SYNERGY-NET on http://www.wiredbrain.net/ RE: Educational Technology: No longer a oxymoron: It starts with Tony's statement that the only technology that has had a real impact since the printing press has been the black board. Our school system is labor intensive, capital poor and spends little ( and very little effectively ) on R and D. The methods were established before the Civil War, and a John Dewey said little had changed 50 years latter, and not much 150 years later, except a loss of standards, and a decline in institutional culture. Now: 'Net access for all mankind it maybe possible to have a real change in the way we teach and learn: We may have global systems with Web-TV terminals working at 10 Mb per second in and 50,000 or so out, providing the kinds of things we are doing on http://www.wiredbrain.net/tutor.htm. With CD ROM, and RAM, lessons can be structured like books, tied to the Internet for reference, and tutors as support. The text book is a CD and/or web site, the teacher is a remote tutor, the classroom is anywhere. Teledesic takes on the world http://eagle.uccb.ns.ca/undp/page6.htm I this was the Arthur Clarke plan from the 1948 article for a aero-journal in England, where he made the first practical suggestion of satellites and the beginning of the post modern age. I thought he and Motorola were working on it. http://ag.arizona.edu/futures/fut/clarke.html Worldview: Three Clarke's rules of thumb: 1) when a distinguished and elderly scientist says something is possible, he is almost certainly correct; when he says something is impossible he is very probably wrong; 2) the only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little past them; 3) any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. II. TELECOMMUNICATIONS INFRASTRUCTURE: AT THE ROOT OF INFORMATION POVERTY "More than half of humanity has never made a telephone call. There are more telephone lines in Manhattan than in all of Sub-Saharan Africa." by Thomas W. Haines Seattle Times business reporter Craig McCaw and Bill Gates are betting a network of low-orbiting satellites can link remote parts of the globe to the information age. They say the company they've founded can launch the system by 2001. For the past two years, they've been trying to persuade the world to let them do it. http://www.seattletimes.com/topstories/browse/html/tele_092996.ht ml 20. Equally daunting are the funding requirements for several competing schemes offering a link via digital satellite systems, which would in principle allow an enhancement of rural communications directly. Several international satellite projects are at present in the pipeline and if realized, they might well push transmission capacity to a satiation point (see chart): * Globalstar Telecommunications Ltd. (owned by Lockkheed Martin and Loral Corp.) seeks to provide telephone services by bouncing signals off 48 low-orbiting satellites; scheduled completion date is 1998 with a projected investment level of US$ 2 billion; * Teledisc Corp., backed by Bill Gates and Craig McCaw, envisages a US$ 9 billion network of 840 low-orbit satellites to bring telecommunications to remote areas around the world; * Iridium is a Motorola-led consortium planning to launch 66 low-orbiting satellites at a cost of US$ 3.4 billion, mainly for cellular telephone services by businesses; * ICO Global Space Communications Ltd., a private company started by Inmarsat, also pursues a low-orbiting satellite project; * Odyssey, owned by TRW and Teleglobe Inc. of Canada, envisages a 12 satellite system; * AT&T proposed a network of twelve satellites relying on spacecraft in geostationary orbit; it would be for users operating from a fixed location, sending and receiving information through small antennas. This overview does not take into account yet the plans by several media consortia to provide a global satellite infrastructure for digital television and broadcast services. http://eagle.uccb.ns.ca/undp/page6.htm Copies of the SYNERGY JOURNAL sent by request: globalvillages@geocities.com SYNERGY-NET on http://www.wiredbrain.net/ Peter E. Pflaum Ph.D. , Headmaster GLOBAL_VILLAGE_SCHOOLHOUSE 225 Robinson Road, New Smyrna Beach, FL 32169-2176 (904) 428-9609 globalvillages@geocities.com http://www.wiredbrain.net// http://forum.trevista.com/ or join #synergy on IRC.