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Wireless and American Dreams

``` [Dave Hughes is a long-time community networking activist who has done many good things. I find his sociological analysis and technological optimism in this message a little oversimplified, but I do think that his basic point is valuable and worth acting upon. The mailing list to which he sent this, com-priv, is concerned with the commercialization of the Internet -- it has a lot of content, but you should read it through the digest to avoid going crazy. To subscribe, send a note to com-priv-digest-request@telerama.lm.com with a subject line of "subscribe". As a periodic reminder, if you wish to end your subscription to RRE, send a message to rre-request@weber.ucsd.edu with the subject line "unsubscribe".]

Date: Fri, 4 Nov 1994 20:40:21 -0700 (MST) From: dave@oldcolo.com (Dave Hughes) To: com-priv@psi.com (compriv) Subject: Wireless and American Dreams

The FCC auctions, and the assumptions behind it, were very much on my mind when, yesterday in tiny snowy Center, Colorado's school building, I gave my pair of Metricom Wireless Ricochet modems a couple of real-worl tests. I had set up the HiCom system the district bought from us (OS2 486, Lora BBS, TCP/IP, our code) in a classroom without phone lines, where 'Special Ed' teacher Jim and one-armed Valley native Elementary Teacher Jim tried to absorb all that I had to show them to operate the system. Already named 'Center Online.' In order to test the ports, demonstrate potential, and maybe make a little history, I accessed the BBS the first time once it was up, from across the room, wireless, for the first new-user login. Then, as young special education students passed by the machine, overwhelmingly Hispanic (80% of the school/community is Hispanic, and almost the same percentage eligible for school lunches such is the poverty in that part of the valley) I grabbed one bright eyed little boy - Valentin Villasenor - and invited him to log-in as the first 'student' to do so. He did, slowly but surely, only taking a long time figuring out what secret 'password' to enter. (we raised the time-out for login from 10 to 15 minutes after watching him look, ponder, think and then try). And he entered a message, in lower case English, to his teacher asking if he could go to lunch now. Dennis answered yes by replying to his message. Which he then got by subsequent login. The first BBS 'exchange' in Center. So as we all, some teachers, and a whole large roomful of little students ate lunch, I asked where the 'closest' telephone was to the Special Ed room where the early development of the BBS (menus, sections, look and feel, Spanish and English) will take place. Turns out to be in the kitchen itself. So, after configuring the TCP/IP Slip capabilities of the system, I put one of the wireless modems on COM1 of the 4 ports on Center Online, and we went down to the kitchen where the washing machines were roaring, the staff was cleaning up after feeding some 600+ students, K-12. And after politely asking permission of the lady who operates the food service with an firm hand, if we could use her phone for a test, we hooked up a Supra 28.8 modem to the wall plug which had, a little home-made (installed) supplemental RJ-11 outlet by the phone jack. Then with a modem cable with a 9 pin gender bender to connect the two 9 pin female plugs to each other at the Wireless modem end, and a null adapter to connect the other end to the phone modem, we turned them both on and went back to the Special Ed room to connect. In less time than it takes to write about it, we had run the SLIPTERM, connected to the remote wireless modem, told the phone modem to dial the local-dial number of Colorado Supernet's terminal ports in Alamosa, 40 miles away, I logged on with my own Slip account, and we were up on the Internet! All the pieces worked, and would work, so that the remote, rural, poor-area, Center school, would soon be up fully on the Internet at a monthly cost of about $300 a month, 24 hours a day, bidirectional. Then the wireless modem showed yet another possibility that had not occured to me when I first got there. The school will gladly bring two new phone lines to the room where the system is. One for 24 hours SLIP connection to the Internet, (which our experience shows can be used by at least 8 people simultaneously who are logged into the BBS by lan, serial line, or modem dial in). The other will be for 'community' access, including students and teachers at home. But only one line. BUT, as it turns out, there are at least 8 other administrative, kitchen, teacher lounge, etc phones in the school buildings within Richochet modem range of BBS-Server. None of which are in use after about 4PM week days, nights, weekends, and all summer and vacation times. What if, I asked Superintendent, Gary Kidd, (who is really committed to improving this desperately backwater school with technology) he bought through us, several 'pairs' of Richochet modems (currently at $1000 a pair, but hopefully at lower cost) and with one 14.4 modem (maybe $125) per pair, and connected all of those existing phones, wireless, to 2,4,6,8 - whatever - terminal ports on Center Online. So that, with only two 'dedicated' new phone lines for the BBS, only one of which is for outside modem dialin, they get, late afternoons, nights, weekends, up to 8 OTHER incoming access lines at NO additional monthly telephone cost - so that as many teachers and students as possible can log in - and, as needed, go out to the full Internet, from outside the school. Using loaner laptops where necessary, or from one or more in the tiny 'community' library, OR, tiny city hall,or other public places. Or from the community Catholic, and/or Baptist, or Methodist churches who admirably serve the community now. (and who are being taught by Noel Dunne, of La Cocina, how to 'go online') Or, if I can get a pole-top antenna that can cover the small town which is no more than a half mile across, by loaner wireless for some of the kids with no phones at home. Lots of the students have no phones at home. When young Valentin logged onto Center Online the first time, the registration software asked him for his 'home phone number' he looked at me and said "We don't have a phone." So we had him enter the school's phone number - the only telecommunications link with the outside world he is likely to have for a long time, perhaps all through school years. Unless he can use no-comm-cost wireless. And then Valentin can do his homework, access the world, communicate with other kids and, above all, let them read and write in English - which is the crying requirement now. As 40% of the school's 700 kids either can speak, read, write ONLY in Spanish, or have such limited English skills, that the school district came under court order to do a better job in getting kids in those catagories up to general educational speed in the dominant language of the country. (But they can't find, or attract enough bi-lingual teachers!) Reading-writing online may be the most dramatic thing they can do to improve things! So in innumerable ways, no-licence, no-comm-cost wireless can/will go to the HEART of Center's problem of education, both economically and pedogigically, of community learning/teaching, economic development, and social outreach, (you cannot beleive just how socially isolated those kids are. As I listened to stories by one white school board woman member who, when sitting with some of the 14-15 year old Hispanic girls, they asked her when did she have her first baby. When she told them she was 30, they exploded in disbelief, one girl saying "you were old! You must have been past menopause. NOBODY has kids that old!") Because those girls are pregnant at 14-16, many deliberately so to get welfare checks so their family can eat. They know so little of what goes on elsewhere. And many simply have already lost any dream, or vision, of going anywhere, except 'the valley.' From which few, including boys, leave. And instead drop out. Of 40 who were tracked from 9th grade, 17 graduated. And two of them, girls, were pregnant. And the girls - even the brightest ones

  • indignantely ask "Why should we waste time here in school when we
    • could be making $5 an hour in the lettuce fields?" They may be already lost. But those tiny tots with black eyes and brown skins that marched past me in the lunch room, are not. And they, like Valentin Villasenor, can go online before their dreams are crushed, or empty of possibilities because they simply have no concept of what is possible to them that they learn through technologies that can link them to the rest of the world. Even if they have to be taught by white teacher, co-Sysop Jim who has to operate the computer with one hand, and the claw that is his other arm. (life is tough in the valley and can be dangerous on the farms), and who doesn't handle Spanish that well as he walks into the Elementary computer room, equipped with 22 Apple II's, networked, where even MECC can't provide enough relevant software by disk. But the kids will be reading/writing. In English - as each line on the Menus contains both languages. 'Center School - Escuela
  • Online'
    • Yep. Center is where the NII is at, for me. Solve their problems, or even make serious inroads with telecom that is affordable and accessible - which just two days in the Valley showed me can be done with public-spectrum wireless as an extension to the slim POTS phone 'infrastructure' and the stated Administration policy of 'Universal Access' can become an American Reality. But wait for high-end, fiber-optic, cable, Mosaic, 'trickle down' and we will NOT achieve that social goal which everybody mouths, but few seem to practically support. ('Let em eat ASCII.') Yeah, even with spread spectrum Part 15 wireless, it will be a long ways to answer that girl's question "What has all this got to do with the lettuce fields?" But I am already past the issue of access. With wireless. So all of us can tackle the really tougher question in Center terms, of how to turn those kids skepticism into dreams, their fun connecting into language skills, their latent talents into accelerated development, and for some - outright careers from the Valley. It was cold as hell and snowing and foggy when I went over deserted Poncha Pass at night on the 180 mile drive home from the San Luis Valley. Listening to how another mother named Smith who lost it, tried to solve her problems. So I ask again. What the hell is Reed Hundt's email address? I got a little kid named Valentin, and a school Superintendant named Kidd in Center, Colorado, who have some questions to ask him about an auction. But Hundt had better brush up on his Spanish, before answering young Valentin. And have some pretty damned good answers for Kidd as to why he should be forced to buy the wireless access he now has free.

    Dave Hughes

    P.S. When I called Superintendent Kidd today at 2 PM to get the correct spelling of young Valentin's name, he called me back and said "Guess what? When I went into the Special Ed room to get his name from Dennis, there was Valentin sitting at the computer working away by himself even though we released all the kids at noon today. They couldn't tear him away from it!"

    Maybe the dreaming has already started.

    So the only type of school 'reform' that makes sense to me is already happening in Center, with Valentin Villasenor. Who doesn't have a phone, but can sure use a wireless modem.

    P.P.S And apropos the Bill Frezza's kid's school problem-with-the Internet, it only took me 5 minutes to demonstrate to the teachers that, by putting the 'Lora BBS as their Front End to the Internet' right at their class level, THEY could decide what was appropriate access to the Internet for those too young to make good decisions, and THEY could program the menus to suit their goals, but limit it appropriately. And not with any $20,000 box either. But just the functionality that comes with any good Fido BBS.

    Rather than argue the idiotic assumptions made elsewhere that 'going on the Internet' is an all or nothing matter, and that all students should or should not be given 'raw' high end access.

    i.e. put School Internet access 'power' where 'responsibility' lies. With the accountable teacher. Not even the Network Center Tech. Or some committee. ```

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