Forum
Can the “Next-Generation Internet” Effectively
Support “Ordinary Citizens”?
Rob Kling
Center for Social Informatics, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana, USA
KEY ISSUES
President Clinton advocated public support for a ª nextgeneration Internetº in his 1998 State of the Union Address:
We should enable all the world’s people to explore the
far reaches of cyberspace. Think of thisÐ the ® rst time I
made a State of the Union speech to you, only a handful
of physicists used the World Wide Web. Literally, just a
handful of people. Now, in schools, in libraries, homes and
businesses, millions and millions of Americans surf the Net
every day. We must give parents the tools they need to help
protect their children from inappropriate material on the Internet. But we also must make sure that we protect the exploding global commercial potential of the Internet. We can
do the kinds of things that we need to do and still protect our
kids.
For one thing, I ask Congress to step up support for building the next generation Internet. It’s getting kind of clogged,
you know. And the next generation Internet will operate
at speeds up to a thousand times faster than today. (Clinton,
1998)
The Internet has been an important extension of the
nation’s (and world’s) communications infrastructureÐ
widely used in education, journalism, and research, as well
as for commerce and entertainment. The ® rst generation
of the Internet supported varied uses, but its popularity
Received 29 July 1998; accepted 18 August 1998.
Roberta Lamb helped me to develop the contrast between social access and technological access. Ya-ching Lee helped ® nd some important
sources. Helpful comments on this article were provided by Phil Agre,
John Cherniavsky, Joanna Fortuna, Les Gasser, Geoff McKim, Ron
Rice, and Rick Weingarten.
Address correspondence to Rob Kling, Center for Social Informatics, School of Library and Information Science, Indiana University,
Main Library, Room 012, 10th and Jordan, Bloomington, IN 47405,
USA. E-mail: [email protected].
The Information Society, 15:57±63, 1999
Copyright ° c 1999 Taylor & Francis
0197-2243 /99 $12.00 + .00
was fueled by e-mail. In the 1990s, the World Wide Web
(WWW) supported a new array of documentary and pictorial communicationsÐ as well as a continuing stream
of innovations in applications such as electronic publishing, digital libraries, and electronic commerce. The nextgeneration Internet (NGI) is a major R&D initiative to
develop a new, higher speed architecture that can support more technically sophisticated communications such
as real-time video and that can enable various classes of
service that range in their speed, reliability, and security.
Clinton’ s speech and similar comments from his administration have sometimes blurred the distinction between
the NGI as a $100 million/year research program and other
ª bigger pipeº deployment plans designed to help decrease
the Internet’ s congestion. In contrast with a bigger pipe,
the NGI’ s advocates argue that it will lead to a new array
of applications in areas such as health care, education, scienti® c research, emergency services, and entertainment.
However, there are many questions about the extent to
which the major direct bene® ciaries will be wealthier organizations and individuals and how much ª ordinary peopleº
may be able to use them for their own purposes as well.
These new video-rich applications could have profound
effects upon professional practices and values in various
® elds as illustrated through vivid vignettes in NGI planning documents (see www.ngi.gov). A signi® cant fraction
of these envisioned applications use the NGI for enriched
videoconferencing between professionals or between professionals and their clients. Some of these applications also
hinge on the abilities of system developers and professionals to integrate data from diverse sourcesÐ such as bringing medical records together from different clinics and
jurisdictions.
The NGI is organized as a research project whose participants (and user community) will initially be research
universities and some high-tech ® rms (CRA, 1997). However, NGI advocates expect that the new technologies, such
57
58
R. KLING
as protocols and network management tools, will support
services that should be widely used within 10 to 20 years.
Because these applications highlight new possibilities
enabled by the NGI, it might appear that technological access is the primary roadblock. Technological access refers
to the physical availability of suitable equipment, including computers of adequate speed and equipped with appropriate software for a given activity. There is an important
but partial truth to this observation, since today’ s Internet
is incapable of effectively supporting any of the numerous
intriguing video-intensive vignettes of NGI applications
that appear in the 1997 NGI Concept Paper, congressional
testimony, and specially commissioned white papers (see
National Coordination Of® ce for Computing, Information,
and Communications, 1997, and www.ngi.gov).
However, many of these scenarios, such as a Dr. Kildare
interviewing a sick person, giving medical tests and diagnosis at the person’ s home via video, assume that ª ordinary
peopleº would have reliable access to new network services. (It also assumes that the person fortunate enough to
have a doctor who will make ª on-line house callsº also has
an array of diagnostic equipment and skills to use them, as
well as telemetric interfaces that the person can effectively
use when sick!) Other scenarios of ª ordinary peopleº using the NGI similarly assume that computer support is easy
to organize, and that access to information and services is
not problematic.
Social access refers to know-how, a mix of professional
knowledge, economic resources, and technical skills to
use technologies in ways that enhance professional practices and social life. In practice, social accessÐ the abilities of diverse organizations and people from many walks
of life to actually use these servicesÐ will be critical if
they are to move from the laboratories and pilot projects
into widespread use where they can vitalize the nation and
the economy. Social access should not be viewed as ª addonº to a technological structure. Many systems designers
have learned, for example, that a well-designed system
does not simply tack on a ª computer interfaceº after its
internal structure has been set in place. The design of
human interfaces and internal structures is highly coupled for systems that effectively support people’ s work and
communication (see National Research Council, 1997, for
an integrated review). In a similar way, social access is
integral to the design and development of systems and services that are to be widely used.
Some analysts do not view social access for ª ordinary
peopleº to the NGI as problematic, since they believe that
access costs will rapidly decline and the public’ s computing skills will continue to rise. In this view, time and
markets will resolve most access issues. In contrast, social
access to the NGI is likely to prove vexing for many people,
based on what careful studies of computer use and Internet use have shown us. This article examines some of the
challenges in the deployment and use of NGI technologies
with special attention to ª the average citizen.º We start by
examining what we know about these issues.
INTERNET USE TODAY—WHAT WE KNOW
There are innumerable examples of the use and value of
the Internet in providing new kinds of communications to
support a cornucopia of human activities in virtually every
profession and kind of institution. In the United States, the
professional and middle classes have found the Internet to
be useful for communication with some government agencies, for some forms of shopping, for tracking investments,
for maintaining ties with friends and family via e-mail, and
as a source of entertainment. While many people install
additional phone lines for on-line computer use, affordable
telephone service and Internet service providers (ISPs) are
available in urban areas (Kahin & Keller, 1995). Access to
ISPs and even basic telephone service is more problematic
in many rural areas. At this time, high-speed communications, such as ISDN or even T1 lines, are available in only
certain markets, and most people seem to ® nd their installation and use to be prohibitively expensive.
The Changing Demographics of Internet Users
In 1995, about 28.8 million people in the United States
16 years and over had access to the Internet at work,
school or home; 16.4 million people used the Internet and
11.5 million people of these people used the Web. About
80% of these people used the Internet at least once a week.
However about 182 million people 16 years and over did
not have access to the Internet (Hoffman et al., 1996).
A 1997 nationwide household study found that computer
ownership and e-mail access were rising rapidlyÐ 93.8%
of households have telephones, 36.6% have personal computers, 26.3% have modems, and 18.6% have on-line access (McConnaughey & Lader, 1998). The total number
of people who have access to the Internet has been doubling every 2 years since the early 1990s, but at some point
will slow down.1
Individuals’ demographic characteristics, such as their
education, income, and locations, are highly correlated
with their use of the Internet. While families with college graduates were twice as likely as those of high-school
graduates to use network services in 1993, these disparities had decreased since the late 1980s (Anderson et al.,
1995, pp. 24±29). Some studies ® nd that the average and
median incomes of Internet users are declining toward
ª mainstream levelsº (GVU, 1997). However, there is evidence that averages mask important differences, and that
the disparity in computer network use is actually growing between poor and wealthy households (Anderson et
al., 1995, pp. 24±29). McConnaughey and Lader (1998)
identi® ed four groups whose ownership of telephones,
NEXT-GENERATION INTERNET ACCESS
computers, and Internet access lags well behind national
averages: rural poor; rural and central city minorities;
young households (below age 25); and female-headed
households. Many of these gaps have increased since 1989
(Anderson et al., 1995, p. 38).
One reason that lower income families use the Internet
lessÐ aside from costsÐ is because of various ª externalitiesº such as people needing technical support and access
to a community of other people who communicate on-line.
People tend to be able to get help from people similar to
themselves, so that low usage levels within a group tend
to be somewhat self-perpetuating (Agre, 1997). Unlike
television, Nintendo, and stand-alone PCs, e-mail is useful primarily if one’ s friends or family also have access
(see Agre, 1997; Bollier, 1998). A recent study found that
the Internet is a social medium for many ordinary people:
Electronic mail use was more popular than use of the
Web, more stable, and drove continued use of the Internet
overall. One reason is that Email sustains ongoing dialogues
and relationships. In contrast, the Web has more bounded
properties, in which information gathering, for example, for
school assignments, purchase decisions, or paid employment
is satis® ed with one or a few visits. . . . The Internet is a social
and emotional technology, and . . . it sustains social networks.
(Kiesler et al., 1997)
There are some data about the extent to which schools
are connected to the Internet. In February 1998, the National Center for Education Statistics reported that 78% of
U.S. schools had Internet access, twice that of 1994. However, the distribution of online resources is uneven: 63%
of schools with a high percentage of poor students offered
Internet access, 84% of schools in the suburban areas had
Internet access, while 74% of urban schools had Internet access. It is common for urban high schools to have
1500±2500 students. A large school with a lab of six PCs
connected to the Internet is counted as being as connected
as a small school that has six Internet-connected PCs in every classroom. The meaning of numbers like these comes
primarily from anecdotal evidence, and we know very little about the actual use of the Internet in schools (see,
however, Garner & Gillingham, 1996).
Supporting Social Access to Computers
and Networks
There is a large and important body of research about the
actual practices of managers and professionals in using
computer technologies in various settings, from research
laboratories to consulting ® rms, from insurance companies
to manufacturing ® rms. Of course, none of these studies
examines professionals using NGI-enhanced applications!
Some of the more recent studies examine how ª ordinary
peopleº use the Internet and related network information
services.
59
Social informatics is the ® eld that examines the development, use, and consequences of information technologies in cultural and institutional contexts (see http://www.
slis.indiana.edu /SI). The research is analytical, systematic, and empirically grounded (Kling & Star, 1998; Kling
et al., forthcoming). Social informatics research has produced some useful ideas and ® ndings that are applicable
to many kinds of information technologies and shed interesting light on the future NGI developments. The concept
of ª computing packagesº is one such idea that is central
to understanding social access to networked systems, including the Internet and the NGI.
Computing Packages. Information and communication technologies are often discussed as tools or simple
appliances, even when they refer to complex arrangements
of varied equipment, organizational practices as in the
WWW, or airline reservation systems. In practice, it is
more helpful to view speci® c information technologies
as a ª sociotechnical packageº that encompasses a complex, interdependent system comprised of people (computer specialists, managers), hardware (computer mainframes, workstations, peripherals, telecommunications
equipment), software (operating systems, utilities and application programs), techniques (management science
models, procedures, training/support/help), and data.
Computing and communications technologies are increasingly intertwined in the everyday functioning of other systems at all levels of organizations and society. This package view has substantial repercussions for understanding
how information technologies in¯ uence social change.
Two organizations that acquire the same set of equipment usually develop different sociotechnical ª IT packages.º A simple contrast between a typical university
library and a typical elementary school that each acquire
20 PCs, a server, and a high-speed laser printer to support Internet access helps illustrate the concept. The university library is likely to have a skilled technical staff
(that supports other library systems) to install and maintain the equipment. There are likely to be library staff
(or academic computing support staff) who are assigned
and trained to answer students’ questions, both about computer use and about ways to effectively search the Internet.
The computers are likely to be connected to a high-speed
campus network, and people who wish to use them may
be required to have a university network ID.
In contrast, the typical elementary school is unlikely
to have its own technical support staff, and is most likely
to rely upon the school district’ s computer specialists to
upgrade and repair the PCs and printer on request. If the
PCs are installed in a lab, students will typically be given
access for a class period or after school. (A network ID is
unlikely to be required, and visiting parents and short-term
school aides may be able to log in on their own.) If the 20
60
R. KLING
PCS are distributed into 10 classrooms, teachers are more
likely to integrate their use into class topics. But the typical
elementary-school teacher still has limited computer and
Internet searching skills. In general, technical support is
less available at elementary schools, and, as a result, they
have more equipment out of service for longer periods of
time, and software upgrades are less frequent.
The organization of instructors’ time also differs in the
typical university and elementary school. The typical university instructor is in class from 6 to 12 hours per week,
while the typical elementary school teacher is in class
about 7 hours per day. While university instructors usually have other service and research obligations, they also
have much more time to prepare each week’ s classes and to
develop new inquiry-oriented activities for their students.
If we add an of® ce of mutual funds investments analysts to this contrast, the ª same equipmentº and network
access would be organized in still different ways. While
students would be expected to share computers, and would
expect to wait in line, each analyst would have his or her
own PC. For the of® ce there are often technical staff who
anticipate problems and opportunities, by organizing preventive maintenance and upgrading the PC and network
infrastructure without always being asked. There would be
more sustained and reliable access to ® nancial and news
databases and the WWW sites that help them track the
affairs of selected ® rms and the fortunes of speci® c industries. Financial analysts develop signi® cant expertise in
knowing the data sources that they use routinely; in addition, there may be special librarians who organize business
and ® nancial reports and who keep abreast of new ® nancial information sources. The computing and networking
support in high-performance organizations, such as urban
medical clinics, increasingly resembles that of the mutual fund investment ® rm rather than the university student
computer labs.
No one expects an elementary school to be organized
like a university, or either of them to be organized like
a mutual fund investment company or a medical clinic.
But researchers have found that the character of the organization profoundly shapes the character of the kinds
of computing services that the ª similar equipmentº provides. Some of the differences are visible in the ways that
computers and network services are organized.
Infrastructure for Computing Support Is Social as Well
as Technological. PCs are much more complicated to
install and use for a diverse array of tasks than are ª turnkey
appliancesº such as televisions and VCRs. While it is a
standing joke that most people don’ t know how to program
their VCRs (and thus watch an LCD blinking 00:00), most
people can reliably play a videotape and enjoy the resulting
entertainment. In contrast, PCs that use networks require
much more complex con® gurations (including data rates
and IP numbers) that can change with changes in network
con® gurations and service providers.
The NGI projects focus on one critical kind of technological infrastructureÐ high-speed computer networking. It is also understood that effective computer systems
that use NGI services will require reliable complementary
technological resourcesÐ such as printers and electricity
(reliable in urban settings, sometimes problematic after
disasters and in remote regions). What is less well appreciated is how the infrastructure for making computer systems
workable also includes a variety of resources that are social
in character. Skilled technical installers, trainers, and consultants are the most obvious social resources. However,
group-scale systems, such as those used in medical clinics,
schools, and research laboratories, also depend upon technical managers to orchestrate system maintenance, con® gurations for new users, and security procedures, as well
as upon people to document local con® gurations. In addition, people who use advanced networking applications
need know-howÐ to be able to learn to effectively integrate
them into their professional practicesÐ based on learning
from their peers or advanced professionals.
There is some debate about how much computer use has
simpli® ed in the last decade. It is probably easier to use a
stand-alone PC ª out of the box.º However, the dominant
operating systems, such as Windows 95/98/NT and Unix
(and Linux), can still stump experts when applications or
components interact badly. Maintaining reliable local networks is still an expensive adult activity, despite periodic
rumors that ª Nintendo generation 11 year olds are running
the networks in schools.º
System infrastructure is a sociotechnical system since
technical capabilities depend upon skilled people, administrative procedures, etc., and social capabilities are enabled by simpler supporting technologies (i.e., word
processors for creating technical documents, cellular telephones and pagers for contacting rapid-response consultants) (Kling, 1992).
Malfunctioning computer systems are not simply an
opportunity loss, such as a book that is bought but not read.
When people organize their days about the expectations
that key technologies will work well, and the technologies
don’ t, the people often spend considerable time tinkering
to get systems to work, waiting for help to come, and so
on. In the classroom, the teacher who spends 20 minutes
tinkering with a malfunctioning computer has also spent
one-third of a class period unavailable to the students. The
alternative of always having backup lesson plans is also
immensely time-consuming.2
Workable Computer Applications Are Usually Supported by a Strong Sociotechnical Infrastructure. The ª surface featuresº of computer systems are the most visible and
are the primary subject of debates and systems analysis.
NEXT-GENERATION INTERNET ACCESS
But they are only one part of computerization projects.
Many key parts of information systems are neither
immediately visible nor interesting in their novelty. They
include technical infrastructure, such as reliable electricity
(which may be a given in urban America, but problematic
in wilderness areas, or in urban areas after a major devastation). They also involve a range of skilled supportÐ from
people to document systems features and train people to
use them, to rapid-response consultants who can diagnose
and repair system failures.
Much of the research about appropriate infrastructure
comes from studies of systems that underperformed or
failed (Star & Ruhleder, 1996; Kling & Scacchi, 1982;
Kling, 1996). The social infrastructure for a given computer system is not homogeneous across social sites. For
example, the Worm Community System was a collaboratory for molecular biologists who worked in hundreds
of university laboratories; the key social infrastructure for
network connectivity and (UNIX) skills depended upon
the laboratory’ s work organization (and local university resources) (see Star & Ruhleder, 1996). Researchers found
that the Worm Community System was technically well
conceived, but it was rather weak as an effective collaboratory because of the uneven and often limited support for its
technical requirements in various university labs. In short,
lack of attention to local sociotechnical infrastructure can
undermine the workability of larger scale projects.
The Routine Use of Computer Systems Often Requires
Articulation Work. The concept of ª articulation workº
characterizes the efforts required to bring together diverse
materials or to resolve breakdowns in work (such as clearing a paper jam when printing a long electronic document
to read). Anomalies are common in many uses of computer systems, and professionals often develop informal
(and sometimes strange) workarounds to compensate for
recurrent dif® culties. More articulation work is required
when people use higher performance and new technologies
in a setting where older technologies dominate. It takes
some time for products to be re® ned, for organizations
to learn new procedures, and so on. Today, people who
install ISDN modems and associated software face more
articulation work than do people who install conventional
modems. As NGI applications are tried out, we would expect that ª leading-edge usersº will also face more articulation work than will their peers who use more conventional
early 21st century information technologies.
Articulation work is often invisible to people who are
not close to the place and moment of working. Articulation
work can require notable ingenuity. Unfortunately, higher
status professionals (and managers) who are buffered from
the details of computer work tend to trivialize the nature of
the work to be done. The articulation work required to keep
a PC up and running at home places more demands upon
61
ª ordinary peopleº than does computing at work, because
many workplaces provide a level of technical support that
is rarely available for people’s private computer use and
network use from their homes. Articulation work is so pervasive that (humanly) effective system designers have to
routinely examine how new systems reduce, increase, or
reorganize articulation work.
Supporting Access to the Internet
for Ordinary People
Although 50% of U.S. households may have computers
by the year 2000, organizations have been the major sites
for adopting networked information systems, especially
as implementers of advanced technologies. There are few
studies of computer use in households. In one careful study
of ª ordinary householdsº (HomeNet), researchers found
that using the Internet is too hard for many ª ordinary peopleº (Kiesler et al., 1997):
Over 70% of the households called the help desk. Calls to
the help desk represented the behavior of some of the more sophisticated users. Less sophisticated users dropped out once
they hit usability barriers. The kinds of problems logged by
help desk staff included problems in installing phone service,
con® guring the telecommunication software, busy signals
(users often blamed themselves!), buggy software, inexperience with mice, keyboards, scroll bars, terminology, radio
buttons, and menus. Yet, in our home interviews, we noted
there were many more problems participants had not called
about.
. . . We thought that as everyone learned how to use the
computer and what the Internet could do for them, the in¯ uence of their initial computer skill would decline with time.
We were wrong. Even after a year of experience with the
Internet, participants’ initial computer skill still constrained
their Internet usage. This result held across different gender
and age groups. (Kiesler et al., 1977)
Many ordinary people access computers and the Internet through community centers and public libraries (see
Law & Keltner, 1995). Mark et al. (1997) examined community technology centers and reported that:
Community technology centers provide computer access
to a majority of people who do not have technology access elsewhere. And, for individuals who have technology
access at libraries, homes or elsewhere, community technology centers provide them with additional technology applications, such as the Internet or scanners, that they do not
have access to at other locations. . . . The informal, learnercentered atmosphere that encourages exploration also was
cited as a reason for preferring a community technology center to other locations.
Community centers can often provide skilled assistance
that increases social access to network services. Industry surveys of the ª total costs of ownershipº (TCO) of
PCs in major business ® rms suggest that equipment costs
62
R. KLING
are a small fraction of TCO. Over time, support costsÐ
including training, maintaining equipment, upgrading,
recon® guration, and other articulation workÐ become major costs. The HomeNet study suggests that effectively
using the Internet is a struggle for many ordinary people. Anecdotal evidence suggests that many schoolteachers struggle with similar dif® culties when they do not
have ready access to computer consultants in their schools.
Community centers may play an important role in making
more complex NGI-based services effectively available to
many ordinary people.
WHAT SHOULD BE DONE?
A large part of the enthusiasm for the NGI has been fueled
by beliefs in the success of the Internet, an appreciation
that the current Internet architecture does not effectively
support high-speed video and high-reliability communications, and the faith that a ª better Internetº is necessary and
will bring commensurable bene® ts even if speci® c uses are
unclear today. Since the Clinton administration and technical research communities seek about $100 million per
year from Congress, much of the public material is optimistic, and indicates few reservations that major bene® ts
are certain.
The opportunities of the NGI that people envision could
be lost if the primary complexities are seen as technological, and if policymakers underestimate the ways in
which social factors in¯ uence the adoption, uses, and usability of advanced information technologies. However, it
is possible to anticipate some of the dif® culties in enabling
broad publics to directly use the new services enabled by
NGI by 2015 or 2020. It is easy to say that new technologies, markets, and time will effectively resolve these
dilemmas, but that is more of a happy mantra than a belief
that is anchored in systematic evidence about computer
usage.
If the NGI is to be more than a project for elites, connectivity and computational management must be simple
enough for any competent human to learn and understand,
yet ¯ exible enough to allow for the management of the
quality and quantity of information communicated. We do
not have a good understanding of the ways in which social access to today’ s Internet is effectively supported for
ordinary people at home and in public service agencies,
such as schools and libraries. This is a topic that merits
signi® cant inquiry, since a large body of research points
to its importance.
It is important to better understand what speci® c kinds
of networked services will actually be of value to ordinary people. For example, it was easy to extrapolate from
the importance of e-mail to assume that many people will
value videoconferencing with their doctors, friends, and
family. However, the videophone was not widely adopted
(for several reasons). People’ s preference for visual pri-
vacy at home was a major consideration (Austen, 1998).
Even in of® ces, many people who have videophones or
desktop videoconferencing mask their cameras or make
notable and time-consuming cosmetic adjustments to their
clothes and desktops before answering video calls (Austen,
1998). It is important to understand the underlying social judgements that people make in using networked servicesÐ at home, in public facilities, and at work.
The NGI promises to be a profound advance in the nations’ telecommunications infrastructure. The high-bandwidth capabilities of the NGI can support promising applications for managers, professionals, and their clients.
While the NGI is a critical enabling technology, it will
have to be shaped as part of larger sociotechnical computing systems for these applications to yield the anticipated social bene® ts. Social access to the NGI will be as
crucial as technological access. This will require careful
in-context examinations of the overall computing packages that are used and experienced by people at home, in
schools, at work, and in other places. Meaningful social
informatics research is not simply a set of post hoc ª social
assessments,º but is actually formative in helping to shape
the design of new systems and services.
This early stage of planning is a critical time to undertake research into the social aspects of advanced networking technologies that will help them work for ordinary people in varied social settings outside of the laboratory and
specially supported pilot projects. There are some ® eldsÐ
such as computer-supported cooperative workÐ where
there have been longstanding collaborations between researchers who have predominantly technical or social orientations, to understand sociotechnical design and systems that embody good sociotechnical design principles.
These kinds of collaborations are dif® cult, but have proven
to be essential (see Bowker et al., 1997). A collaborative
research program of this kind is needed for the kinds of
systems and services being developed under the NGI umbrella.
The National Institutes of Health National Human
Genome Research Institute has committed 5% of its annual
research budget to study ethical, legal, and social implications of developing and working with human genome
databases (NHGRI, 1997). This approach seems appropriate for NGI research as well. One straightforward way
to fund social research about advanced networking applications that will identify ways to improve its value for
ordinary citizens, as well as for service agencies such as
schools and libraries, is to use 5% of the NGI research
budget.
NOTES
1. At any given time, the estimates can vary by a fact of two or
more, depending upon the stringency of the criteria that characterize
Internet access or Internet use (i.e., having an account for receiving or
NEXT-GENERATION INTERNET ACCESS
sending e-mail, having WWW access, having used the account within
the last N months) (Hoffman et al., 1996). By even stringent criteria,
the number of Internet users is continuing to rise rapidly.
2. Soloway and Norris (1998, pp. 12±14) provide a wrenching example of some of the cascading mishaps that disrupt the lives of teachers and students in networked classrooms based on their experiences in
working with middle schools in Michigan.
REFERENCES
Agre, P. 1997. Building community networks. In Reinventing technology, rediscovering community: Critical studies in computing as
a social practice, eds. P. E. Agre and D. Schuler, pp. 241±248.
Norwood, NJ: Ablex.
Anderson, R. H., Bikson, T. K., Law, S. A., and Mitchell, B. M.
1995. Universal access to e-mail: Feasibility and societal implications. RAND, MR-650-MF. [http://www.rand.org/publications /
MR/MR650/]
Austen, I. 1998. Videophone s evolve, slowly: A perennial dream of
futurists has arrived, but a revolution in telecommunications has not.
New York Times July 16: D1, D7.
Bollier, D. 1998. Social Venture Capital for Universal Electronic CommunicationsÐ A Conference Report, April 24±25, 1997Ð The Aspen Institute, Washington, DC. ISBN 0-89-843-227-8 . [http://www.
iaginteractive.com/emfa/venture.htm]
Bowker, G., Star, S. L., Turner, W., and Gasser, L., eds. 1997. Social
science, technical systems and cooperative work: Beyond the great
divide. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Clinton, W. J. 1998. 1998 State of the Union Address. [http://www.
whitehouse.gov/WH/SOTU98 /address.html]
Computing Research Association. 1997. Research Challenges for the
Next Generation Internet. [http://www.cra.org/main/cra.info.html]
Garner, R., and Gillingham, M. G. 1996. Internet communication in six
classrooms: Conversations across time, space, and culture. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
GVU. 1997. GVU’s WWW User Surveys. GVU Homepage (online). Available from World Wide Web. [http://www.cc.gatech.edu/
gvu/user surveys/]
Hoffman, D. L., Kalsbeek, W. D., and Novak, T. P. 1996. Internet
and Web Use in the United States: Baselines for Commercial Development. Project 2000 Working Paper, Owen Graduate School,
Vanderbilt University, July.
Kahin, B., and Keller, J., eds. 1995. Public access to the Internet.
Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Kiesler, S., Kraut, R., Mukhopadhya y, T., and Scherlis, W. 1997.
Homenet Overview: Recent Results from a Field Trial of Resi-
63
dential Internet Use, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA.
[http://homenet.andrew.cmu.edu/progress/ovrview8697.html]
Kling, R., and Scacchi, W. 1982. The web of computing: Computing
technology as social organization. In Advances in Computers, vol. 21.
New York: Academic Press.
Kling, R. 1992. Behind the terminal: The critical role of computing
infrastructure in effective information systems’ development and use.
In Challenges and strategies for research in systems development,
eds. W. Cotterman and J. Senn, pp. 153±201. New York: John Wiley.
Kling, R. 1996. Computerization and controversy: Value con¯ icts and
social choices, 2nd ed. San Diego: Academic Press.
Kling, R., and Star, S. L. 1998. Human centered systems in the perspective of organizational and social informatics. Computers and Society
28(1):22±29. [http:/www.slis.indiana.edu/CSI]
Kling, R., Crawford, H., Rosenbaum, H., Sawyer, S., and Weisband,
S. (Forthcoming). Information Technologies in Human Contexts:
Learning from Organizational and Social Informatics. Center for
Social Informatics. Indiana University. Bloomington, IN.
Law, S. A., and Keltner, B. 1995. Civic networks: Social bene® ts of
on-line communities. In Universal access to e-mail: Feasibility
and societal implications, eds. R. H. Anderson, T. K. Bikson, S.
A. Law, and B. M. Mitchell, Chapter 5. [http://www.RAND.org/
publications/MR/MR650/mr650.ch5/ch5.html]
Mark, J., Cornebise, J., and Wahl, E. 1997. Community Technology Centers: Impact on Individual Participants and Their Communities. Education Development Center, Inc. Newton, MA, April.
[http://www.ctcnet.org/eval.html]
McConnaughey, J. W., and Lader, W. 1998. Falling Through the Net II:
New Data on the Digital Divide. National Telecommunications And
Information Administration, Washington, DC.
National Coordination Of® ce for Computing, Information, and
Communications. 1997. Next generation Internet Concept Paper.
[http://www.ccic.gov/ngi/concept-Jul97/pdf/ngi-cp.pdf]
National Human Genome Research Institute. 1997. About the Ethical,
Legal and Social Implications of Human Genetics Research Program.
[http://www.nhgri.nih.gov/ELSI/aboutels.html]
National Research Council. 1997. More than screen deep: Toward
every-citizen interfaces to the nation’s information infrastructure.
Washington, DC: National Academy Press. [http//www.nap.edu/
readingroom/books/screen/]
Soloway, E., and Norris C. 1998. Log on education: Using technology
to address old problems in new ways. Communications of the ACM
41(8):11±18.
Star, S. L., and Ruhleder, K. 1996. Steps towards an ecology of infrastructure: Design and access for large-scale collaborative systems.
Information Systems Research 7:111±138.