In the end, as I see it, the real solution is a TeleRead-style program of the kind described in the previous chapter. It would connect the students to the nets from home, reduce the future communications costs of the schools somewhat, and allow students to explore computer networks at leisure rather than just during the school day. A few small steps are already being taken in this general direction. The state of Maryland has granted limited—but free—Internet privileges to school children and other residents. Without leaving home, they can dial up material ranging from weather reports, to academic papers, to Shakespearean poetry. Joseph Peightel, a cable splicer with Bell Atlantic, says that the Sailor program is just the ticket for his ten-year-old daughter, whose hunger for books outstrips the family budget. While the Peightels can’t retrieve the latest best-sellers, they at least can enjoy Project Gutenberg-style material in the public domain. The Maryland program helping the Peightels is not TeleRead, and it comes with problems and inefficiencies, but it may be as close as any state effort to the nirvana envisioned by Al Gore, in which all children could dial up the Library of Congress.
Needless to say, I bristle when Cliff Stoll glosses over the reasons why the Net can’t provide easy answers to questions such as “What political compromises caused Bismarck to become the capital of North Dakota?” or “Why isn’t Kyoto the capital of today’s Japan?” or “What’s the history of the Ruhr Valley, and what are the implications of its new Eastern European competition?” Of course. Worried about piracy, publishers have understandably kept their textbooks off the Net. The last laugh, however, just may be on the more zealous of the copyright interests. Right now Stoll couldn’t be more correct about the need for more and better books on the Net; but as shown by, say, MendelWeb, the academic community is doing plenty on its own. And if this keeps up, the demand for copyrighted, commercial books, the kind that feed me, my editors, and yes, my publishers, too, could suffer. Far better to have a national digital library with privately originated books available from the very start.
Ahead I’ll examine more closely some scientific and educational uses of the Net. Selections—yes, the print kind, not the Jernigan variety—will appear on:
• The “hows,” the positives, and the negatives of the Visible Human Project—it stands out for reasons beyond the drama. The Clinton administration has encouraged high-bandwidth, scientific users of the Net. The original Visible Man requires sixteen gigabytes of storage—enough space to hold fifty Encyclopaedia Britannicas. Some say this isn’t the best use of Net resources. I disagree, however, and I’ll tell why. Along the way I’ll pass on information about the Internet’s Visible Man before he became so visible.
• High school use of the Internet. The United States is hardly the only nation with thousands of children in cyberspace—countries ranging from Canada to Singapore are putting students online, directly or indirectly. Significantly, computers and networks can help students outside the elite. Some proof of this comes from Nova Scotia, where, for several years, a high school has been using the Internet to benefit some “at-risk” students. I’ll tell you about the Internet success that a Canadian teacher named Jeff Doran has enjoyed with leather-jacketed teenagers. Many are racing into the computer lab and, let’s hope, away from fates such as Paul Jernigan’s. The Internet project at Park View Education Centre is far from an unqualified triumph—many Park View teachers still fear the technology—but patterns there suggest a vast potential for educational uses of the Net if schools will modernize their curricula.
The Visible Man
The doctor, a Scottish-accented man in his fifties or sixties, had collected a wall full of diplomas and plaques. Perhaps that’s why he felt entitled to give only the sketchiest of explanations when he told a Midwestern friend of mine that she might need heart surgery to avoid a possible stroke. Karen* would be in the hospital just a day or so. But during this time a surgeon would insert a catheter up her groin and go on to kill off selected heart cells. With luck, the operation would end her atrial fibrillation. It had made her heart throb as quickly as 200 beats a minute on occasion and had sent her to the emergency room.
Karen pressed for details about the recommended operation. “Ma’am,” Dr. S. said in a peremptory burr, “this is too technical.”
It was Valentine’s Day and Karen and her husband would rather have been thinking about hearts in that way alone. But she wanted to know all. “Ma’am, I’ll draw you a picture,” Dr. S. said a bit grudgingly. The doctor sketched a crude heart that might as well have been on a greeting card. Hastily drawn lines showed how electric impulses were traveling through Karen’s heart with an extra path. The operation would cut off the surplus wiring, so to speak.
Well, this was a start. But Karen still felt ignorant, and it was her body into which the catheter would go. And so it is with many patients, not all, but many. Even good doctors don’t always tell enough.