Making the most of information technology is a key factor in the growth of the so-called knowledge economies. SIMON COLLINS and photographer PAUL ESTCOURT discovered how successful countries are linking their people to that new world.
In the Hally household in a new housing estate on the edge of Ennis, in
the west of Ireland, the family computer gets hooked into the internet at around 8 am every day.
Larry and Martina Hally, or any of their four boys, check the e-mail several times a day. It has become part of the life of the neighbourhood.
"About 80 out of the 94 houses in the estate are connected in a network," said Larry Hally. "We set it up ourselves."
If anyone sees anyone acting suspiciously, the details get e-mailed to the network. "If I get it, I go next door to make sure my neighbour got it," said Mr Hally, who works shifts as an air traffic controller at nearby Shannon Airport.
Rory, 16, belongs to the Ennis Musical Society, and uses the internet to feature upcoming productions. Joseph, 14, uses the net for school projects and to download music. Kevin, 10, checks match results and fixtures for the Clare County Schoolboys Soccer League. Colm, 8, checks out the Children's Independent Television website, enters competitions and used the web to make Valentine's Day cards in February.
Mrs Hally does the family banking online, books overseas holidays and is starting to use it for some of the local specialty shops that have gone online. The local supermarkets have not yet done so.
The Hally household is among 4600 in Ennis - 83 per cent of the town - that have bought subsidised computers in a unique experiment, sponsored by Ireland's telecom company Eircom, on the effects of linking almost an entire community to the internet.
Starting in 1997, families paid £Ir260 ($690) for computers that were worth six times that. They received a free internet connection for a year and a half-price connection for a further two. Those who needed it received eight hours of free tuition on using their computers and the net.
Tomas Connole, 33, also received a computer. He is blind, and paid £100 through the Disabled People of Clare to buy a computer worth £1800 that reads out the words he writes and the words on websites and e-mails.
"I hated computers before I got it. I could only type a little bit," he said. "Now I can't live without my computer. I use it to check e-mails and send e-mails, and to write short stories."
Out on the edge of town, the traveller, or gypsy, community held off at first. Michael Byrne, a former priest who now manages the Ennis experiment, said the breakthrough came when a teacher at the gypsy children's school started e-mailing their homework to an adult training centre in the gypsy camp.
"The instructor does the work [with the children's parents] through the day, so when mum comes home she would be able to do the homework with the child," Mr Byrne said.
"That was a significant shift in our relationship between school and parents. Previously we were effectively telling children, 'Your mum is stupid."'
As well as subsidising computers to families, Eircom provided Ennis schools with one computer for every nine pupils, internet access, teacher training, and e-mail accounts for all pupils and teachers. Five community network centres were also opened for public internet access and training. Children at one school have used the net to find penpals in 22 countries.
Mr Byrne said seeing their work displayed neatly on the computer screen had boosted every child's self-confidence. "We are seeing entrepreneurial activity by kids creating web pages and fixing computers for other people," he said.
"Our strategy is not just to provide content but to encourage people to see themselves as contributors as well as consumers on this information superhighway. So we are working, with considerable success, to encourage people to publish on the web."
Even the local churches are posting their service times and parish newsletters on the web, and the net is boosting Gaelic culture. "The confidence the economic boom has brought has given a new boost to the Irish language," said Mr Byrne. "Suddenly people are saying it's sexy to be Irish."
Ennis is a limited experiment, which will finish at the end of next year when Eircom will have spent £Ir15 million.
But Ennis today is how the world may look tomorrow. Already, according to a Nielsen/NetRatings survey in March, the internet has reached 70 per cent of the homes in Seattle, 69 per cent in San Francisco, 68 per cent in Boston and 58 per cent in the United States as a whole.
There's no doubt that the computer and the internet are the technological changes that led the world economy through the 1990s, in much the same way as railways, electricity, cars and oil-based synthetics led earlier growth phases.
With the public use of the net still in its infancy, we are as yet only scratching the surface of its potential applications. In two senses, it is changing the ways we can contribute to the lives of others.
First, we can use it to directly enhance the lives of the people around us. It opens up cheap, fast access to a whole universe of human knowledge and concerns. Second, by dramatically weakening the barriers of distance and national borders, it is creating huge opportunities to provide a whole range of goods and services to people on the other side of the world.
Both effects may be greater in New Zealand than almost anywhere else because of our geographical isolation.
New Zealanders are clearly giving the new technology high priority. The World Information Technology and Services Alliance found last year that New Zealand spent a higher share of its national income (10.5 per cent) on information and telecommunications technology than any other country.
But there may still be lessons we can learn from other countries about how to maximise the contribution this spending makes.
Many countries are spending taxpayers' money to make sure the benefits of the internet extend both to lower-income people and to rural areas.
Ireland, for example, is spending €200 million ($418 million), including European Union grants, over five years to subsidise extending the high-speed internet (broadband) network outside Dublin. By calling for tenders to supply each area, it expects the private sector will invest a further €550 million in those areas.
Singapore is contributing $S100 million ($135 million), alongside private investment of $S300 million, towards the broadband network Singapore-One.
Australia earmarked $A464 million ($583 million) from the sale of Telstra shares to be spent between 1997 and 2002 on enhancing telecommunications services in rural and disadvantaged areas. This includes extending broadband access, public internet access centres and mobile phone coverage.
New Zealand's Government has rejected spending any taxpayers' money on telecommunications. Instead, it has renegotiated its Kiwi share in Telecom, requiring Telecom to upgrade its network so it provides slow internet access to 99 per cent of all residential customers, sharing the cost across the whole telecommunications industry.
Commerce Minister Paul Swain has flagged the idea of tendering out the right to provide this basic service in rural areas, after wireless companies said they could provide a much faster internet service for no more than farmers' average existing phone bills. This would remove the need for the kind of broadband wire networks being built in Singapore and Ireland.
However, this still leaves the issue of affordability. A survey by the Ministry of Social Policy last year found that while 45 per cent of New Zealanders aged 18-64 had internet access, a further 19 per cent wanted the internet but could not afford it.
Only 26 per cent of Maori had internet access and 33 per cent wanted it but could not afford it. Among Pacific Islanders, only 12 per cent had access, while 37 per cent wanted it but could not afford it.
This is not simply because low-income people cannot afford to pay the monthly internet access charges. In 1999, only 47 per cent of households had a computer, and, once again, the numbers were much lower for Maori and Pacific Islanders.
Some cannot afford even a telephone. In the 1996 census, although 96 per cent of all homes were on the phone, this dropped to 86 per cent of Maori homes, 85 per cent of Pacific Island homes, and as low as 25-35 per cent of Maori homes with incomes below $15,000.
In Ennis, households that didn't have the phone were offered free phone connections as part of the subsidised computer package. The offer was taken up by 647 households, or 12 per cent of Ennis homes.
However, within two years, 36 per cent of these new phone subscribers had had their phones cut off again, mainly because they couldn't afford the rental charges.
Moreover, although 83 per cent of Ennis homes now have a computer, only 45 per cent use the internet. Mr Byrne said this reflected the cost of internet access, people's inexperience and, for some, a lack of relevant web content.
In New Zealand, the 2020 Communications Trust is running a pilot Computers in Homes project, through which 50 families with children in Panmure and Porirua have been given computers, internet access, a phone line if required, training and technical support.
Some of the submissions on the Government's proposed "information society initiative" have suggested that the project should be extended to all low-decile schools and to other disadvantaged groups - perhaps along the lines of Singapore's scheme to provide cheap recycled computers to 30,000 low-income families.
Some submissions suggest an alternative option of free internet access in libraries, schools, community centres, marae and other public places, much as libraries now supply free information in book form.
In the San Jose public library in California's Silicon Valley, it is free not only to access the internet but also to print off several pages from a website.
It's the same in many libraries in Canada, as a result of Government grants to libraries and other groups to establish internet access centres, on condition that they have support from local councils and other sponsors to keep going. In some areas, one of the sponsors is the federal employment service, which encourages unemployed people to prepare their CVs and search for jobs online.
In Singapore, the internet is available at all libraries, community centres and Singapore-One clubs at a nominal fee.
In Ireland, the Irish Library Council plans a public access network, available free in all libraries, giving access to Government and community websites and information about health, education and cultural heritage. Libraries will charge for access to all other information.
Other countries are also putting resources into teaching people how to use the new technology. In Australia, the Federal Government is coordinating a programme that aims to equip all citizens with computer and internet skills and ensure a supply of more highly skilled workers for the IT and communications industries.
Schools aim not just to give these skills to their students but also to provide online access to parents and the local community to support the achievement of their students. They hope to finance this partly through partnerships with local businesses.
Washington Elementary School, in a low-income, predominantly black area of Richmond, California, teaches internet research and keyboard skills - typing - from the fourth grade (age 8 or 9). "We find that a big hangup for teachers and students is that they are sometimes slow with the keyboard," said Will Plutte, the teacher who coordinates computer education.
Washington has one computer for every five pupils - better than the New Zealand average in 1999 of one for every 11 pupils in primary schools and one for every six in secondary schools. (The average ratio in a Herald survey of secondary schools in April was one for every 7.3 students.)
Singapore has one computer for every 6.6 pupils in primary schools and one for every five in secondary school and junior college. Its official target is a ratio of 1:2 by next year.
At Singapore's Victoria Junior College, which caters for 16- to 18-year-olds, the teachers have created software that demonstrates scientific principles, such as a program showing the effect of hitting a billiard ball from a certain angle with a certain force.
School students are learning to create their own web pages. Singapore is second after the United States in the number of students who enter the international ThinkQuest competition, which offers $US2 million ($5 million) in prizes for student website design.
Singapore also puts all teachers through a 30- to 50-hour course on computer-based learning and pays 40 per cent of the cost of personal laptops for teachers. Its national IT literacy programme, launched last August, provides courses on using computers and the internet through many groups and agencies, including community centres.
In New Zealand, an IT think-tank set up by the Qualifications Authority has proposed a new qualification, or "tickIT," to certify that a person has basic skills, such as being able to create and save computer documents and e-mails, buy goods on the internet, change a printer and set up a mobile phone. People would be able to follow the programme at their own pace on the internet, through training opportunities programmes, apprenticeship courses, SeniorNet, libraries or anywhere else that the internet is available.
"We need people to have those basic skills," said think-tank member Joan Grace, chief executive of the Printing and Allied Industries Training Organisation. "Once they have that, then they have some confidence so that, when the kids come home from school with some homework, they can say, 'Why don't we go down to the library and look it up on the internet?"'
Although only a step on the way to the kind of changes taking place in Ennis or Singapore, tickIT would not need any help from the Government, except a small office to keep the list of basic skills up to date and issue the certificates.
"The All Blacks should have their tickIT, so they can send e-mails home when they're away. And the Symphony Orchestra," Joan Grace said. "It's a way to get people started."
LESSONS
1. Computers and the internet are creating new ways in which we can contribute to the lives of other people and to the world.
2. To maximise the value of the new technology for people we need widespread affordable access and education.
3. We also need more training to maximise the ways we can use the new technology in business.
Links
Ennis
Closing the digital divide
WITSA
Thinkquest
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<i>Our turn:</i> High-tech learning to increase net returns
Making the most of information technology is a key factor in the growth of the so-called knowledge economies. SIMON COLLINS and photographer PAUL ESTCOURT discovered how successful countries are linking their people to that new world.
In the Hally household in a new housing estate on the edge of Ennis, in
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