Volume 5 ---CONTENTS--- Summer 1989


1 Masthead and Index

2 ENA UPDATE
by Lisa Kimball

3 Using E-Mail in the Classroom
by Jason Ohler


4-6 The Transformative Vision of Dave Hughes:
An Interview by Gordon Cook in 3 Parts
by Gordon Cook

7 Everything Is Related: From Looms to Computers
by Philip Siddons

8 A Vision of Networking Systems of the Future
by Mike Blaszczak

9 Time Management: Or how to control your destiny in four easy steps
by Philip Siddons

10 The Matrix: Computer Networks and Conferencing Systems Worldwide
A Review by Steve Cisler

ENA Update
by Lisa Kimball

I hope SOME of you have noticed that we missed a few issues of NETWEAVER. The press of Networking Forum '89 in Japan and our annual ENA f-t-f conference in May created a bit of overload.

However, this month we're *back* - with an extra "thick" issue for you.

During our f-t-f conference in Allentown, PA in May, we identified a number of key jobs we need help with in order to continue to use NETWEAVER as one of our primary means of disseminating information and ideas about what we're doing with the networking community. If you'd like to become part of the NETWEAVER "staff" - please contact us soon! Here's a partial list of our needs (and feel free to add a new idea you're willing to pursue):

1. authors - we need articles about networking applications,
theory, and related issues. We prefer articles from 5-10k.

2. editors - we need people willing to edit other people's
articles.

3. "stringers" - we need people to scout out good stuff which
appears online, get permission from the author for us to
publish it, and format it appropriately for our use.

4. porters - there are a number of networks which aren't getting
NETWEAVER because we don't have anyone porting it there. If
we're not appearing on your favorite network - be a porter!

5. usenet newsgroup/mailing list - we'd like to have NETWEAVER
available via the internet. We need someone to take on the
task of making that happen.

6. NETWEAVER on disk - we have an offer from Jim Button to
distribute NETWEAVER on disk via Buttonware. We need someone
to be the liaison and provide copies of NETWEAVER on disk.

7. ENA Journal - We'd like to begin publishing a quarterly
electronic journal which would be a better format for our
longer articles. We need a group willing to help put that
together.

8. Printed Highlights - We'd like to make excerpts or highlights
of NETWEAVER available in print so we can use it to attract
people who are not yet online.

9. Network Liaison - We would like to develop our relationship
with as many networks as possible in order to: get free or
discounted accounts for our porters, get networks to promote
NETWEAVER and ENA to their users, and get more material from
a wider range of networks. We need people willing to take
lead to initiate conversations with key folks on their
network.

If you'd like to join the NETWEAVER team to work on any of these tasks - or on your additional ideas - please contact me through your porter or at (703) 243-6622. E-mail: lisa@tmn.uu.net

Using E-Mail in the Classroom
by Jason Ohler


OVERVIEW
========

I have used, or assisted other teachers (most of whom are K-12 teachers), in using email with kids in a number of ways, including:

-As a literacy builder.

-As a cross-cultural exchange medium.

-As a way for foreign language students to communicate with other kids
in their target language.

-To develop online newspapers.

-To connect kids to resources (such as people and information sources) outside their immediate vicinity.

-To practice certain kinds of cooperative learning.

TEACHER AND ADMINISTRATOR IDEAS
===============================

As part of an electronic mail course I teach (online of course), students (most of whom are K-12 teachers or administrators) are asked to brainstorm ways to use electronic mail as educators. Many of the ideas have been fresh and exciting, such as:

-School counselors wanted to use email to contact other
counselors in the state for insight and information in dealing
with particular student problems, especially as they related to
counseling in remote areas.

-State education officials saw immediate use for it as a
tool to keep in closer contact with central office staff, key
advisory groups, legislators. They saw email shortening the lag
time between requesting and receiving information they needed in
order to make statewide policy decisions.

-Math teachers had creative ideas for the use of email,
like the creation of "Challenge Math," a contest which would
post math problems and collect answers via electronic mail. As a
result of the email course, the head of the statewide math
consortium used email to send out audio conference agenda and
gather input from members.

-Special Education teachers envisioned using email with
the deaf, cerebral palsy victims, and people with other
handicaps to reduce their isolation and put them in better
contact with special educational resources. They also saw it as
a promising administrative tool to be used to coordinate special
ed. efforts within districts, and to exchange critical medical
data with medical institutions much more efficiently.

-Librarians cited a number of reasons to use email,
among them, to expand "our pitifully small library," to
significantly reduce the time and paper work needed in
inter-library loans, and to reduce the number of times
librarians in a district need to meet face-to-face to exchange
information. My first job as a telecommunications teacher was to
train all of Juneau-Douglas school district's librarians to go
online for just these purposes. When I last checked, they were
still active emailers and extremely appreciative of the time,
energy, and busy work that email spared them.

-Bush teachers wanting to take summer school recency
courses saw using email as a way to obtain guidance from
university teachers about course offerings to better enable them
to plan their summers. Many remote teachers noted that email
could also be used to help compensate for the communication lost
due to the severe travel restrictions caused by falling state
revenues. Some commented that as a communication system for
those trying to reach them from outside the school (like
parents), it was preferable to phoning, which often interrupted
their day. One teacher suggested creating an occupation bulletin
board to help students understand the employment opportunities
beyond their own communities.

-Writing teachers had a number of ideas for the use of
email, such as the creation of a creative writing bulletin board
through which students could share poetry, fiction, and essays
on an informal basis, as well as in a contest atmosphere. In
addition, some wanted to pursue 'cultural awareness' by having
students email with other students around the state in order to
compare and contrast their communities and environments. One
suggested a writing project in which students create character
sketches of email partners they had never seen in order to
determine how much of one's personality could be revealed via
electronic mail.

-Science teachers saw joint statewide projects, such as
animal migration tracking and weather data collection. One
suggested starting a weather forecasting service for the state
based upon student efforts.

-Some teachers saw email as a tool to improve
communications within their school. One commented that while
individual attention was an impossibility because of class size
and diversity, email might be effective for reaching some
students because it adapted to the teacher's schedule. Another
saw it as a means for the distribution of lunch menus, quizzes
and legitimate note passing for students, as well as way to
reduce the amount of paper memos for staff.

TEACHER CONCERNS AND RECOMMENDATIONS
====================================

At the conclusion of a recent email project which connected about 80 remote kids in Alaska to a master teacher in Juneau, the kids' teachers were asked for their frank opinions about using email. They made four major points.

Using electronic mail:

1) requires more learning time than they had during the
pilot in order to feel comfortable with its regular, classroom
use. But given the time (perhaps a semester just to play with
it) they could become comfortable.

2) is technically frustrating, either due to bad phone
connections, lack of phone lines, or unsympathetic
administrations, but could be a sound educational tool if the
technical hurdles were overcome.

3) turned kids on to learning, helped support their
curricula, and offered a fresh dimension to classroom
activities- when it was available and when it was working, which
unfortunately for some of them, was infrequently. And,

4) helped kids communicate better, not just via email,
but face-to-face as well. This was an unexpected and frequently
cited phenomenon.

Over and over we heard teachers complain that administrators just "didn't get what all of this online business was about." Thus, teachers' pleas for their own phone lines, a $100 modem, etc., often went unaddressed.

MY CONCLUSION
=============

For some, telecommunications is no doubt just the latest gimmick in the educational technology rally of the last decade which they grudgingly explore 'because it is here.' But others understand it as a way to meet some of the emerging needs of the information age learner, such as the need to:

1. Experience new learning dynamics. Many online computer conferencing projects use electronic networking to practice cooperative learning, resource sharing, and other untraditional methods of interaction which may seem out of place in the typical school but in step with the new methods of living and working which we are warned are the hallmarks of the highly successful Japanese style of management. Cooperative learning does not just occur among students. Indeed, one of the most profound changes that classroom telecommunications encourages is a change in the role of the teacher, from primary information source to guide and coach.

2. Learn in a more global context. A number of online computer conferencing projects take advantage of the fact that they are tied together by a global phone network. Besides those already mentioned, others are worth noting. Kids Network run by National Geographic offers children a chance to track international environmental problems across political boundaries MIX maintains a number of projects with a global or at least international flavor, such as tracking bird migrations over North America, and stimulating communication (electronically and face-to-face) between students in the Soviet Union and the U.S. The list of such projects is long and growing.

Offering a global, less provincial point of view reflects the fact that the world which students of today will inherit is in many ways the global village that was observed decades ago by McLuhan, in which xenophobia is dysfunctional and cross-cultural communication must be a way of life. It is interesting to note that high risk-learners, often with overwhelming personal problems and fixated on their immediate condition, can particularly benefit from a perspective which lifts them out of their own emotional 'muck' and places their lives in a much larger perspective.

3. Learn information economy skills. A telecommunications curriculum for middle and high school students (some would suggest for lower grades as well) might include online searching of data bases, creating and maintaining a discussion group online, and working cooperatively with students from across the country or the world on a joint project. This is not just fun. This is the very stuff of the evolving work place. If nothing else, learning via technology establishes a comfort level with a work environment that students will find upon leaving school.

Not only should students expect to work in such an environment, but they should expect to continue to learn in one as well. Many service industries (such as the health and engineering professions) and corporations need to frequently re-train a geographically dispersed work force due to rapid advances in information, techniques, and technologies in their fields. Focused telecommunications delivery systems are already commonly used for such purposes.

4. Improve communication under certain conditions. This is one of distance education's greatest contributions to 'local' education, the use of improved communication (usually via FAX, electronic mail, phone) to connect teacher and student who exist in a more or less distance learning environment due to scheduling (meeting once a week or two weeks) or the fact that a teacher or student is hard to get hold of for a number of reasons (on the road, conducting research, ensconced in a library heeding the publish or perish imperative).

OTHER ONLINE SERVICES FOR KIDS
==============================

[note: from "What's Online for Educators?" by Jason Ohler
Copyright : 1989, with one time rights assigned to Electronic
Learning Magazine for article publication]

One of the most exciting developments to accompany the growth of distance education has been the rapid evolution of online computer networks, projects, and services. What follows are summaries of some of the more popular activities in this area that are geared for educators.

Service: National Geographic Kids Network
Description: A hands-on science curriculum for grades 4-6 also
involving geography and social studies subject areas. It uses
electronic mail to connect teachers, kids, experts into research
groups from around the US and other countries, for the purpose
of comparing data, sharing expertise, and preparing joint
reports. Activities focus on environmental topics like water
quality and acid rain. Contact: Dorothy Perreca, Project
Manager, National Geographic Kids Network, National Geographic,
Washington, DC 20036. Phone: 202-775-6580.

Service: FrEdMail (Free Education Mail).
Description: A low cost, teacher-created, grass roots network of
90 bulletin boards across the US (with one in Canada) which
share information. Each bulletin board within the network is
used as local bulletin board while also contributing to the
national network's two main conference groups, IDEAS and
KIDWIRE, geared toward teachers and students respectively.
Contact: Al Rogers, 4021 Allen School Road, Bonita, Ca. 92002.
Compuserve: 76167,3514.

Service: Interactive Communication Simulations (ICS)
Description: Offers role (actually character) playing games for
over 1000 students at one time through an enhanced Confer II
computer conferencing network. It is designed primarily for use
in junior and senior high social studies curriculae. Students
from eleven countries are networked together as they assume
roles in simulations of, for examples, the Arab-Israeli
conflict, Environmental Decisions, and a US Constitutional
Convention. Contact: ICS Staff, Univ. of Michigan, School of
Education, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109-1259. Phone:
313-763-6716. BITNET ID: USERGCEE@UMICHUB.

Service: MIX (McGraw-Hill Information Exchange)
[Note: MIX is currently undergoing reorganization and I am
unsure of its status.] Description: An international electronic
mail and conferencing service featuring a broad range of
services for K-12 teachers, students, and administrators to be
used in a wide variety of content areas. MIX supports student
projects in most academic areas, teacher-to-teacher planning and
support conferences, a forum for educational groups and
consortia, and hosts who help to orient and personalize the
online experience for newcomers. Contact: Lynne Schrum
(503-345-8257), or Griff Wigley (507-645-9347), MIX, PO Box
382, Northfield, Minnesota 55057. BITNET ID: LSCHRUM@OREGON,
MIX ID: LSCHRUM or GWIGLEY.

Service: Dialog Classroom Instruction Program (CIP)
Description: A simplified, student version of Dialog, offering
teacher guide, student workbooks, good online rates to
facilitate group instruction of the techniques of online
searching. Geared for middle school and up. Contact: Anne
Caputo, CIP Administration, Dialog, 1901 No. Moore St., Suite
500, Arlington, Va. 22209. Phone: 800-334-2564.

Service: Pals Across the World
Description: An international writing project for third grade
and up that matches up classrooms in different countries to
exchange electronic mail for a number of activities, such as
letter, report, and poetry writing, electronic journalism,
dialog on social issues, and script writing. Contact: Jim
Irwin, 4974 SW Galen, Lake Oswego, Oregon, 97035. Phone
503-697-4080, or 635-0338. Applelink ID: K0591, Dialcom ID:
WEW001.

Service: Long Distance Learning Network
Description: An AT&T sponsored, international electronic
cooperative education service, using 'learning circles' to
organize activities in many subject areas at primary, middle,
and secondary levels. Contact: Margaret Riel, AT&T, Long
Distance Learning Network, PO Box 716, Basking Ridge, New
Jersey, 07920-0716. Phone: 619-943-1314. AT&T ID: !MRIEL,
Compuserve ID: 76004,1007.

-----
Author's note: Jason originally shared this on a usenet mailing list for folks interested in linking kids via networking.

The Transformative Vision of Dave Hughes
An Interview by Gordon Cook


Introduction
============

In April of this year I was fortunate enough to visit Dave
Hughes on his home turf in Old Colorado City. Now while I have
been a follower of Dave's stories since early 1981, at breakfast
the first morning, Dave told me a new one which in many ways was
the most inspiring of all. It is the story of how he got
started in a new career after retiring from the command of Fort
Carson in the early 1970s. It is the story of one man acting as
a catalyst to affect an entire community--one man who knows how
to listen and lead better than most. It is the story of politics
and money being used to benefit many people rather than a select
few. It reflects a vision that the Democratic Party should be
expressing on a national level, but isn't. Finally it
emphasizes the importance of listening to problems as one's
first step and reflecting on the application of the appropriate
technology to the solution of those problems only as a second
step.

Seeing how the pieces fit together and walking down the
picturesque four-block-long section of Old Colorado Avenue that
is framed by the majestic snowy crown of Pike's Peak eight
thousand feet above and perhaps 15 miles away as the crow flies,
I was deeply moved. Where else could an easterner walking
through the main street of the "wrong" side of the tracks of a
city of 400,000, enter a shop and say to a total stranger: "Hi,
I'm here visiting Dave Hughes!" and get instant smiles and warm
reminiscences about how the combination of leadership and
technology returned to a decaying part of town, the ability to
become a community and take control of its own future?

Excited and inspired, I said to Dave how could you have told me
all this without a tape recorder? I badgered him without mercy,
until on the last day of my stay, he relented and repeated the
tale again, on tape in Roger's Bar. Herewith is the transcript
of Dave's recollection of the project that got him going down
the road where he has met so many of us. It embodies so well,
his metaphor for what he is doing when he says: "like Voltaire's
Candide, I have retired to cultivate my own backyard and enrich
my own community. Only I use a microprocessor as my hoe and a
modem as my wheelbarrow!"

It's time to let Dave speak.

Old Colorado City History
=========================

Here we are with Gordon Cook in what is now world famous
Roger's Bar. To understand about revitalization of Old Colorado
City, you must understand the context. Colorado City was
founded, as a gold rush town, right here at the base of Pike's
peak, on Ute Pass, the only way to get to the mountains between
Denver and Pueblo. However they didn't find any gold short of
Fair Play which is over 100 miles away. Now in the 1850s this
was part of the Kansas Territory and the 25,000 people who went
out here in the gold rush of 1859 had problems with land
claims. When you bought a lot, you had to go 600 miles back to
Kansas City to record the deed. So the El Paso Claims Club was
founded. The Club was a group of businessmen substituting for
government. They ran the town, hung horse thieves and recorded
deeds. After a few years, the club began to lobby along with
Denver to create a new territory which would be called
Colorado. The Club was successful and Colorado City also
outhustled Denver to become the first capital of the territory.

However, when the Civil War broke out, because no gold had been
found nearby, the town had begun to die. The wagon trains no
longer came up from the south. But Gilpin, a fellow West
Pointer, at the little Gettysburg of the West in 1862, using a
draft on the federal treasury in Denver, raised the Colorado
territorial militia which marched 96 miles in 36 hours over
Raton pass and kicked the hell out of 4,000 Texas Confederates
who didn't know whether they were Texans or Confederates.
Despite his acheivement, Gilpin was in for a surprise, the
drafts he drew were refused by the Treasury in Washington. As a
result the businessmen in Denver got Lincoln to fire Gilpin for
political expediency. Then Evans of Evans Illinois sent his
hoods down here in 1862 and stole the capital away from Colorado
City. Without gold and without travels, it almost died. But
farmers from the south taught the easterners how to irrigate and
kept the town alive as a little agricultural community.

After the Civil War General Palmer, with yuppies from the East
and people from England came out here and founded Colorado
Springs (where their ain't no Springs) right next to Colorado
City. He then reached over and created Manitou Springs on the
other side so that the rich ladies of the East would use his
railroad, the Denver and Rio Grande, to come out and take the
waters. At this point Colorado City gained a sort of second
breath and it's inhabitants became the iron workers and stone
cutters, the working class for the "upscale" developments under
way on either side of them.

Twenty years later, one of the characters of the town was Bob
Womack who could, while riding his horse at a dead gallop,
snatch a whiskey bottle from the ground on Colorado Avenue out
there Now Bob knew there was gold in Cripple Creek up near the
top of Pike's Peak. But no one would believe him, because you
see the know-it-alls are always down town in the Springs. They
wear suits and ties and are highly educated. But the real
people who were in Colorado City were a lot more practical and
smart.

Finally some folk investigated, found Womack right and the
great Cripple Creek gold rush began. It lasted from 1891 until
1915 as the greatest gold camp in the world with 50,000 people.
The problem was you couldn't get there in one jump. You had to
change railroads in Maintou Springs. Colorado springs was dry.
So everyone came out here to Colorado City as the jumping off
spot for Cripple Creek. You had 21 saloons in a row on the
south side of Colorado Avenue out there. You had the only
morality play which I know of in the 900 ghost towns in Colorado
in which the dividing line between good and evil ran right down
the middle of main street. The red light district was also on
the south side of the street and tunnels were built so that the
"decent" men of Colorado City could slip across without being
seen walking across the street. It was during this era that
these Victorian brick buildings were built as this became the
democratic and union side of town.

Furthermore a lot of the the people from Cripple Creek moved
down here because you had to roast the ore to drive off the
sulpher so that the cyanide would work. The coal to do the
roasting was up toward where the Air Force Academy now is. So
the smart thing to do was bring the ore down from the mountain
rather than the coal up. So consequently Colorado City became
the great golden Mill town, adding mill workers to the railroad
workers already here.

----

1973-1975
Running an Information Age Business
===================================



From running my information age business, Enjoy Colorado, I had
come to know this history. I knew what people wanted: history
and a flavor of the West. I sold knowledge about Colorado and
started by asking people what THEY wanted to know about the
state. They want to see the Rockies, and so you give them a
brochure and they come out and "see" the Rockies. But if you
ask them carefully you find out that their dog had a cardiac,
and they don't want to go over any passes higher than 8,000
feet, and if they are a German family, they want one kind of
discipline, while if they are a scientist from Sandia Labs they
want something entirely different. Well I could give them
answers to any question. For example, if the wife were
handicapped, precisely where on the south rim of the Back canyon
of the Gunnison they could stop their care and let her see clear
to the bottom without getting out. That precise. Got it?

So in 1973 I opened a company where I sold people my
knowledge. I charged for time and materials. Within my little
company I went out and learned 100% of the state. I can put you
within ten meters of any boulder and tell you what kind of rock
it is. And the question is do you want to fish or catch fish?
There's a big difference. So we determined what people wanted
at a psychological experiential level. I was running a pure
information store. We file everything in the state by place and
time, including duration. To give you an example, in 1976 for
the bicentennial I organized a climb of all the 55 14,000 foot
peaks in the state. All 55 peaks were climbed simultaneously by
645 people in 100 climbing parties during the worst storm we
ever had. I arrived on the top of my peak with Senator Gary
Hart within 15 minutes of my predicted time.

I kept seeing this repeated theme. Everyone who comes to
Colorado is looking for the possibility of moving here because
it's the great western experience, where one can live in the
great outdoors, in a community with some character to it and do
business and be successful. For example one man wanted to
travel through towns with no more than one accountant per every
thousand of population, because he was an accountant and was
looking for an opportunity to move. I had to unearth as my
capital knowledge of Colorado. Of course my business theory was
kind of "kooky" because in most companies you start out in the
field and you work your way to the main office and then you
spend all your time earning money so that you can go the hell
back out in the field and vacation. In Enjoy Colorado, it was
the opposite. The chairman of the board, namely me, spent all
his time out in the field experiencing Colorado, while you had
to start in the central office, learning the files and the
information and then once you got good, we'd risk you in the
field.

1976-1981
Developing and Executing a Revitalization Plan
==============================================

So underneath the grime of old Colorado City and its 6,000
households in 12 square miles, I knew what was going on.
Colorado Springs was so dumb meanwhile that it had destroyed its
downtown. Damned dumb easterners come out here and they repeat
the East. They tear down the downtown and urban "renewalize"
everything and destroy its charm. As a result, not only was
there no historical downtown, but Manitou Springs had turned
into tickey tackey tourism as well. It seemed to me that here
was an opportunity to revitalize a commercial district and
essentially create a win-win situation for everyone.

What was the city's interest? The city of Colorado Springs had
to do something because the tax base was declining. The
delivery of municipal services to this side of town was starting
to cost the city more than what it was delivering to the city in
terms of sales taxes and property taxes. Furthermore jobs were
declining. So the city was willing to come out here and do
something, but it only had two ideas. Urban renewal. Slash
burn and let someone invest some money on the good old
Republican trickle down theory. Or noblesse oblige. Charles
Dickens all over. Pat the poor folk on the head and give them a
little welfare.

But west siders were proud people. Surplus City was a
million-dollar-a-year venture employing 30 people. That wasn't
a bad business. Nevertheless on January 1, 1976 you had 8
linear blocks, 98 buildings 45% vacant. You could rent any
building for $2.50 a square foot and you could buy any building
for 10 dollars a square foot. Sixty-two businesses with with
362 employees were doing $2.5 million retail sales per year.
There were only two eating places in the whole area.

So I took a look at it and said "wait a minute. This is a
capital short state. All the capital has been extracted and
shipped back East. Nevertheless, people move here and want to
go into business for themselves. They want to get away from big
business and big government. They have a good business idea
but, as a consequence of the lack of capital, the bank makes
them put so damn much down that they don't have enough for
operational expenses. So six months later they go under and we
all stand around and say 'small business is unsound.'"

Then I began to read David Birch of MIT who was pointing out
that our biggest increase of jobs would come from businesses of
under twenty employees. So I said "if the future is in small
business in terms of leveraging jobs and if the city wanted only
three things: removal of slum and blight, an increase in the
tax base, and additional jobs, what could I do?" Well I
treated the city as an investor in the west side entitled to a
return on their investment of what they asked for. Then I
looked at the people and asked "what do they want? Capital to go
into their own small business." And I looked at the people who
lived here and visited here. What do they want? They don't
want to come all the way to Colorado, look up at Pike's Peak and
see a shopping mall, and they also don't want tickey tacky
tourism because it doesn't wear well. So I asked: "Was there
any reason we couldn't have small business to bring back Old
Colorado City without making it too upscale and gentrifying it
and driving out the old timers?" I wanted a place in my front
yard I could be happy with.

What I did was intervene in the process and simply went up and
down the street and talked to business people because I knew one
thing from my federal background. You cannot spend federal
dollars without talking to the citizens. It is required by law.
I recruited the local business people who were already here:
Clark Service Station here 50 years. Kenny Limmens who had
bought the Matress factory. (He paid 30 thousand for it. He
now wants 300,000.) Gene Brent the character down here who ran
the gun shop. So we got together and resuscitated the West
Colorado Springs Commercial Club. The result was a citizens'
group made up of the new and the old businesses out here which
could talk to other entities with a united voice.

I sat down and studied the thing and listened very carefully to
what people wanted. And good ideas came from the people. And
then I looked around and found this SBA 502 program. A Small
Business Administration Program that in 1976 said this: If you
form in a community a non-profit economic development company
and if it can come up with 20% of the capital needed for the
fixed capital assets of a business, then it, the SBA, would
guarantee any financial institution like a bank that made the
loan 90% of the remaining 80% out to a limit of $500,000 for
twenty years.

But since capital was short where was the first 20% going to
come from? The allure was fantastic because I could see that if
we set up such an instrument where the SBA would guarantee a
bank 90% of the first 80% AND could find ANOTHER way of
providing the remaining 20%, then people in Colorado Springs who
couldn't borrow there to set up their own business, will come
out here because we have financing. And then I did something
really new. No one had ever used federal block-grant monies to
cities as the first 20%. Even the SBA assumed that you were
going to go get a bunch of businessmen to put it up. But in a
place that's flat on its ass, the businessmen don't have any
money to put up -- another stupid federal assumption, as a
result of which SBA 502 had never worked properly. Therefore we
got the city to loan, through the development company, the
first 20% of the capital taken from its Federal block grant
funds.

Now lets take one example. Suppose you wanted to open a
restaurant and you had both some operating capital, maybe 10 or
15 thousand dollars, and the ability to run a restaurant. Well
we took this data and in early 1978 put it on a Radio Shack
Model 1 microcomputer running visicalc and looked at projections
on this early computerized spreadsheet. Well if the projections
made sense, then we could figure the loan to buy the building
for 50,000, improvements to the building at 25,000 and heavy
kitchen equipment at another 25,000. You needed 100 thousand
but only had 10 or 15 and none of what you did have could be
spared for fixed capital investment.

Well the city, through the development company would loan you
20,000 dollars at 8% interest for 20 years and take a second
mortgage on the property. Then we had no trouble finding banks
willing to loan you 80,000 dollars because the SBA is
guaranteeing 90% of it and the damned bank turns around and
sells the loan on the secondary market and makes points to
boot. It's risking only 10%, so when you take the points and
add it to the interest that they are going to charge, it comes
out to about 30% interest on what's at risk. Not because they
are great bankers, but because they are making money, the banks
were happy. And so by helping the banks make money we helped
their self-interest. And meanwhile YOU got 100% of 100,000
dollars on a long term loan.

However if you wanted to borrow the money from us, you had to
fix up the exterior of the building to go along with the
architectural theme of the history of Old Colorado City. And
then we turned around and got the city to pay for the
architectural rendering out of the money that was for the
project. Even if your deal didn't go through, the building
didn't change and the drawing could be used for the first loan
on the building that did sucede. And the drawings were done by
an architect in town. It was just an elevation drawing done on
the exterior of the building. So you got 100,000 dollars and
architectural assistance.

While all this was going on, I spent my time not only putting
all this stuff together but also telling you about the history
of the place. When Whitey Pine down here bought the old
building that was really ratty, as a result of my immersing him
in it, he respected the history of the area and he named his
restaurant Thunder and Buttons after the two elk that carried
Laua Belle, the Queen of the Red Light district, thundering down
into Colorado Springs. The horses carrying the fine ladies of
Wood Avenue would smell those rangy elk, bolt, and dump their
ladies in the street and the police would arrest Prarie Dog and
Laura Belle who would walk all the way back trailing their gowns
in the middle of the street...... By telling these tales, I was
bringing the real true history was back as a function of small
business investment.

But one of the businessmen said "if I fix up my building, my
taxes will go up." Well we told him "it's in the interest of
the state of Colorado that you fix up your building, so if they
don't raise your taxes for a period of 5 years when you do it,
will you fix it up?"

"Well you can't do that!"

"Want to bet?"

"Well you've got a deal buddy." And in Old Colorado City a
deal's a deal. You're a dead man hung from a tree if you break
your word.

So we had to convince the legislature. Well nothing helps like
a little morality play. We formed outside the old log cabin
out there and had Gene Brent fire in the air with his Colt 44.
We had citizens around. The press was there. Michael Garman,
who makes the porcellan statutes that go to the White House and
everywhere else, was there on his horse. We wrote a petition:

We the hard working, vote-casting people of Old Colorado City
which was once the capital of the state before it went to Denver
where Colorado government has gone down hill ever since, invite
the legislature to come down here and reenact its first five
days. We then clattered off down the street and two days later
road up the steps of the capital in Denver and called out to the
Speaker of the House and the President of the Senate, and handed
them the petition. Well, a week later the House and the Senate
adjourned and came to Colorado City in a melodrama to reenact
the early days. Everyone had fun and we had a parade for the
first time in years. (The parade is now an annual event. It's
called territory days, every year at the end of May.)

Then we walked the legislators up the street and said we want a
tax law that says if you fix up a building more than 30 years,
old historical or otherwise, that you don't pay increased taxes
for five years. The guys from Grand Junction and Grand Lake
and Denver said: "you know, that would work in our town too."
The legislation was passed and I went back and said fix your
dang building up. You don't have to pay increased taxes for 5
years! He swallowed his cud and sold his building and the guy
who bought it from him fixed it up.

-----

The Transformative Vision of Dave Hughes
An Interview by Gordon Cook
Part 3

Economic Outcomes and Impact of the Microcomputer
=================================================

The thing took off like a shot. We made 55 loans. The city's
never lost a cent, not one penny even though some of the
businesses haven't worked. The last time I checked the 98
buildings are 95% occupied. The empty ones are only empty in
transit to new businesses. You had all the restoration done and
the area declared a National Historic District. I had to fly
back to Washington and put a boot up the ass of the Feds because
they said: "oh this isn't elegant enough." I said: "this is
Main Street Buddy.," and in order to find out how to work with
Washington I began to use telecommunications.

In the meantime this was a small organization that I was
heading up. Small organizations have the problem of having
either a director or a secretary, but seldom both until they get
pretty big. In outfits without a secretary the board has to do
too much. Well I brought my first computer in Radio Shack in
1977 two months after it came out. I brought it over here and
I was able to run the Commercial Club and keep track of every
building and every floor and so on with a little database.

I simply stole the management ideas from shopping centers which
offer centralized management in return for some of the gross to
pay for public improvements like parking. The city was putting
in the public improvements. But I had to coordinate it, to tie
it together. We expressed our political clout through the Board
of Directors of the Commercial Club who were all businessmen.
This by-passed and out-flanked the bureaucrats. So every time
THEY tried to give us a hard time, we'd go right over their head
to the city council.

You must also understand that when the city came out here, part
of the money was spent on the amenities necessary to make the
place go. Parking lots, behind the buildings, and pawnbroker
lights that you see up and down both sides of the street that
further help to unify the diverse character of the buildings.
And that was about two million dollars of federal money. The
question becomes whose going to take care of it. Well in most
of these communities you end up trying to do a mall type
approach. Often you take the approach that the adjacent
property owner's responsible. But in a mall, if a light in a
public area burns out you can be assured that mall management
will fix that thing NOW! You've got the security question
also. But the mall also provides for this.

Well again I just stole their idea. When the city wanted to
put meters in he parking lots, I said "wait a minute. We just
spent all this money to put up free parking lots to compete with
the malls and now you want to put meters in them?"

"Well we've got to have money for maintenance."

"So you've got a revenue problem, you DON'T have a meter
problem. So let's back up and lets create something new. Lets
create the Old Colorado City Maintenance and Security District."

There had never been one before under state law which thought
only in terms of capitol improvement districts. So we
researched it and had a board of advisors to the city council
created to be a feedback loop to this district once the tax was
levied. We established the idea that you had to have the
approval of 51% of the property owners before the city can
impose an improvement district of any type. I said I will
deliver the signatures necessary if you don't screw the
businessmen by trying to make them pay back the 2.5 million in
physical improvements.

Then we had the ultilities people and parks people come up with
a good estimate of what it would cost to maintain the eight
square blocks of improvements, the pawnbroker lights and the
electricity they use, snow removal in the winter and so on.
Well a good $50,000 bucks a year. So I sat down with my model 1
and using a spreadsheet took the total assessed valuation of the
seven square blocks and the mills valuation of each building as
a percent of the total. I divided it into 50,000 to get the
dollars and then converted that back into mills of tax increase
and came to the conclusion that a 38 mill property tax increase
would pay for the district. Furthermore, since the last block
wasn't done yet, the base would go up while the millage would go
down and might flatten out at 25 in the future. But how to talk
small businessmen into agreeing to what amounted to a 40% rise
in their total property taxes?

Well I took my computer and converted it into dollars and cents
for services rendered per month. For example Herb Parry had
come into see me and said "Gee Dave I am going to hire an off
duty policeman to rattle my door at night and it's only going to
cost me $50 a month." I said "Herb take a look at these
figures. If you buy them not only will you get the security of
the rattled door, but also you will have a free but controlled
parking lot behind, and snow removal, and the pawnbroker lights,
and it will only cost you $23 22 per month."

"Well what if it costs $60,000?"

I did the what if on my spread sheet and it came back with
something like $27.50. So the what if gave him the confidence
and he signed the petition. Seventy percent of all the property
owners of Old Colorado City signed my petition to raise their
taxes by 40%! It's working well, especially with our board of
advisors watching to see that the city doesn't pull any
shenanigans.

We took care never to ask for anything that the city shouldn't
want to do. What we did take care was to tell the city HOW to do
what was already in its own best self interest. We had better
ideas and a working concept that highly-paid planners developers
did NOT have.

Using National Telecom to Expand the Beginnings
===============================================

When the Source first existed, I was having to fight some of
the big boys downtown who suddenly didn't like this because it
was getting popular. Little business people were coming out
here and pulling up their bootstraps with a public-private
partnership while the downtown had fallen flat on its ass. The
big "studds" couldn't make downtown go. Urban renewal had come
in and torn down the buildings and the ground was still flat 10
years afterwards. There was a lot a jealousy and to make this
thing work. I had to basically be a Lone Ranger out here doing
things for the local businessmen who otherwise would have been
retaliated against by the local power structure because we were
making the economy work WITHOUT the power structure. And his
REALLY bothered some heavy weights in town who weren't as smart
as they think are. Some men have grown up in this town, made a
million dollars and couldn't do it again if their lives depended
on it because they have confused what God gave this place,
called Pike's Peak, with their business sense, OK? And they
aren't as smart as they think they are.

But neither was I because I didn't know how to do this
completely. I had some concepts and activism and understood
these themes but the nitty gritty was tricky. I didn't know the
SBA and historic preservation that well. So I got on the Source
when it first came out and I asked questions because I
understood that the Source had a whole bunch of professional
people on it. I wasn't getting good answers. So I said well
what's exciting about this place? And the answer of course was
obvious the history. So I started telling stories. I can write
a little bit so I told stories of the area and of Colorado City
in particular.

For example the glass factory right across from here was
co-ventured by Jerome Wheeler of Aspen fame, General Adams of
the Meeker Massacre fame and a man named Adolph Bush. Well one
night three doors down here Bush came in downstairs in the
Templeton Building, where my office is now, and Dr Winterness of
the old Winterness family was upstairs and somebody went in to
say Mr. Bush would like to see you downstairs and he went
downstairs. Bush confronted him because he was angry about
what the good Dr had put on the death certificate his daughter
who died from suspicious circumstances. Bush shot the Dr. but
didn't kill him. Well this was the very same Bush who went on
to found Budweisser.

So when I would tell these stories on the Source to pick the
brains of people on how to do it. I would tell stories, and
gather a crowd and then out in this crowd would be engineers,
lawyers and so on. I'd ask questions of my crowd and they would
tell me about this contact or that agency in Washington. But at
the same time the Source was the perfect place to develop my own
ideas of the use of it to do such things as electronic
publishing, and education when I taught the first class for
college credit over the Source in 1981. Then I realized that
this use of telecommunications could become the basis for people
who could move here and go not into retail or service but into
information age businesses. But in the meantime the problem is
still the chronic underemployment.

Well we solved the problem of investment and we solved the
problem of small business. In fact I'll give you the hard
numbers. By 1984 Old Colorado City had gone from 2.5 million
to 20 million in retail sales and from 62 businesses of which
half were really marginal to 180 businesses with not a single
business coming in from an out of state headquarters. We
created 500 new jobs at a capital cost of 5,000 dollars per
job. We put people in the ownership position of their own
business and the city never lost a cent. Why? Because when an
occasional business failed, and the property was passed on, with
values going up it was always passed on at a higher price than
that for which the loan was made. We didn't finance real estate
speculators because for the building to qualify for the loan,
classed as business capital equipment, you had to occupy at
least 51% of the ground floor. We did the historic preservation
because it was good business to do so.

Not a single condemnation of a single building under the police
powers of colorado springs took place. There was not a single
ordinance passed telling what you couldn't do in historic
preservation because the community worked. It worked because we
made the economy work in everyone's best interest. And finally
the increased sales tax from the city is paying off in ten years
100% of all the federal money involved. This is one half the
time of the scheduled 20 year loans. We did what government is
supposed to do in economic development with no bullshit and we
did it for a lot of little people not a few fat cats. And I'm
damn proud of the way it was done because it blew virtually
every theory out the door that you've got to go outside the
state to get an investor, that its got to be big business and
not small, that everything should be trickle down. There's not
a keystone business there.

So round about 1983 I said ok I have worked long enough and
hard enough and you business people can take care of yourselves
now. Now I am going to add personally the third level of
economics: retail on the first floor, service on the second
floor, and pure information business on the third floor. I did
this by setting up my own bulletin board called the Old Colorado
City Electronic Cottage and putting on it politics called
Roger's Bar because this is the place where west siders have
always discussed democratic politics. It will become a metaphor
for the virtual community that reflects the real community.

Then I stepped back a little, and these little west siders whom
you wouldn't think had two nickles to rub together loved it so
much that one of them left us $110,000. We're going to use it
to set up a museum, maybe in the church that's next to my house
over here right across from Bancroft Park.

The Future: Global Visions
==========================

I have evolved with my first partner Louis Jaffe onto Chariot
which is a dial-in subscription business. And I still tell
stories on places like the Metanet and the Well and elsewhere.
And by this time the fame of this place began to spread. So the
Wall Street Journal shows up, the New York Times, Stern Magazine
and McNeil Lehr. And so the people here don't get too excited
when they walk in here with their cameras. The good old boys
at the bar held the lights for them and never missed a beat.
And they don't get too excited about my saloon journalism when I
come in here and write stories datelined: Third Bar Stool
Roger's Bar and the step over to the telephone there and upload
them any where in the world, because these are the salt of the
earth people, the lower middle class. This is the place where,
if telecommunications doesn't work, the failure will polarize
our society. So step-by-step we have made this a total
community with the online community adding a cross section from
the highest tech.

Nevertheless when you come in here, you are a westsider. It
doesn't join you. You join it. And this is very appealing
because this is what a lot of people want out of America. This
is what a lot of people want out of the west. This is what a
lot of people want out of their town where there is a sense of
community -- public works, private works, works together
sometimes, nonprofit works. So we just made AMERICA WORK in 8
parallel blocks and called it Old Colorado City. It was the
first capital of Colorado. Before I am done it will be the last
capital of Colorado. It is already the electronic capital of
Colorado. And it's also becoming something of an international
center. The west Germans have come with Stern Magazine.
Japanese have come and a lot more will do so when I'm through
with them in Sendai latter in the month. The the Russians are
coming the first week in June when Sergei Alexandrov of Novosti
in Moscow arrives and we are striking a business deal between
Novosti News Service and Old Colorado Ciy Communications. My
youngest son is now in Dalien China with his lap top teaching
conversational English to the Chinese and getting ready to dial
out from there. And we hope to get Gorbachev on the screen here
to talk to the good-old-boys at the bar. And we'll probably
have a summit meeting here with Margaret Thatcher and
Gorbachev. When I am in Moscow and my son's in Dalien and we
get Montana into this circuit too, it's my hope Gordon, that we
can go either to Siberia or Mongolia and set up the Genghis Khan
Bulletin Board out there. We'll just use these techniques to
make their little communities work too.

I've got my feedback mechanism working well enough that all I
am doing is emulating Ghandi when he said: "There go my people.
I must hurry and catch them if I am their leader." All I can do
is implement their visions in their own context in my own
community which makes it a better place for me to live in. But
just remember also that it was not just me and the knowledge in
my head. Without that computer and the knowledge in there, and
the ease and speed, no secretary, no accountants and without


telecommunications to pick brains elsewhere and to promote it,
it also could not have been done.

-------
Author's note: Gordon Cook, trained as a Russian historian has
been a technical writer in the computer industry for the last 6
years and a user of conferencing since 1980. He is about to
begin his third year as Science Editor at the John von Neumann
National Supercomputer Center in Princeton NJ (609) 520-2000
where he runs a Caucus conferencing .system. He is a member
both of EIES and The Meta Network. He is the author of
"Strategic Analysis of Computer Conferencing" published by the

Gartner Group. He hopes eventually to become a principal in the
implementation of computer conferencing at the corporate level.

Everything Is Related:
From Looms to Computers
by Philip Siddons

It was an ideal teaching context. Our family was spending Memorial Day at the Genesee Country Museum in Mumford New York. One of their restored buildings had an operating printing press from the 1700's. I was determined to show my thirteen year old daughter the comparative ease in desktop publishing on a computer today.

When we were standing beside the press, I began by pointing out the pieces of lead used for separating the lines of type. I explained how each letter had to be set on the plate by hand, and then only one page at a time could be produced. I talked, with some enthusiasm, about how far publishing has come in the last several hundred years. But her attention was waning.

To her, this ton of black metal with a leather handle was boring. There was nothing electronic or colorful about it. At home, at least she was interested in Ventura Publisher's ability to manipulate and place graphics on a page and set interesting fonts with a few keystrokes. So she gave me that patient pseudo look of attention while wondering when I'm going to get a real life.

"So much for a great learning experience on the history of desktop publishing" I privately said to myself.

"What I'd like to see," she inserted, is the weaving loom. The computer stuff we can talk about any time."

"Fair enough" I responded. And off we went, across the Village Square, to a quaint little house with shaker furniture, Museum volunteers sweating in their Victorian costumes, and a loom.

When we arrived, the weaver was under the loom, kneeling as she arranged strings connected to the foot pedals of the device.

We asked her about some of the apparatus and its complexity. She went across the room and showed us some of the beautiful patterned material she had produced. She talked of the hours involved and the common necessity of looms for producing household fabrics.

I've always admired people who have the propensity to do intricate and detailed work. So I said: "I suspect that in the days when people depended on these looms, the ones who were adapt at creating these decorative patterns were equivalent to our modern day computer programmers."

My daughter glanced at me out of the corners of her eyes, only to roll them heavenward, aghast in adolescent disbelief.

Looking rather surprised, the weaving expert responded: "You know, its funny you should mention that. Joseph Jacquard, a Frenchman living in the late 1700's and early 1800's, built the first successful loom for weaving patterned fabrics. To create the more complex patterns he used a system of punched cards. And this was the forerunner of the computer."

That evening I logged on to the national computer network Compuserve and looked up information on Jacquard. The on-line encyclopedia said the punched cards, for Jacquard's loom, were adopted in 1835 by the British inventor Charles Babbage for his calculator. Babbage, a mathematician at Cambridge, attempted to build an "analytical engine," a mechanical forerunner of the digital computer. Although Babbage spent his life's savings trying to produce a calculator that never fully operated, his designs proved to be correct.

The Buffalo, New York inventor and entrepreneur Herman Hollerith designed a system for recording data, using Jacquard's idea of punched holes. His device became one of the basic input mechanisms in digital computers. By 1890 he had invented machines to record and read punched cards, and this system was chosen for use in the 1890 U.S. census.

In the next decade he improved the technology and founded, in 1896, the Tabulating Machine Company in New York City. This firm eventually evolved into IBM Corporation.

As for my daughter, she seemed somewhat more interested in this progression of technology from the loom to the computer. I read her the articles from Compuserve's encyclopedia, but she had other things she wanted to do that evening. She was going to use Ventura Publisher to create an ad, with her picture on it, for her babysitting services.

-------
Author's note: Philip Siddons is the author of "Speaking Out
for Woman" (Valley Forge: Judson, 1980) and numerous magazine
articles. He is a freelance writer, a desktop publishing
instructor, and Director of Marketing and Advertising for
Personal Computers in Buffalo New York.

A Vision of Networking Systems of the Future
by Mike Blaszczak

Modern computers are incredibly fast machines. Over the last six years, the IBM PC-line of computers has developed systems with over sixteen times the speed as original models. Amiga computers and popular workstation-based systems, such as Suns, also exhibit phenominal speed.

Many desktop computers have also come to bear the multitasking features found only in larger systems. The 68000 series from Motorola was one of the first lines of processors to develop its own memory management units.

Even after losing all the marketing mistakes and hype, operating systems are developing with comparitive sluggishness. OS/2 provides for a kludgy page swapper, allthough its multitasking abilities are a panacea for bored MS-DOS users. Unix derivatives, such as Apple's A/UX system, provide the desktop user with a comfortable amount of control over multiple processes.

But precious few other software packages provide for multitasking. Sure, you can set up a print spooler to run your printer in the background, and you can have PageMaker reformat one page while you're adding text to another, but this isn't developing the capability that is inherent in the newer processors like the 80386 and the 68040.

Even sadder, we have long known that the VAX, PDP, and Prime mainframe and minicomputer systems that run our telecommunications services are capable of having more than one user. Even some larger BBS systems make use of systems that have many serial ports and modems tied to an array of phone lines; only to connect to one CPU.

But why can't we make the systems we each use help us with their power? Wouldn't it be great to have a system that you could log in to, compile your conferencing notes, download a file from a users' group, and chat interactively with other users, all simultaneously?

The dedicated architecture (one user, one process) of telecommunications system design must quickly become a thing of the past. Our throughput can improve by several fold, and our communications range can be extended sharply.

What am I thinking of? Well, let me be a little more specific, and perhaps a little more technical.

When a user accesses a computer-based communications system, let's say NJNET, for example, their connection is a one-on-one interaction with their system and the computer. If they're using an old Apple II or if they're using a new IBM PS/2 Model Eighty, all of their system's abilities are being spent on sending data out the port and waiting for it to come back.

Software that has a lot of cushy creature-comforts allows for neat things; you can print information as it falls in your port, and maybe you can even capture it at the same time.

Each of these tasks, even for the most complicated of protocols, such as Kermit or ZMODEM, requries very little CPU time. Even if CPU time were upped by software data compression or run-length encodning as implemented in many high-level communications protocols, more powerful systems like those based on 80286, 80386, or 68020 CPU's could easily handle the load using their multitasking features. The bottleneck of the system is the slow throughput achieved by modems.

Some software, such as Crosstalk Mark Four, allows you to maintain multiple sessions if you have the hardware to support it. While this feature is a great asset for those who have two or three modems and two or three phone lines, it doesn't serve the average user with one line and a single modem.

What I would like to see is a windowed interface for the typical communications system. When you log in to a system like this, you're still at a one-on-one session, but not for long. While you maintain one single connection to one single process, you can request that other processes be set up to run quietly in the background, or that other processes be initiated and given some window space.

When a process is initiated, it can notify the user's terminal that the terminal's client area should be split. So, perhaps instead of having a 80 by 25 screen, I might suddenly have two 80 by 12 screens.

This "smart terminal" approach could use a common protocol, easily implementable on a variety of systems. The protocol could even provide for the host interrogating the client to see if they supported the windowed protocol. Perhaps if they didn't, the system could fall back on a stock TTY-based interface. If the caller did have the windowed software, the software might report the maximum capabilities of the user's system; not only in CPU abilities, but perhaps in screen size, modem speed, and maybe even free disk space. A "termcap" standard might perhaps evolve, such like the one found in Unix systems.

That protocol might initiate each packet with a unique packet header:

<Header>

That header might contain a "stamp" or sequence number to indicate that the user had not missed any packets, and it should certainly begin with a group of rare or "screened" characters so that the receiver could be guaranteed that it just found the beginning of a packet. This would aid in restoring communications, should they become confused by line noise.

The packet then might contain a command:

<Header> <CommandCode>

Obviously, the host would issue a different set of command codes than the client would. For example, the host might send "open window from point x1 and y1 to point x2 and y2", but the client would never need request that the host do that. There might not even be a real "action" or "command" associated with a packet; perhaps a packet might be stamped as the next block of a binary transfer.

The packet would then include the data necessary. Some packets won't need any data. (For example, if the CommandCode were just an acknowledgement, the user wouldn't have to send any data with it.) To make it easy to decode, let's also include a length for the data field.

<Header> <CommandCode> <Dlen> [<Data>]

Since there might not be any data, we could just make the Dlen zero if that were the case. We could follow it up with any one of several checks for integrity; a CRC word or a checksum, and maybe an ending marker.

<Header> <CommandCode> <Dlen> [<Data>] <Check> <Trailer>

When I iniate the connections, all the <CommandCode> fields would just be "place text". The <Data> would contain a mention of what text to place. Perhaps, even ANSI or VT-series terminal escape sequences could be imbedded there to provide for screen control.

If I initiated a new session, as I mentioned above, we might split the screen in two and run the MAIL system in one area and the CHAT program in the other. Since data now has two places to go, perhaps we should add a tag field to each packet that says which window should pay attention to the data:

<Header> <Tag> <CommandCode> <Dlen> [<Data>] <Check>
<Trailer>

Using the object-oriented programming techniques that are becoming so popular, one might find it interesting to implement the protocol to take advantage of the OOP philosophy. Each window would be "notified" that it had data waiting for it, and would reply at will. This would also help get the protocol started on distributed processing systems, such as are found in most multiprocessing environments.

So, in one 80 by 12 window, I might be drafting a letter to a friend. In the other 80 by 12 window, I might be engaged in an online exchange with a representative from XYZ Software, enjoying the online togetherness of the CBIX CB Simulator. When I request the second session, I might get a packet with a <CommandCode> telling my system to set up two windows. The <Data> field of that packet would let the system know where it should put each window, and how they should be sized.

From that point on, each packet is just another "place text" command. In the top window, the text would be coming from the MAIL utility of the source system. The bottom window would be getting the interrmittent lines of discussion from the CHAT I was involved in.

If I decided that I wanted to get a new program from one of the listings areas, I might open a third window to do this, overlapping my mail message as I write it. Again, we'd get a new "split windows" command, and some coordinates for the placement of this window.

I could search the library and find the program I am looking for, and then download it. Since the download is typically a non-interactive process, I might close the window. If the download became riddled with errors, another window might open to tell me about the problems the system was having with my file. Otherwise, I would continue to work on my letter, occassionally popping back down to the exchange with XYZ Software to put my two-cents in about their product. While I'm not "looking" at the other two windows, they're still updating because my system is still receiving packets with their <Tag>'s. If someone in the CHAT made a particularly neat point, for example, I might drag my mouse down there or poke a hot key to get there and add my two cents. When I was done, I could move again to the window where I was.

This way, the outgoing data would be tagged as coming *from* a particular window, as well. Maybe the <CommandCode> would be "say something". The <tag> would be the number of the window where I typed what I said, and the <Data> would be simply what I typed.

Should I decide to move around windows, the sending system would be notified. It could then reformat text that was coming my way, or perhaps use a slightly modified format for sending listings. For example, if it knew that my database-searching window was only thirty-six columns wide, it might not give the "Comments" field of each record it listed. If I did have a wider window, however, the "Comments" field might be sent to me.

Though some might argue it would be possible that such activity could bog down the system and not really generate any stronger throughput, I think that the typical user would strongly benefit from such a situation. How much data do you actually send and receive in an interactive CHAT? Most of the time is spent waiting for the other person, or other members, to send their replies. That "dead air" time could be used to send me my file. I could send back, perhaps as a complete packet in itself, a copy of my letter. Certainly, the time I spent looking around in the database would be mostly waiting around for the system to answer my request for information.

We've covered the three very common uses for computer-based communications systems. The first is the exchange of binary files, from user-to-user or in user-to-public, such as found in SIGs or Forums or Users Groups. The next is one-on-one or one-on-group chatting, such as found in CompuServe's famous CB Simulator or in The SOURCE's CHAT product. The third is the interrogation of databases; searching for news stories, looking for a bibliography reference, or finding a precedent for a legal matter, perhaps.

These three activities could easily be compressed into a packeted interface, and the windowing presentation layer for the PC user would be easy to develop and simple to implement, as I've described above.

I believe that the two biggest problems involve the implementation of such a service from the host's end. First, there would be no way to accurately bill someone. It would not be very fair to charge a user with only a single window and process the same rate as someone who is enjoying a CHAT, downloading a file, compiling their waiting notes, and jotting down a note all at the same time. I suppose that billing could be done on a per-window, per-service basis. A higher rate would apply for the first window, but ever other window would be much less.

The other would be to find someone to implement such an innovative protocol. Such an item would no doubt bring on a great deal of interest, but a substantial amount of time would be spent developing the system for each microcomputer, as well as for the host.

Who's going to take the ball? And, better yet, when?

I would love to have your feedback on these ideas; please feel free to write or call.

------
Author's note: You can reach Mike at: Mike Blaszczak, 35
Ginger Lane #229, East Hartford, Connecitcut 06118
The fine print: CompuServe is a H and R Block Company. "The CB
Simulator" is a servicemark of CompuServe. UNIX is a registered
trademark of American Telephone and Telegraph. The SOURCE is a
registered service mark. CHAT is a servicemark held by The
SOURCE. BIX and CoSy are registered trademarks of McGraw-Hill,
Incorporated. Participate is a registered trademark of NETI.
MS-DOS is a registered trademark of Microsoft. PS/2 and OS/2 are
registered trademarks of IBM. 80286 and 80386 are registered
trademarks of Intel. VAX, VT-series and VT-100, and PDP are
trademarks of Digital Equipment Corp. Prime and Pr1me are
trademarks of Prime Computer.

Time Management
Or how to control your destiny in four easy steps
by Philip Siddons

Some people handle their time like they handle their money -- they're always out of it and wished they had more. They were your classmates who invariably waited until the night before the deadline to start their paper. They're the ones you expect to walk in late for company meetings. Once in the meeting, they wouldn't be able to arrive at a final decision and closure on a topic if you told them the building is about to blow up. Thank goodness they aren't chairing the meeting.

It's true. Time management comes easily for some, but for others, time is alien to their spontaneous life. For some, time is a river of life's movement, during which you can accomplish whatever is most important to you before you get down steam. For others, time is something that gets used up ... without prior thought or effort.

Some of us have natural abilities to manage the time periods of our lives, to maintain a sense of movement through tasks in relation to the other tasks of varying degrees of priority. Others of us are process people -- people who like the doing of the task but care little for standing back and analyzing where they are in relation to the conclusion. There are advantages to each type of behavior.

For the process people, unfortunately, the business world is structured the same as school -- there are things to do and there is a limited amount of time in which to do them. Unless you're a gifted artist who produces a painting whenever you get around to it, and makes a few million on each painting, you're forced to be living in the real world of time and task restraints.

In once sense, time is a gift. Life is a gift. You only have to walk down Main street and notice the physically challenged people in wheelchairs or the aging alcoholics, from the City Mission, edging their way past our windows. They've had hard times and the choices they have in their future are considerably less than our own.

So how do we make the best use of our time? How can we control our time -- our lives -- most effectively?

"Controlling" is a word many of us don't like. We don't like "controlling" people and we somehow don't like that word associated with our lifestyle. Life is to be lived, we feel, not controlled. Isn't this dog-eat-dog rat race, typified in the movie "Wall Street," about people who are always out to control everything?

True, there's a lot of "Type-A" heart attack prone power freaks around who are into control, but their problem has to do with controlling others. The last horizon for them is to get control of themselves.

Time management is, first of all, realizing who controls your life. Are you the subject of your life or are you the object of another's? Put another way: Who determines what you do with your time?

"That's easy," we quickly say, "I am in charge of myself." But look, for a minute, at the scenes from the play in which we star.

Scene One. You have a date this Friday. This looks like serious symmetry coming up. Dinner, theatre tickets, .... a clear moonlight in the forecast. By Tuesday you've got your clothing decided. By Wednesday the transportation is figured out. Tickets are in hand and on Friday your life is choreographed like a Broadway smash hit. No ring around the collar here.

Scene two. It's Tuesday morning. In ten minutes you go into a department meeting and you're supposed to present a summary of the work you've been doing on a project. You know a chart or an outline would clarify what has been happening, but in ten minutes? No time for that. "They'll have to be content to sit there and just hear me talk through it. And who ever said meetings were supposed to be interesting or stimulating? Where has the time gone?"

In these two scenes, we were more prepared for our date than our business meeting. Is our manager correct in assuming that since we don't get paid to go out on dates, might we be better prepared for meetings if we didn't get paid?

The point is that we do better with things we feel are more important -- high priority items. But think again about priorities. Where would your date life be without income from your job?

Now all this relates to time management. The basic premise is this: Your life consists of a series of choices that you make. Only you control what happens to your character in the play in which you star. And there are four steps to taking control of your life.

These four things are the key to how you control your destiny, whether it involves being prepared for a meeting or a hot date.

1. Keep a list of what you've got to do

Sounds simple, but surprisingly some people can't even do that. A list means an account of the tasks for which you have responsibility. A list means one place where you can find and refer often to what you must do. Thirty-five scraps of paper of things to do is barely better than keeping no list at all. How many times have you seen an office with about fifteen stacks of paper, each representing a project that demands attention? Piles of work are alright as long as there is one list containing what all those piles represent.

There's the marvelous example of the auto mechanic in the book "Zen And the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance." The mechanic had his tools scattered all around the garage, and at first glance it looked like a tornado had struck. The mechanic, however, had his own system of organizing his tools and knew exactly where every piece was when he needed it. Appearances are not so important as organization.

No matter what your office looks like, your list should be in one place on one piece of paper, and it should be edited several times a day.

2. Prioritize that list

This is harder than it sounds. It's hard because we already know what is more important. It's just that we like doing some things better than we like doing others. Some parts of our job, (and don't tell the boss), are so enjoyable, you can't believe they pay you to do them. Some tasks come easily for us while other things are pure drudgery -- even boring. Its these monotonous and routine things we tend to put off, even though they often have deadlines attached to them.

Our tendency is to do the things we like first and put off the rest. But remember what your parents said years ago -- "work first, play last." Perhaps a quip from the fairy tale world is more appropriate: "If you've gotta' kiss a frog to marry a prince, kiss the biggest and ugliest ones first." (No relevance to modern day dating.)

The point is to go through that list of things to do and make it clear which tasks are more important to do than others -- even if they might happen to be less enjoyable.

3. Plan when to do them

This gets harder. It involves having a space on your paper representing the day you are planning. It is much better to plan your day the prior evening. That way, you can start the day's work without having to stop and analyze your tasks while the phone is ringing and you've got two people requesting help. To commit time periods of your day to doing the highest priority tasks on your list is 90% of what time management is about. If you look at a person who hasn't got their day's time periods committed to accomplishing specific tasks, on paper, you are looking at a person who hasn't got control of their day. It's like staring in a play for which you haven't got a script. You don't know what to expect nor how to respond. By in large, you don't know your part.

The best practical thing you can do, if you're not used to managing your day's time, is to go out and buy a calendar/scheduler from your stationary store. "Dayrunner" is one of the best I've seen. You can look at the month's appointments at a glance and flip a page to see your day's work mapped out before you. On the "day" page you see the time periods mapped out, with an ongoing list of things to do to, with a priority ranking on the right. The "Dayrunner" costs about $35.00 for the year, but with our computer and a good word processor, you could make your own.

4. Starting

That's the hardest part. You might have your day, month and whole life organized magnificently, but the last ten percent of getting your act together is beginning.

You've heard of "writer's block." That's when people feel they just can't get started -- that they don't have anything to say, or are afraid that if they were writing, nothing would come out. The reason for writer's block lies in the above phrases:
"feel that they just can't get started" ... "afraid that if they
were writing... ." If you started writing you'd be writing. And
once you actually are writing, you are saying something. The
only way to overcome writer's block is to write -- to do it.

But that's true of everything. The trick is to put aside your feelings about "what if" and "what might" and just do it -- to physically begin the task. The rest is down hill.

Benefits

Once you incorporate these four patterns of managing your time, you'll notice a tremendous change in your life. You'll feel more in control of your life. You'll be in more control of your life. You will sense that your life has more worth because you are calling the shots -- in fact, your life will get more interesting. You'll not only be more aware of what is before you, because you are making the choices for your day, you'll feel more free to improvise. Because you have a better sense of what you are choosing to do with your day and week, you'll feel more familiar with your script. And with familiarity comes creativity.

Instead of taking the time to just create a visual chart for your department report, perhaps you'll add a little skit -- involving three others in your department, to dramatize the point.

That's the kind of imagination that one day moves you from having a starring part in the play to becoming the director and producer.

------
Author's note: Philip Siddons is the Director of Advertising and
Marketing for a computer firm in Buffalo New York.

The Matrix: Computer Networks and Conferencing Systems Worldwide
A Review by Steve Cisler

The Matrix: Computer Networks and Conferencing Systems
Worldwide by John Quarterman will be published by Digital Press.
The book's order number is EY-C176E-DP; the cost is $59.95 plus
local sales tax from the Sales Manager, Digital Press, 12 Crosby
Drive BUO/E94, Bedford, MA 01730. Ordering information is from
Computer Communication Review, April 1989, p.9.

This 631 page volume may become one of the holy books of the telecommunications world, especially for those who think the people using the technology are of more interest than the workings of the hardware, software, and physical networks that link the millions of people together. This is not to say that it is not a technical book; it is. The focus is more on the interesting interactions in the research community, among hobbyists, and more narrowly defined virtual communities that are being reinforced by this technology.

John Quarterman is the co-author of "Notable Computer Networks" which was published in the Communications of the Association for Computing Machinery in October 1986. The book builds on the article, but Quarterman acknowledges that it is not exhaustive. For instance, there are few references to library networks, some of which have thousands of nodes all over the world (OCLC, Inc in Dublin, Ohio). I am glad it is not exhaustive because the author will have a good reason to continue to revise this important work.

The book is divided into two sections: Background and The Matrix. The first sections contains very useful information on layers and protocols including the ISO reference model, TCP/IP, various proprietary architectures, connectivity, standards, user communities, effects of the technology, LAN's, MAN's (metropolitan area networks), and larger regional and national groupings of machines. The uncorrected page proofs contained no index, and this is essential for the print version. Considering the subject matter, I'd love to see an on disc or online version, but neither the author nor the publisher has indicated that an electronic verson is planned.

In order to find information, for example, about the Electronic Networking Association (ENA), I had to browse through the table of contents until I found "Standards Bodies" and found three paragraphs in the Conferences subheading: "...This is a very loosely structured organization, and its specific goals are unclear. In spite of or because of this, it has so far achieved a high level of communications among network users and has promoted connections to places that were previously unreachable. Nonetheless, ENA primarily consists of people from only one of the two major computer conferncing communities: that of the commercial systems. Many ENA members have never even heard of USENET."

The second section describes the Matrix, "a worldwide metanetwork of connected computer networks and conferencing systems..affects the personal and socail lives of millions of users and even influences national and international politics." Quarterman describes in detail worldwide networks such as BITNET, UUCP, FidoNet, VNET and the backbone(s) that they run on. There is a large chapter on the Internet (Quarterman's business is called Texas Internet Consulting), all the networks on each continent (263 pages), a short chapter on commercial networks such as NWI, The WELL, The META Network, Bix, TELEX, etc. (10 pages), and a groups of appendices on public data networks and on computer mediated communications and the law.

I highly recommend this work, and I encourage you to write the author with suggestions for enhancements and greater coverage of areas that concern your own network or user community. He can be reached at: The Matrix, TIC, 701 Brazos, Suite 500, Austin, Texas 78701-3242 U.S.A.