Information Age

Look up in the sky. Far overhead, soaring silently through the night, invisible in the light of day, 135 man-made satellites crowd the heavens, drenching the Earth in an electronic rain of data. Down here on the ground, that never-ending rain is collected and translated into TV shows, military movements, company sales reports, bank deposits, news stories, the location of ships at sea and even the whereabouts of a delivery van in your neighborhood. Satellite transmissions are part of a tidal wave of information that, like Noah's flood, is washing away the old world and its customs, and transforming the way we work, play, learn and defend ourselves.

Members of the American Society of Newspaper Editors, convening in Washington last week, heard what may be the most critical question they face in the age of the Internet-generated information explosion: How (can) the fundamental purpose of the newspaper be maintained and you still make enough money to stay afloat? Perhaps the most remarkable thing about the question is that it wasn't posed in one of the ASNE's numerous panels and workshops but by the group's Thursday luncheon speaker: President Clinton.

Shortly after her husband's assassination, Jacqueline Kennedy wrote: "For Jack, history was full of heroes . . . . Jack had this hero idea of history. " How quaint she seems, how naive and sentimental. Now Jack frolics in the White House pool with call girls and plots how best to kill Fidel Castro. We listen on the White House phone as Lyndon Johnson bullies, to tapes of Richard Nixon as he swears and vows revenge. We read descriptions of our president's penis. For us, there are no heroes.

Nothing annoys me more than professional futurologists who insist that the digital revolution will solve all the world's problems. You know, the ones who tell you that the state doesn't matter anymore because information flows don't respect borders. Or that computers will recreate community and save democracy. Or that information technology will level the growing gap between rich and poor. Sure, there are kernels of truth in all these propositions. We know that technology is changing the nature of work, statecraft and warfare.

County Commissioner Andrew Dinniman's agenda in 1994 stresses job development and training. Dinniman presented his 26-page "Agenda for the Information Age" at Tuesday's commissioners' meeting as a sort of minority report, the sole Democrat said. Last week, Republican Joseph Kenna was elected chairman and described his action plan for the county. Dinniman wants to move the county's economy from being rooted in the industrial age, with its standardization and centralization, to a new model for the age of information.

Welcome to Komputer Korner, the column designed for technological morons such as - no offense - you. We can safely assume that you're a "low-tech" individual, because you're reading this article in a newspaper, which is a primitive medium invented thousands of years ago by ancient Egyptians who wanted to be able to read Ann Landers. If you were a modern, "high-tech" individual, you would not be getting your news this old-fashioned way. Instead, you'd simply go to your computer and "log on" via your "modem" to an "on-line service," which would instantaneously send you back an "electronic message" informing you that your account has been "suspended" because your 14-year-old son, "Robert," has been using it to "screw around.

A major technological transformation, potentially as significant as the electronic revolution of the 20th century, is creeping up on a largely unsuspecting world. Light, in the form of tiny, weightless particles called photons, is on its way to succeeding electrons as the high-tech workhorse of the 21st century, scientists say. Practical applications of the coming photonic revolution are still a ways off, but researchers offer the prospect of much faster communications, more powerful computers, sharper display screens, more effective ways to harness sunlight for energy, and many other benefits.

Proposals to speed development of exotic "information-age" services by easing restrictions on regional phone companies such as Philadelphia's Bell Atlantic Corp. were criticized in a report released yesterday by two consumer groups. The report said permitting regional phone companies to enter new lines of business - including cable television, electronic publishing and manufacturing - might not provide the economic and social benefits envisioned by the companies. And it said the cost of the services might be passed on to telephone customers, who might not want them.

Want a chance to tell the federal government what you think of it? And take a practice ride on the information superhighway at the same time? You can do so for free for the next two weeks, starting Monday, at 362 public libraries, schools, offices and stores across the nation. To encourage citizens to take part in the new information-age technology, the government is sponsoring a National Electronic Open Meeting from Monday through May 14. It's sort of a nationwide electronic suggestion box. For example, participants can tell the Social Security Administration whether it should deposit benefit checks in bank accounts electronically.

The future, says Philadelphia's Bell Atlantic Corp., will be populated by consumers plugged into the information age. They will be eager to learn, work and be entertained by an elaborate fiber-optic communications network built by - who else? - the phone company. At least that's the picture of turn-of-the-century, America painted by Bell Atlantic in its report, "Delivering the Promise: A Vision of Tomorrow's Communications Consumer. " The report is intended to show lawmakers what kind of world we could live in - if only Bell Atlantic and the six other regional phone companies (the so- called Baby Bells)

When was the Information Age - our age of Twitter, Facebook, and Google, of word processors and encyclopedias - born? a naive questioner asks James Gleick. Gleick, whose new book The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood (Pantheon, $20.95) is a commanding chronicle of the information revolution, repeats the question, then pauses for a few moments to reflect. It's such a "silly cliche, the Information Age," says Gleick, who will discuss his book Tuesday night at the Free Library of Philadelphia.

George Miller, CEO of Central Montgomery Medical Center in Lansdale, stopped by my office the other day to take me out to lunch. As we drove to a restaurant, I had fun watching his in-dash navigation system, which operates with voice recognition. Make a right or left turn and the monitor automatically shifts to the new direction, showing a grid of named streets ahead. If George wants the shortest route to his house, he simply speaks "Best way home" into the dash. The route, mileage and estimated drive time to the house are communicated to him in seconds.

The conventional wisdom has it that John F. Kennedy was the first television president. Meaning not that he was president when the medium began to affect the nation - that distinction goes to Dwight Eisenhower - but that he was the first to understand its potential and exploit its power. The signature illustration is the famous debate with Richard Nixon. People who watched it on television felt that the handsome, vigorous Democrat trounced the ailing, haggard Republican. Curiously enough, many of those who only heard the debate on radio gave the edge to Nixon.

THE PHOTO on the cover shows what appears to be a teenager with a high-powered rifle, his mouth open in mid-scream, pointing his rifle at you, the viewer. On his back is strapped a pink teddy bear. "Killer Kids: Chilling shots of children in combat," says the caption. The title of the magazine is Shock, with a gunshot-burst pockmark blasting away the mid-sections of the "o" and "c. " The overline above the title reads, "Welcome to the Real World. " "The marketplace is different now. There are so many different outlets of news and entertainment and sports.

Traveling around the country promoting his book on the future of work, Daniel H. Pink employs two props - a toilet bowl brush and an empty bottle of wine. Yes, brush and bottle are related to work in Pink's latest book, A Whole New Mind: Moving From the Information Age to the Conceptual Age. Both evoke the role that creativity, design and storytelling will play in the coming world of work - a world where success will belong to the most creative, the most empathic, the most perceptive, not to the linear thinkers, the data-driven, the technocrats.

A major technological transformation, potentially as significant as the electronic revolution of the 20th century, is creeping up on a largely unsuspecting world. Light, in the form of tiny, weightless particles called photons, is on its way to succeeding electrons as the high-tech workhorse of the 21st century, scientists say. Practical applications of the coming photonic revolution are still a ways off, but researchers offer the prospect of much faster communications, more powerful computers, sharper display screens, more effective ways to harness sunlight for energy, and many other benefits.

Question: There does seem to be an attitude among many in the tech community that the creation of a New Economy makes the old politics obsolete. Answer: Do people really believe that?. . . When I look at people who say politics isn't relevant because other things are going to move faster, I say, "Well, wait a minute - the last time I checked, it was government that got us The Family and Medical Leave Act. " Within the software industry, people would go crazy if we didn't have family and medical leave ... Instead of just letting politics continue to lose relevance because it moves so slowly, let's figure out how to help change that process.

Upstairs in the cramped third-floor offices of the Belleek Shop, three young women sort through last night's Internet orders. Sales stream in, mainly from the United States: a Belleek vase for a family in the Bronx, N.Y. Waterford Crystal wine glasses for a woman in North Carolina. A Claddagh pendant for another in New Jersey. Since the Belleek Shop launched its website (www.belleekshop.com) in October, the tiny Abbey Street family retailer has made at least one online sale each day. Next year, the Internet is expected to account for 20 percent of sales, said Ronan Cahir, whose mother founded the shop 22 years ago. The Belleek Shop is just one of the beneficiaries of an interesting experiment to see what happens when a town - where some residents recently did not own a telephone - suddenly becomes wired.

Members of the American Society of Newspaper Editors, convening in Washington last week, heard what may be the most critical question they face in the age of the Internet-generated information explosion: How (can) the fundamental purpose of the newspaper be maintained and you still make enough money to stay afloat? Perhaps the most remarkable thing about the question is that it wasn't posed in one of the ASNE's numerous panels and workshops but by the group's Thursday luncheon speaker: President Clinton.

You might call it catching up with the grandkids. It was the grandparents doing the learning yesterday. They were introduced to a world where a mouse is not a household pest, a cursor is not somebody who cusses a lot, and an icon is not an object of religious devotion. The new meanings for old, familiar words were part of a seminar that got under way at the Senior Citizens Center here, with classes geared for folks over 55. They are designed to help the seniors catch up with a technological world that has zoomed past many of them - often to their dismay.