Telepreneurship training could start as early as the third grade to teach the concepts and skills students will doubtless need to be successful. School-based community networks could provide convenient interaction with the local business community as we all look toward what we need to be teaching our students and citizens about the shifting world of work.
How can a National Information Infrastructure be fairly implemented? Those who receive gigabit bandwidth services may enjoy disproportionate advantages over those, perhaps in the rural United States, who do not. How can we all move forward together? Local electronic bulletin board systems offer a minimal-cost network server model to provide store-and-forward Internet e-mail services, as well as local free access to customized menus containing self-directed training and high-value information specific to the local community, gleaned from the Internet. These can be supplemented by SLIP access to full Internet only as needed, within local budget restraints.
Transmission speed does not automatically equate to value of information … The highest-value information is typically condensed information that may not require more than the simplest transmission technologies to deliver. Given this premise, perhaps the highest-value network service would be e-mail access to experts who provide condensed information and training targeted to individuals’ specific needs. Equity of access to such human-mediated services must be assured.
The ability to access sources of highly specific expertise and to manufacture this knowledge into unique information products and courses of action is likely to be key to future commercial success for individuals as well as businesses. Perhaps those who collaborate best to share information with others will be the most successful entrepreneurs, a key national resource … The nations that first establish a high degree of citizen “teleliteracy” may well become the new global economic leaders. Thus, successful implementation of the economic potential of networking must emphasize the development of these skills.
The abilities to glean specific information rapidly from global sources and to work collaboratively with others to mold that information into entrepreneurial opportunities through global niche markets appear to be the key skills required for success in the emerging global info-gathering society. As the rate of change increases, success depends more and more on an individual’s ability to learn steadily, and to make decisions based on up-to-the-minute information.
Locally accessible low-cost community networks allow any community to provide training opportunities for its citizens that are targeted toward community strengths and the best potential economic opportunities … Training provided by the federal government would not be likely to have a local focus on a community’s most promising opportunities or necessarily reflect a budget-sensitive approach.
Communities need to learn how to enhance their local information infrastructure, to rebuild and rehumanize from within through the many advantages of local telecommuting, and to use those same developed skills in a global context via the Internet. Communities will be better served if NII implementation places emphasis on assisting citizens to access that information proven to be beneficial, and not just providing the physical connection.
Networking, by its very nature, leads away from rigid stratified structures and toward informal, lateral, socially supportive learning partnerships. All of us can learn enough to help someone else survive. Once this is understood by the goodhearted among us, the incredible power of networked, knowledgeable, caring people taking purposeful collaborative action may begin to effect world-wide change, transcending governments, cultures and religions.
Networking makes it possible to be “relationship-rich” even when one might feel isolated in one’s local environment. Isolated individuals without access to supportive on-line communities are likely to be “relationship-poor.”
In the past, communities have formed to meet needs as a group that we cannot meet as individuals. Today, group protection from marauding animals or enemies is being replaced by group protection from the assaults of constant change and too much information. As information networking begins to enter mainstream society, each of us discovers new sources of data in our specific areas of interest, and suffers from the increasing pressure of information overload … Networking increases the opportunities for collaboration, which helps protect individuals from information overload.