SYNERGY-NET on http://www.wiredbrain.net Small, stable, smart and convenient : THE SPOT for PARTICIPATION ON THE WEB: RE: Time warps, The good OLD Queen Mary: Internet 101 is the instruction kit for the Internet. Learning to learn on the Internet. The Internet is and can be the greatest learning tool since the printing press. To take advantage of printing people had to learn to read. At the time, 15th century, 95% + of the population could not read. They thought reading was hard and for the nerds of the church and state. They were illiterate, including some priests, CEO's, Kings and Nobles. Being reading or computer illiterate is no joke. It excludes you from the future. Almost 50 % of Americans are functionally illiterate in reading a 9'th grade level manuals, the WSJ or NYT ( ask any HR department or the military ) and 90 % computer illiterate. Maybe that's why only 10% are now using Internet in any meaningful way. Usage is a lot higher in the literate countries of Europe and Asia. America: It won't do. PUBLIC EDUCATION IS HOPELESS, believe me, we need alternatives. Public education produces the Queen Mary, 50 years late. The mass market for hardware, software, Internet providers, content, services all depends on mass education. The industry should support our efforts to close the gap. Learning is a basic part of the SYNERGY of the Internet. PC Machines and chips companies need applications or people won't buy the hardware, on- line services need content, software companies need users with machines, customers are people with applications they want to use and some level of knowledge on how to make it all work. Industry support for general education ( not the specific of applications and technical stuff ) has been limited and not available in any useable form on the Internet. The tutor in www.MSN.com for example is pitiful, Netscape doesn't have a tutor and it's help is only sort of helpful. You can only understand most instruction if you already know what you are doing. Is this the best you can do ? No single set or sets of instruction can or will do to produce basic computer literacy because of rapid change. In reading you are better off if you know phonics, the building blocks of turning sounds into codes. Since my computer can pronounce written words don't tell me that English is not phonic, there are 45 phonemes not 24 letters. Sure you can read without knowing you know sound codes or learning to pronounce each word as it comes along but why do it the hard way as I do. Users of the Internet HAVE TO learn to learn the basic phonemes that make the systems work. This is the basis of Internet 101, we help learn the basics then for 1000 different applications people have to figure some it out for themselves, with support and advice. It's not real hard stuff, but for you to set up ftp or chat, or i-phone, CuSeeMe, games, VDO, Netscape options helpers and plug ins, cold fusion, x-files, net meeting, and on and on and on - you have to learn by doing and only when you need it or want it. It's really not hard with a little help from your friends. Any program that gives me grief, I often give up on and look for one that doesn't make it hard. IBM produces 1000 pages of manuals, I just say NO ! If you can't make the damn thing work, forget it, someone else will produce a more friendly product. It's been hard in hypertext editors, but now with WebEdit Pro, and Hot Dog I'm functional. When all else fails read the instructions. Help functions (F2) sometimes are helpful, not often. Someone needs to work on general help such as; cut and paste, file management, drag and drop, register, etc. The Basic stuff that most programs using C+++ and OLE ( object files ) use but only information when you need it, not three weeks of lectures, or 1000 pages of manuals, lost on my shelf somewhere. The only way is to plug ahead. BUT that's not the American consumer way ! People say they can't set the time on their VCR's. Well I don't think there is an INTERNET for DUMMIES. Oh maybe services like AOL, but how dumb can they be ? The books by-the- way are useless, because they are out of date before they hit the presses and have something to sell as do the magazines, who don't bite the hands that feed them. Also useless are almost all of the Internet classes, which give you a lot of details about useless stuff you don't need to know. With increasing information over- load you have to make important choices about what you choice to learn. We do it right on the SYNERGY network. Kids have use a lot of cleverness to get multi-media games to work, old cyberdogs can learn new tricks. IT'S NOT HARD. Really it's not hard and getting easier every day. Learning is part of the fun if not the whole point. The Internet is not a passive entertainment and MASS media but a community of learners and group dynamics involving SYNERGY. The Internet is and can be the greatest learning tool since the printing press. To take advantage of printing people had to learn to read. At the time 90% plus could not read. They thought reading was hard. They were illiterate. Being reading or computer illiterate is no joke. It excludes you from the future. Almost 50 % of Americans are functionally illiterate in reading and 90 % computer illiterate. It won't do. I visited the Queen, safely deposited in concrete, in Long Beach Harbor. One point from the tour sticks in my mind. The Ship was designed toward the end of the 19th Century. Finance and construction delays then World War I prevented construction. I don't remember but I think it was the last part of the 1920's or early in the 1930's before she was finished and set sail. It was close to half a century between conception and delivery. Yet, the old gal did good service in World War II and managed to hold her own on the Atlantic trade, with a substantial government subsidy. Between the design of the Queen and it's launch, airplanes were invented, the telephone and radio became consumer goods, automobiles replaced horses, and Urban populations overwhelmed rural precepts. I think they only changed, the Queen, from coal to oil fired boilers and the ship has a 19th century feel to it's decor and the class structure of the lounges, salons and cabins. There were facilities for steerage passengers, carefully walled off from the middle class, which was also excluded from the private domains of the upper class areas. A lot of people still are on the old queen on the Internet. Compu-serve has a mosaic, AOL still has browser problems. ( I am told they spent 25 million on the dog they keep trying in endless versions that never did work, now they are using explorer and Netscape ). The use of on-line services of this kind is completely obsolete. I'm told 6,000 people leave AOL very day as it dawns on them that a ATT, MCI, MSN, NetCom, Spry, ( where is WOW ? ) local on-ramps ( pipeline, and 2500 others ) provide unlimited service ( $20.00 ) with a direct dial up built into windows 95, rather than the trash provided by even the big time service companies. I throw away the dial ups that come with ATT, MCI, and just do a dial up in windows 95. Only 20 % of existing systems have converted to windows 95 from 3.11 and many people didn't like it. If you are going to do Internet I don't think you have a choice. The browser has a lot more stuff then any on-line services and fairly easy to find. MSN and explorer give away the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the Boston Globe and the LA Times are on POINTCAST, it's all there..Chat, FTP, newsgroups, mail, and coming together in a user friendly manner. It does require some assembling and batteries and all the parts are not included. Internet 101 is the instruction kit for the Internet. I have gone through many stages and design shifts in the last few years. Now comes the process of launching the Internet as a consumer product. The major money is in Intra-nets, office application that provide Wide Area Networks and resources. The network itself was designed in the 1960's to help military and scientific efforts. Newsgroups now wildly il-relevant were at first notice boards for technical information. With Eudora, ( e- mail ), became list servers, and the first popular search engines, gophers were tied to more useable FTP ( file transfers ) without knowing UNIX codes. Freenets were established and local BBS, began to provide interconnections and some form of Internet access. Compuserve became somewhat more user friendly, and began to earn money about the time the Reader Digest gave up on it, and America on Line entered with a dynamic interface from the old text only formats. The use of mosaic lasted only about a year, and then Netscape produced a free and functional product, early in 1995, with Local Service Providers popping up madly using win- sock ( Windows socket - sets up the communications ports ) connections of mixed quality. The beta of Windows 95 included a 32 bit direct connection ( ports built in ) that was a clear improvement over 3.11 and external Winsocks. Last summer Windows finally arrived free of disk destroying bugs. Copies of the SYNERGY JOURNAL sent by request: pflaump@cfl.rr.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 pflaump@cfl.rr.com http://synergy.trevista.com/ Personal classes in small groups, $50.00 a month, includes $10.00 a month for the SYNERGY CLUB charter membership. THE SYNERGY CLUB charter membership includes a web site and home pages, ftp, IRC, newsgroups, listserver, net meetings, World Form, BBS, Chat, and more. Synergy schools and club stay with all the you all the way into cyberspace. Your group is stable. You have a home on the net. You will have a network of helpers. You keep in touch with "what happening", get advice and support. It's the only way to go, you can't do it on your own. YOU NEED SYNERGY http://forum.trevista.com/ and http://forum.trevista.com/talk/ sign up on: http://www.wiredbrain.net/winhttpd/htdocs/peterml.htm