ACRL News Issue (B) of College & Research Libraries 9 6 / C&RL News CNI m eeting fe a tu re s the futureC onference Circuit B y W i l l i a m M ille r In revolu tionary times, the p ast may not predict the fu tu re O n D ecem ber 6– 7, 1996, I was one o f 330people attending the Coalition for Net­ worked Information (CNI) meeting in San Fran­ cisco, along with ACRL executive director Althea Jenkins. ACRL is one o f several hundred mem­ bers o f CNI, which focuses on collaborative efforts to enhance access to networked infor­ mation. Members include individual libraries, vendors, and higher education associations. CNI packed more than 30 programs and events into its two-day program this year, and although it was possible for the serious attendee to take most o f it in, the several hundred in attendance were kept very busy imbibing so much infor­ mation in so short a time. The focus, o f course, was on networked information. Most o f the ground was very familiar for academic librar­ ians, though the meeting differed from typical library programs by being centered more on the future than on the present. The “ regulation-proof” Net The three plenary sessions offered much food fo r th o u g h t. EDUCOM p r e s id e n t R o b e rt Heterick discussed the Internet from an histori­ cal perspective, declaring it to be “management proof,” and stating that ISDN is too little, too late, and too expensive a method o f providing high bandwidth to be the solution o f choice. He discussed the proposed Internet II and its probable successor, Internet III, and warned about extrapolation, which he defined as inter­ preting the future based on the assumption that it will b e like the past. While usually reliable, extrapolation does not work in a time o f revo­ lution or paradigm shift. Legislators are extrapo- lating when they try to regulate the Net, which Heterick declared to be “regulation proof.” He opined that microcash and secure transactions will soon predominate on the Net, and that the current effort to hold intermediary transmission points responsible for Internet content is ridicu­ lous and will not work. Paul Mockapetris, director o f engineering at a company called “©Home,” discussed his firm’s plans to hook the nation’s hom es to the Inter­ net via cable TV. Mockapetris, one o f the cre­ ators o f the Internet, made a very cogent case for cable as the medium o f ch oice for the home market. He stated that there are 100 million homes available in the U.S., and cable is al­ ready installed in most o f these. Cable is al­ ways “up,” and has a bandwidth capacity right now that far exceeds what other Internet carri­ ers are likely to offer for som e time. Sim ulations of reality Professor Sherry Turkle o f MIT worried about high school students who are excellent at us­ ing simulation programs such as SIM City, but who see these simulations merely as games they cannot change, and about which they have no real insight (she discussed one young girl, an “expert” at the game, w ho attributed her suc­ cess to principles such as “raising taxes always leads to riots”). She worries that young people are more interested in simulations o f reality than in reality itself, and argues that it is dangerous to be creating a generation that does not see reality as inherently more interesting than simu­ lation, especially because simulation games are just m odels, co m p lex but often unrealistic. Turkle pointed out that the definition o f “com ­ puter literacy” used to include being able to program a computer or understand its inner workings; it now means the ability to use soft­ ware and surf the Net. This shift o f definition is William Miller is director o f libraries a t F lorida Atlantic University a n d p resid en t o f ACRL; e-m ail: m iller@ acc.f a u .edu mailto:miller@accfaii.edu Febru ary 1 9 9 7 / 9 7 another dimension o f the same problem: pro­ gressive alienation from direct experience. How w e p la n to do it good The 20 “Project Briefings” were much more focused, on topics such as “Overview and Dis­ cussion o f Meta Content Format (MCF): A Pro­ posed Open Standard for a Format Represent­ ing a W id e R an ge o f In fo rm a tio n a b o u t Content.” One constant in these sessions was in the one marked difference betw een them and most sessions at library conferences: in­ stead o f being about “How We Did It G ood,” they were about “How W e P la n to Do It G ood.” The line betw een vaporware and reality was hard to see at times, but the air was thick with plans for on-demand publishing and immedi­ ate electronic access to pretty much everything. Many projects described in the briefings are still on the drawing board but will undoubt­ edly com e to fruition in one way or another because they are funded by private foundations or government agencies. The “Getty-RLG Dis­ tributed Database Initiative,” for instance, will com bine the Getty art research databases with RLG’s network infrastructure, enabling remote data entry and decentralized editorial functions. “University o f Virginia Library to Explore Inter­ net Future o f Rare Books” will be a two-year, $400,000 study underwritten by the Mellon Foundation to determine if rare research mate­ rials can be made available at reasonable cost on the Web. The “National Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations” is a project with sup­ port from the government and other groups. Internet II: Creating “ g igapop s” “The Internet II Project: Focusing on a New Generation o f Internet Applications,” perhaps the most fashionable session, was presented by William H. Graves, UNC-Chapel Hill, and M. Stuart Lynn, University o f California. This Internet II, still some years away, will not re­ place the current Internet. Graves and Lynn see the development o f new and more powerful versions o f the Internet as a continuing evolu­ tionary process. This next version, now in the capital intensive phase, will be funded by con­ tributing schools (probably limited to 200) with the University o f California and other large in­ stitutions taking the lead. The creators hope for some government support also. The Inter­ net II depends on the creation o f “gigapops” which do not yet exist, but which Graves and Lynn are confident can be built eventually. The confluence of libraries Not all o f the project briefings were so futuris­ tic; many simply described current projects, ven­ dor activities, or trends. For instance, Swets de­ s c r ib e d its n ew s u b s c rip tio n s e r v ic e for electronic serials, and Dartmouth College (rep­ resented by Malcolm Brown) described its “En­ terprise-Wide Information System.” (In addition to its continuing goals, CNI has announced a new goal: Enter-prisewide Information Strate­ gies.) The confluence o f libraries and comput­ ing at institutions large and small was a com ­ mon theme at this meeting, as it was at the CAUSE meeting which preceded CNI in San Francisco. The “ presence” of Paul Evan Peters A pall hung over this meeting because o f the shocking, untimely death o f Paul Evan Peters, CNI’s executive director and guiding spirit, just w eeks before the conference was held. Peters personified CNI for many years, and his death was a visible blow to many at the meeting. But his presence was everywhere, not only in the memorial service held in his honor, but at so many sessions where his influence was pal­ pable. An occasional award is being established at CNI in Peters’s memory. ■