Subject: Re: Markle initiative for universal e-mail
Karen Coyle (karen.coyle@ucop.edu)
Date: Thu, 16 Apr 1998 13:51:08 -0700
Message-Id: <3.0.3.32.19980416135108.006a614c@popserv.ucop.edu> Date: Thu, 16 Apr 1998 13:51:08 -0700 To: roundtable@cni.org From: Karen Coyle <karen.coyle@ucop.edu> Subject: Re: Markle initiative for universal e-mail In-Reply-To: <008c01bd69c5$5d30e080$510605c6@sam1.idi.net>
On 4/16/98, Sam Simon <sam@simon.net> wrote:
>
> The goal of universal e-mail is, I agree, an outdated concept. It
> is, for all practical purpsoes nerly here.
I disagree with that. I don't consider a figure of 40% of the
population to be "universal," yet that's what I recall as the latest
estimate of people with email access. (Many of whom have that access
only at work, BTW, where personal use may be disallowed.)
> What we need to focus on is the next generation of communiation, high
> speed, interactive video/audio/grphics over easy to use and affordable
> home devices.
"Devices" are not the crux of the access problem, nor are high-speed
lines. The problems we face are much more complex than equipment - they
are human and social. If you are literate, healthy and English-speaking
you have a pretty good chance of getting online and make use of the Net.
If you aren't, then you have great barriers to access. Literacy is a
huge barrier - one that is not a problem with telephone use. Same with
being English-speaking: two speakers of Urdu can do fine over the
telephone, but will have a great deal of trouble communicating over an
ASCII-based keyboard device.
Now someone's going to come back and tell me that we'll soon have voice
recognition and computers and getting cheaper and easier, etc., etc.
Well, frankly, I don't give a damn... to hear about solutions that
don't exist yet and that we can't have an impact on. Although universal
e-mail may, in and of itself, sound like something from way back in 1995
or so (which I believe is the original Rand report), it has the
advantage of being an activity that we can actually organize around and
something that we can accomplish today. Solving that problem would lead
us to solve many other problems as well, like those of education and
training. The main thing is that we need a buy-in to something we can
DO, not just another "if we wait long enough, the technology will solve
it all" approach.
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Karen Coyle karen.coyle@ucop.edu
University of California Digital Library
http://www.dla.ucop.edu/~kec/
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