On Gibson's suggestions to improve schools: I just read William Gibson's suggestion to provide free long-distance phone services, cable access and *rights to get any commercial software for free to all _public_ school teachers* - and give nothing to private schools. Frankly, I didn't expect anything like this from William Gibson. There are so many things to criticize here, it's really hard to pick. Mandating all software companies to ship their products to any public school teacher? Or will the teachers just get the right to copy the software free, without the documentation and tech support? How much should they pay for documentation, upgrades and support if they need them? Or if the teachers should get the manuals for free too, then why not *all* the books, magazines and newspapers from all those 'fat publishers', and allow every teacher to collect a Library of Congress worth of freebies? Also, allow all teachers free access to everything: movies, theaters, museums, [unused!] seats on planes heading for Europe, etc. Would be really nice to give these rights to children themselves too, and - why not ? - their parents! Is there really a reason why I and my son shouldn't get a free copy of an algebra tutoring program, but his *physical education* teacher will? Should the English teacher have a right to request a full version of the MicroSoft Software Development Kit? Or a fancy limited edition stock-trading program? One can suggest that the teacher's rights for free software should be limited to 'relevant' programs. Still worse! Consider a company whose main market *is* the classroom. The obligation to provide software to teachers for free will leave it without any commercial customers! You will kill a big part of the educational software market with this plan! Will the government replace it? If the government knows better how to organize the production and distribution of educational [or any other] software, why isn't it doing it now? Also, why don't we give rights for all educational software to students? (this sure would kill the *whole* market at once!) How are we going to control the software piracy issues after we grant rights worth *millions* of dollars to hundreds of thousands of people? Could anybody explain to me how this 'plan' could possibly work??!! Politically, the idea that any producer of software should supply an unlimited number of copies of the product to the state institutions, IMO, stands in one row with totalitarianism and slavery (except that those, more or less, *worked*. This won't!) I even don't want to discuss such political views (had too much of this in the USSR). Also, if we allow one group of people to stand above the law (in this case, engage in unlimited software piracy), we may be tempted to expand this practice. Education is not the only problem this country faces. Should we allow poor hungry people to take some food for free from those big fat food-processing companies? Can doctors take anything they want for free if it may help them to improve professionally? What about women, minorities, the elderly, children, handicapped and retarded people - wouldn't it be nice if they could satisfy their urgent needs at the expense of those fat companies, any time they feel like it? If Gibson's speech is taken seriously anywhere in the educational establishment, it can bring a disaster. Actually, since this 'plan' is as evidently impractical as it is disastrous, I don't think it can convince anybody, but it sure distracts the education professionals from _appropriate_ actions. What would *I* suggest? Actually, I don't believe that much in the government's involvements; the very idea that the only social structure that can make all things work is a centralized[?] territorial [??] entity (i.e. national government) seems so atavistic... But even being a socialist, one could come up with reasonable suggestions on *national* actions regarding computers and education: Implement a national-scale school voucher program. Allow the vouchers to be spent on educational software (including spelling, typing and math tutors, simulation and strategy games from Oregon Trail to Civilization, Logo compilers, Internet and BBS accounts for kids, etc.), Discovery Channel, educational books and tapes, etc., etc. - and you will see much more efficient allocation of resources, booming new markets - and, as a byproduct, you may see lots of companies giving free products and seminars to teachers so that the teachers could explain benefits of those products to the students! Specify a set of necessary educational software tools, buy distribution rights for those tools that already exist, and order the rest on the competitive basis from the industry; the software will be appropriate, standardized and very inexpensive (due to elimination of marketing expenses and economies of scale). Implement the necessary infrastructure for software superdistribution to allow teachers, students and the rest of the population to rent/try *any* software package they want very cheaply. This will create a multi-billion dollar industry in the process. Create an easy-to-use distributed hypertext on Internet, with message rating features that would allow people of *any age* find whatever they (and all other people with correlating interests) like much faster, and make visits to cyberspace a really rewarding pastime for anyone, while saving the network resources from carrying an ever increasing number of unwanted messages. ( Instead of installing expensive 'data highways' to carry still more information to people who already receive many times as much stuff as they can possibly read. ) Remove people who have proven they understand nothing in computers, education and social engineering, from any advisory positions in the national educational system. I would be really interested to see William Gibson's explanation on why his 'rob the industry to destroy the schools' plan would work better than the above suggestions; in the absence of such explanation, I would be happy to replace Gibson on any advisory job he is invited to perform, to help implement the above mentioned and numerous other ideas that can really educate children and revitalize the industry. I don't have Gibson's email address, but would appreciate if somebody forwards it to him. Not that I think it may help... :-( - Alexander Chislenko 08/02/93