notes provide a very partial account of the subject conference, as they cover only those remarks made by the various political figures who addressed the conference and those made by Dr. Billington. The Library of Congress is preparing a summary of the proceedings of the conference and plans to disseminate it widely, including via the Internet. These notes are also rather "telegraphic" in the sense that they frequently take the form of phrases rather than complete sentences. INTRODUCTION [Note: The following appeared as the first paragraph of the _Conference Goals and Themes_ document which was distributed just before (July 8) the conference.] This conference brings together key participants from industry and government, as well as the academic, library, and user communities to help shape the policy framework essential to creating an advanced information infrastructure. The results will contribute to the efforts currently underway in Congress to foster development of a National Research and Education Network and in the Administration to design its National Information Infrastructure initiatives. The goal of this conference is to examine critical public policy issues central to the development of electronic information resources that will be distributed over the emerging digital "highways". The conference is organized around three themes that are vital to creating a robust and diverse array of electronic information resources. o Building, locating, and preserving the electronic store of knowledge; o Public and private sector roles; and o mechanisms for safeguarding intellectual property rights. VICE PRESIDENT AL GORE You are the right people at the Right time in the right place. Consider how rapidly information technology has been progressing; if the same rate of growth had occurred in the automobile industry, we would now have cars that emit no pollutants and get 500 miles to the gallon of gasoline ... but would be one millimeter in length. :-) We need a compelling vision that is true to practical realities. We need to avoid insurmountable opportunities. The information superhighway is a key component of the National Information Infrastructure (NII) program. We need to think in terms of raw data being processed into information being distilled into knowledge being fermented into wisdom. We are awash in raw data at precisely the time we are painfully short of wisdom. We have used technology to turbo-charge information generation; now we need to achieve similar gains as regards knowledge and wisdom. The metaphor of the "digital library" is as compelling as that of the information superhighway. It is the second key component of the NII program. How to establish consensus in a time of change? When radio stations started to broadcast music it threatened the interest of musicians; we solved that problem and we will solve this one. The High Performance Computing and Communications Program is one response. The Information Infrastructure Task Force (IITF) that John Gibbons is helping to organize is another. A third is the recently issued Circular A-130 which offers guidance to many agencies that have been slow to move for lack of a clear policy framework. Respective roles of public and private sector. Building of interstate highway system stimulated the building of more miles of other highways that the interstate highway system itself contained. Government has a key role in vision, standards, and inter-connecting structures (backbones). Entertainment and other consumer spending will drive the building of the last mile, but policy should not be contorted by this short-term reality. We need to formulate policy for the long-term, like libraries do. Next step of the NII program is to focus on schools and libraries. This is the point of the new program being mounted by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration. This is our goal. This is what we are working on. The IITF will coordinate. There is something American about the NII program concept. It is consistent with our historical quest for an ever more perfect representative democracy. SENATOR ROBERT KERRY Content will drive the character of the network. We need a system of home-based learning that leads to degrees and certificates. We need to help people make their own decisions about their health. The technological capabilities of the intelligence community, NASA, and other science and security agencies will soon be available to the Nation as a whole. Partnerships between government and industry will be the key to making progress. States have the responsibility for educating the youth. Home schooling preceded the institution of the school. Children should arrive at school ready to learn. Distance education needs to serve citizens both before and after their school years. Although ideas about "national digital libraries" have merit, we need a state-based strategy. In Nebraska all we have needed to do is to ask the TELCOs to do the right thing. We face a regulatory morass. The TELCOs are just beginning to perceive the market. All learning need not be home-based, but were we to build the public education system today we would build it quite differently. REPRESENTATIVE NEWT GINGRICH Vision, strategies, projects, and tactics are the four levels on which we should be working. Vision is a problem. Science and defense was the first wave. Second wave was doing better things that we were already doing. The next wave will trigger more fundamental change. What should the government enable, not provide? We need to think in terms of a 20 year timeframe. By 2010 we need a home-based educational system that blows apart existing professional guilds and bureaucratic structures. We need to sell this vision to the public. We need to hook America on this dream. Let's get going. Let's establish "information empowerment zones" in, say, nine areas around the country with, say, 6,000 people per zone. REPRESENTATIVE EDMUND MARKEY Only seven representatives were interested in membership on the House Telecommunications Subcommittee twenty years ago; now we have had to cap the membership at twenty-five. The good news is that everyone in Congress supports the NII program; the bad news is that no one in Congress knows what it is!? Who should benefit from it? Who will build it? How will privacy be protected in it? We are moving from Plain Old Telephone Services (POTS) to Plain Old Digital Service (PODS). We have just transferred 200 MHz to the private sector; this is four times more bandwidth than we transferred when we created cellular service. Our goals should be two wires carrying competing services plus a satellite delivery system. Universal service needs to be redefined. And privacy goals need to be updated. DR. JAMES BILLINGTON Libraries will supply cargo for the NII. But the situation of the Library of Congress can be compared to the slow and unrecognized decline that doomed the Alexandrian Library. We need to figure out how to fund the conversion of noncommercial, non-entertainment information resources ... how to fund public sector digitization. We also need to determine the proper roles of the public and private sectors. Finally, we must avoid creating a society of information haves and have-nots. FURTHER INFORMATION Further information about these notes and the subject conference can be obtained by contacting: Paul Evan Peters Executive Director Coalition for Networked Information 21 Dupont Circle Washington, DC 20036 Voice: 202-286-5098 Fax: 202-872-0884 Internet: paul@cni.org ATTENDEES Paul A. Allaire Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer Xerox Corporation William Y. Arms Vice President for Computing Services Carnegie-Mellon University Jerry Berman Executive Director Electronic Frontier Foundation Timothy A. Boggs Senior Vice President for Public Policy Time Warner Inc. John F. Cooke President The Disney Channel Jack Dangermond President and Chief Executive Officer Environmental Systems Research Institute Michael S. DiMario Acting Public Printer U.S. Government Printing Office Joseph Dionne President, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer McGraw-Hill Publishing Company Kenneth Dowlin Librarian San Francisco Public Library Charles R. Ellis President and Chief Executive Officer John Wiley and Sons John Gage Director, Science Office Sun Microsystems John H. Gibbons Director Office of Science and Technology Policy Executive Office of the President John S. Hendricks Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Discovery Communications, Inc. James Hoover Professor of Law and Director of the Law Library Columbia University Joseph Howard Director National Agricultural Library Karen A. Hunter Vice President and Assistant to the Chairman Elsevier Science Publishers Larry Irving Assistant Secretary National Telecommunications and Information Administration U.S. Department of Commerce Donald G. Jones President Star Cablevision Group Glenn R. Jones Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Jones Intercable Robert Kahn President Corporation for National Research Initiatives Sally Katzen Administrator Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs Office of Management and Budget William H. Kling President Minnesota Public Radio Madeline Kunin Deputy Secretary U.S. Department of Education Bruce Lehman Commissioner-Designate U.S. Patent and Trademark Office Michael Liebhold Senior Scientist, Media Architecture Research Advanced Technology Group Apple Computer, Inc. Peter Lyman Dean, University Libraries University of Southern California Clifford A. Lynch Director, Division of Library Automation Office of the President University of California M. Stuart Lynn Vice President for Information Technologies Cornell University Charles McClure Professor, School of Information Studies Syracuse University James Michalko President Research Libraries Group, Inc. Emily R. Mobley Dean of Libraries Purdue University Michael North President North Communications David Penniman President Council on Library Resources, Inc. Paul Evan Peters Executive Director Coalition for Networked Information Trudy Huskamp Peterson Acting Archivist of the United States National Archives and Records Administration Larry Smarr Director National Center for Supercomputing Applications Joshua I. Smith Chairman and Chief Executive Officer MAXIMA Corporation K. Wayne Smith Chief Executive Officer OCLC, Inc. Raymond W. Smith Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Bell Atlantic Corporation Al Teller Chairman MCA Music Entertainment Group Robert Wedgeworth Interim University Librarian University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana .