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There can be no doubt that the sums of money involved in expanding the global communications network to all nations--and building an information "superhighway" in America--will be enormous. Given severe budget constraints at all levels of government these days, that means the private sector will have to lead the way, driven in large measure by the profit motive. Governments around the world recognize this, which is why telecommunications industries are being deregulated and privatized almost everywhere.

Does this mean that the information highway is destined to be a limited-access tollway, where only the wealthy can ride in their limousines? Or are there steps that we can take, particularly in the educational arena, to promote a vision of the information highway as a multiple-access freeway which can promote the common good, not just private fortunes?

These are important questions that will be widely debated in coming years, and I can't even pretend to have the answers at this stage of the game. But let me make some recommendations about where to look for answers.

1. Public-Private Partnerships. Educators should start with the assumption that private-sector businesses, energized by the profit motive, will be the driving force which implements the information highway. Since businesses are, in an important sense, the "customers" of public schools, there need to be private-public partnerships at every level of education to make sure that schools are teaching skills that businesses will need as the information revolution progresses and to make sure that they have access to the right equipment to be effective.

For their part, businesses need to recognize that their own success in the future will depend on the success of their "suppliers" of educated workers, namely the schools. School boards, Parent-Teacher Organizations, and Chambers of Commerce around the country need to keep open lines of communication regarding these issues and to learn from some of the innovative experiments that have already been made along these lines.

2. Support for Extended Libraries. More than a century ago, when far-sighted and civic minded educators saw the growing importance of universal literacy for our society, a grass roots movement arose to put public libraries into every community in the country. Private philanthropists like Andrew Carnegie played an important role in providing seed money for the rapid spread of the library movement.

With the growing recognition that computer literacy and widespread access to the information highway will be important for the future of our society, why not build on the excellent infrastructure already provided by our current library system to make public libraries into relatively open access gateways into the information highway? While it is unrealistic to hope for every schoolchild to have personal equipment for accessing the information highway, public access centers with good equipment and some free (or donated) access time to various information providers would go along way toward providing more open access.

3. The Important Role of Private Philanthropy and Community Activists. What better legacies could be left behind by some of our information-industry millionaires (or "Bill"-ionaires) than extended libraries based on their philanthropy combined with community initiatives? And what better focus for civic-minded activists and educators than to promote an open-access vision of the information superhighway in tandem with private business and governmental organizations alike? Horace Mann and Andrew Carnegie, where are you now?


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