Subject: Re: J-Schools, the Info Highway, Today's Tech or Manana's, &c. From: jvncnet!mcc.com!wilt (bill wilt) Date: Tue, 10 May 1994 05:25:11 +1154

Cc: online-news@marketplace.com (online)
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Status: O

Rex Ballard wrote:

>Others, such as WSJ are harbingers of
>opportunity, nearly every article is an opening to take some kind of action
>(buy stock, joint ventures, contact marketing,...).  Even "bad" news is an
>opportunity to sell short.  When DJ readers got the news about the world
>trade center exploding, they got on the phones to set up offices in
>New Jersey.
>
>What disappears in on-line journalism is the sense of context.  In a newspaper,
>you might see a front page that has first columns of a rape, a robbery,
>a bombing in the middle east, and in the bottom right corner, an announcement
>that Microsoft has released a new product.  Because the Context of the
>first page is "Bad News", the product announcement may be perceived as "bad
>news"
>too.  The best example of "Bad News" was 60 minutes.  If the 60 minutes team
>were to cover a breakthrough in cancer treatment, it would be perceived as 
>"bad news".
>
>In the on-line universe, parsers, profilers, and filters deliver only the
>subjects and topics the reader requested.  How many people will want to read
>about disasters and crime?  A few lawyers?  Insurance adjusters?
>
>Most people are going to want the information that calls them into action.
>What are their suppliers, customers, and competitors doing?  What breakthroughs
>are happening in their industry.  How might today's news give them an
>opportunity to act?  Even the "bad news" is more likely to be read by someone
>who is likely to take action.
>
>This is just one person's opinions and views.  Does it fit?

Rex, this was great to read, just now. I'm procrastinating/vacillating
putting finishing touches on the business plan for The New Mexico
Interactive! Digital DailyC, at once living in possibility, getting tossed
back to "what's wrong here?" and "It'll never work," and "why should I
bother,"--and reading these posts, and my one-lung bbs has been ringing
constantly for the past hour, with brand new logons of Hispanic-surnamed
people logging on to Albuquerque Interactive!, an experiment of months'
standing, no-fee, just tell me what you think a public BBS should be like,
thank you, and entering CHAT to ask me what's what--with one line, the only
person you get to chat with is the sysop--and it's kind of amazing. Really.
"So, Hi, how'd you hear about us?" "Well, I just got a computer and someone
gave me this list and said, 'These are bbs's. call them' and so I called."

Mind you, this is happening on the computer over my shoulder across the
room as I'm typing this. And it's never happened like this before--like
hellzapoppin, is what it feels like.

One of the human "conversations" that we all get at birth, or pretty close
thereto, is "Something's wrong here." 

But the other "conversations" we get are what's up with humankind, at least
in our little circle of it. Whatever that happens to be. Whether "life
sucks, and then you die." or "Hey, what's with this electronic stuff, 'ey
hoser? Let's try it out."

It never struck me 'til your post that I got interested in the WSJ at
precisely the time I went to work for Atex in 1980, and my job was to
finish what I'd started under Stan Asimov (Isaac's bro.), which was:
Totally integrated everything systems for Newsday--then called "a
pagination system." I had shifted, with that job change, from a "trained
observer" to a full-fledged "developer"--living into the future, rather
than chronicling the past.

Rex, save that post--it's the best verdamnt ad for/explanation of the WSJ
I've ever seen. (Or maybe it just struck me so tonight, as I sit here on a
balmy Albuquerque evening, a Sony frame-grabbing super-8 aimed at my
physiognomy, an old Voice Navigator stick microphone pointing at my nose,
arching over a bar-code reading stylus, at a stand-up desk and keyboard,
with 1.2 gig micronet, old 40 meg Syquest, micronet 2.6 gig DAT, ancient
NEC intersect cd-rom reader and Sony video-8 VCR, hooked to ancient 19-inch
Trinitron 1948 (and my business plan's awaitin' over on a powerbook 180,
with a little 500 meg internal drive, so I can demo a prototypical kitchen
"information appliance" called "What's4Dinner?C" which only needs a 4D
database of 85mb so people can "SaveTime4theFamilyC" and not go
grocery-shopping anymore, unless they just looooove it.)

What incredible things are possible!!! with this technology?  And this
conversation is UP right now with humanity. I think Suzanne R. Lainson
(Hey, Suzanne, how's Scotto? [Converse, grandaddy of OneNet, toiler for
Apple Computer & eoWorld--and when're you gonna put The Wilt Letter
online?])--I'm in a free-association frame of mind right now (ok, ok, or
terrified of putting my neck out to ask for help to do what I believe
in--work hard, learn more, work hard, learn more--you should be able to do
this by yourself--only sissies ask for help--be a man)...
Anyway, Suzanne notes that there are so many good, serious, thoughtful
scholarly things to read that she doesn't have time for, so why should she
bother with "amateurish" stuff from the keyboards of Jedermann.  

What strikes me about that is: All the aphorisms and alliteration and
erudition and "professionalism of presentation" in some of these scholarly
sources is past-based; not living toward the future, from the future, or
whatever you want to call it--not living into opportunity, into a call for
action.  It's more like: I know what a good scholarly paper should be like.
 I know what a good newspaper should be like. I know what a good grocery
store should be like. I'll make one of those, but bigggger! (cleverer,
cuter, more erudite.

WHAT IF: we were hanging out here on this digital frontier, playing.
Playing with all of the total engagement of 3 and 4 and 6 year olds
playing--paying attention to nothing else. Time flies. Nothing else
matters. total absorption. Not a thought, not one, about what others may
think. Sort of like that.

But playing with all the experience and skill of 50-year-olds, 70-year-olds
(senior-net), 28-year-old PhDs, 47-year-old managing
editors/parents/spouses/citizens, 17-year-olds who've been programming
since they were 11 and got their first Atari (or 8, and snuck time on their
big brother's PC). Not freedom of the press. Or a clever "Freedom From The
Press" as in "crushed trees smeared with ink" technology (John B. Evans,
News Inc.). But freedom from the past.  (though we are, of course, indeed
well-counseled to note that "Those who refuse to learn from the past are
condemned to repeat it."  Heavy, man. Heavy. Not "something's wrong here"
but "something was wrong there, and if we don't fix it, then something'll
be wrong here!)

to Suzanne (and myself--as I know the terror of tossing out paper--even the
WSJ--before on-line services are ubiquitous enough and cheap enough to
really, really do that, just to see what it's like to live in that
terror--oh, I'll have missed something significant, I won't be an expert
(work hard, learn more, work hard, learn more). What'll people think of
me!?)):

   Anyhow, to Suzanne, about missing that important scholarly thought:
What, me worry?  If someone said something you should know about, wrote
something you should know about, then a dozen others you know or will meet
or will have met have said or will have said the same thing, or wrote or
will have written the same thing. We just have to pay attention, be aware,
all the time that we're playing, 108%. That's just the way humans work,
when they're talking one with another. And if we indeed do act with the
fully attentive joy and inquisitiveness of children--as if growth and
development were something that continues forever, until we die--then maybe
we won't be like "anyone" in "a pretty how town, with up-so-floating many
bells down," who "down they forgot as up they grew" (unless I forgot the
line from my 12-th grade English teacher's favorite poem--well, I don't
know if it was his, but it was mine for the nonce.

  And we will have an information superhighway. And we will have universal
access, and universal literacy (in word, picture, and sound).  And.  (gasp,
pant, pant, thump) [Futurist's eyes glaze over and (s)he swoons, stage
left.]

  On the other hand, the fact that any of us are exchanging thoughts in
this manner, with all this gear, suggests that we are indeed living in
possibility, however we may gainsay it in our paragraphs. Living out what
seems to me more and more these days to be a universal human imperative to 
 c o m m u n i c a t e .   Not like showing off; like shaking hands. Like
sharing. Being in touch.

 Whew.  Now I'm ready to go back to the business plan.
 Wilco. Over'n out.

bill wilt

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Bill Wilt, Editor, The Wilt Letter: How to Flourish in An All Digital World
505-298-1333 vox      505-298-7034 fax       505-298-7514 BBS (28.8K,8,n,1)
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To: Ken Laws