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Galileo and Other Voyages Date: Wed, 6 Dec 1995 Hi folks, Tomorrow marks a remarkable achievement, as the spacecraft Galileo reaches Jupiter. This voyage of over 5 years and 2.2 billion miles is best known for the technical difficulties and ingenuity required to devise work arounds to permit us, back here on earth, to receive the information previously out of reach for humankind. As I listened to the report on National Public Radio, on my way to an Internet workshop at a rural part of New Jersey, I was suddenly struck by some parallels. When the Galileo spacecraft was carried into space by the shuttle Atlantis on October 18, 1989, it carried the latest computers available at the time. Today, these would seem like toys. The engineers here on earth, have used the current batch of latest computers to overcome fried transmitters, stuck antennae and a host of other problems to get performance similar to the 300 baud modems that were in use back then. In a way, Galileo is reaching back in time to where things were for many of us, using Apple IIe's in the time before the Internet. In another way, not much has changed for too many of us. It is though technology in society has travelled 2.2 billion miles, while we've stayed behind, some of us by choice, others of us under duress. Society has moved ahead with evermore powerful tools, while many of us resemble the patched together gear on the probe. The people I was going to visit live at the extreme southern tip of New Jersey, halfway between New York City and Washington DC. There are no T1 lines, no cable companies willing to talk, and only one POP anywhere near. The plight of these folks reminds me more of Montana or Mesa Verde or St. John than an hour's ride from Philadelphia, and there are no shortage of places as unreachable within an hour of you, I'm willing to wager. It's perhaps coincidental, but the 2.2 billion mile journey works out to 1,000 miles per teacher in this country; many teachers have yet to begin their journey with a single step. Those of us on these lists are perhaps well on the way, but there are others behind us who would welcome our help. In a recent meeting, I heard Gene Hastings recount a great image. He said, "Imagine that your school board went to the community, asking for a bond issue to raise money to build a separate four lane highway to be used exclusively for school buses, to ensure they could go to and from school unimpeded. Do you think for a minute such a plan would fly? Yet we're asking for connectivity to connect schools to the Internet, when we really should be connecting communities to the Internet." It made us stop and think. Why are schools taking this work on? Today, I found an answer: because we are probably the only ones who will act as advocates for our nation's children, who need to take ownership of this mode of communication and conduit for thought, and who need to do so equitably. No one else will care about this issue, in this way. If Galileo could make it, despite all the disasters, so too can we. Let's keep on with our voyage, and seek ways to add to our ranks the reluctant as well as those patiently waiting. Ferdi |
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