bad memory

[David Farber <farber@central.cis.upenn.edu>]

Date: Fri, 6 Jan 1995 14:05:22 -0500
From: Charles Brownstein <cbrownst@CNRI.Reston.VA.US>


Dave- planning for this "overnight Gingrich innovation" of congress
business on line began in 1987 when Gorden Bell participated in laying out
an architecture for information systemsfor the House and Senate. It got a
big boost last year when many members went on line, and now that most
Executive branch agencies and White House have active Web sites, (following
years of work by the FNC to legitimize IP over the objections of GSA and
NIST, and the push of the National Performance Review report on Reinventing
Government With Information Technology).


Newt does understand the power of direct access. Next he needs to
understand how much more ecomimically sound, and feasible it is to support
the R&D that brings the technology into the price range of every American,
and the necessity of an assured infrastructure of virtually infinite
channel capacity-- ie as opposed to giving everyone a laptop or even a tax
credit for one.


          WASHINGTON (Reuter) - Congress moved further into the
>computer age Thursday when House Speaker Newt Gingrich and
>Librarian of Congress James Billington announced that a new
>information system called Thomas, after Thomas Jefferson, was
>now available to people around the world.
>         The database of congressional information, including the
>full texts of House bills, will be available through Internet.
>It will vastly expand online information available when it
>becomes fully operational, the Library of Congress said.
>         Gingrich hailed the new system during an appearance before
>the House Ways and Means Committee saying that information on
>the House would now be available in 84 countries.
>
>***********
>         And he gave the committee what he called ``a nutty idea,''
>to get members ``thinking beyond the norm.''
>         ``Maybe we need a tax credit for the poorest Americans to
>buy a laptop,'' he said.
>***********
>         ``Now, maybe that's wrong, maybe it's expensive, maybe we
>can't do it, but I'll tell you, any signal we can send to the
>poorest Americans that says, 'We're going into a 21st century,
>third wave information age, and so are you, and we want to carry
>you with us,' begins to change the game.''


Charles N. Brownstein
Executive Director
Cross-Industry Working Team
Corporation for National Research Initiatives
1895 Preston White Drive
Suite 100
Reston, VA 22091


Tel: (703) 620-8990
Fax: (703) 620-0913


Internet: cbrownst@cnri.reston.va.us


On the Web: http://www.cnri.reston.va.us:3000/XIWT/public.html