TITLE

SMART PEOPLE, DUMB NATIONS: Harnessing the Distributed
Intelligence of the Whole Earth Through the Internet

AUTHOR

Robert D. Steele, MA, MPA, NWC
President
OPEN SOURCE SOLUTIONS, Inc.
11005 Langton Arms Court
Oakton, Virginia 22124-1807
Voice: (703) 242-1700
Fax: (703) 242-1711
Email: 

KEYWORDS

Regional Issues, Policy Issues, Commercial and Business
Aspects, Education, Collaboration Technologies,
Community Networking Services, Education and Research
Communities, National and Regional Initiatives,
Mission Oriented Networks, Information Infrastructure
and the Role of Governments, Intellectual Property
Rights, Economic Policy, Commercial Use of the
Internet, Electronic Commerce, Publication, Emerging 
Business Opportunities, Legal Considerations, Global
Issues, Building New Global Learning Communities,
Promoting New Cultures of Learning and Teaching,
Encouraging New Partnership; Industry, Government,
Community.

ABSTRACT

	The Internet has matured.  Although it must
continue to be concerned with standards and the extention
of its capabilities to all corners of the Whole Earth,
it has for all practical purposes achieved global reach.

	Now, as the structure of topics for INET '95 so
clearly demonstrates, The Internet Society and all who are
a part of the Internet must begin to concern themselves
with practical issues of policy, governance, commerce,
and education.  In brief, the Internet must now become the
primary vehicle for harnessing the distributed intelligence
of the Whole Earth.  It is no longer connectivity that is
fundamental, but rather content, and the human expertise
creating and communicating the content.

	It is time that The Internet Society deliberated
upon how best to nurture national and corporate
information strategies which would better enable the
global integration of content and the global coordination
of research & development, both in the context of a
secure electronic environment--an environment which permits
Inter-nauts to work and play safely.

	The fundamental elements of any national or 
corporate information strategy are four:

	CONNECTIVITY.  There must be a fundamental
commitment to enabling every citizen or employee to connect
electronically with every other citizen or employee, and
with all others beyond the boundaries of a specific nation
or corporation.  Strategies and policies must be devised
which encourage the adoption of Internet connectivity as a 
fundamental tool of both governance and commerce, while
respecting internal cultural constraints and concerns.

	CONTENT.  The Internet Society must adopt as a
priority for the year to follow a program to identify
distributed centers of excellence around the globe and
across both the private and public sectors, including non-
governmental organizations.  The rich and robust content
within both the electronic and the hard-copy databases
of these centers of excellence--many in the Third World
and the Balkan States--must be linked and made accessible
to every Inter-naut.  Economic models (including digital
cash transfers between individuals and extremely low
transaction costs) and legal models (copyright the content
not the container) must be proposed and championed.
The Information Continuum, consisting of K-12, Universities,
Libraries, Businesses, Private Investigators and Information
Brokers, Media, Government, Defense, and Intelligence, must
be converted into an Information Commons, in which the Iron
Curtains between sectors, the Bamboo Curtains between
institutions, and the Plastic Curtains between individuals,
vaporize in the face of "the force" of the Internet.

	COORDINATION OF RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT.  There is no
greater tragedy, beyond the wasted energy and the arms trade,
than the extraordinary waste and abuse of funding for 
research & development of information tools.  When every
government department and every corporation is spending
$10 million or even $1 million a year, to build its "own"
desktop workstation and integrated applications suite, the
total cost in dollars pales in comparison with the opportunity
cost of failing to rapidly establish a common denominator
for linking smart people and their content.  In the U.S.
alone autonomous efforts to develop a generic desktop for
internal organizational use is estimated at $2 billion a year
to build 10,000 or more versions--incompatible versions--of
the same generic multi-media workstation.  It is time the
Internet Society played a role in facilitating international
consortia focused on orchestrating research & development
to reduce waste and interoperability difficulties.  Above and
beyond the standards process, and well into the requirements
and the data entry process....

	COMMUNICATIONS & COMPUTING SECURITY.  We have a house
built over a sinkhole.  The vulnerabilities of all national
telecommunications and computing architectures, and especially
the financial centers in New York, London, and Tokyo, is 
frightening in the extreme.  The recent consolidation of the
Federal Reserve digital transaction computers into a single
point of failure, and the blatant losses being incurred by
major financial institutions world-wide, are cause for grave
concern, particularly when we contemplate the effect on
wholesale and retail industry, and international trade, of
a freeze--however temporary--or worse, the destruction of
billions or trillions in "virutal money".  Security standards,
testing & certificaiton laboratories, international education,
and due diligence policy and law are imperative if we are to
avoid a series of electronic Chernobyls.

	It is time The Internet Society, perhaps in association
with the United Nations and other non-governmental bodies,
created a formal program of outreach to governments and 
corporations which sought to specifically assist them, not
just in connecting to the Net, but in contributing content
to the Net while achieving acceptable levels of security
for all those who work and play in cyberspace.  In particular,
The Internet Society might consider how best to accelerate the
introduction and translation of hard-copy knowledge into 
cyberspace.  If the Internet is 10% of cyberspace, and
cyberspace is 10% of knowledge, then our endeavor has only
just begun.  

	Paper will include two page talking points (originally
prepared for the President of the United States) and 17 page
double-spaced draft legislation, "The National Information
Strategy Act of 1994", provided to every U.S. Senator and
Representative.  This material, while not expected to actually
pass as legislation, is part of the bi-partisan dialogue
expected to develop between the Speaker of the House who is
a student of Dr. Jay Keyworth and intent on bringing the U.S.
into the information age, and Vice President Al Gore, a student
of Dr. Robert Kahn, who has the same objective.