__________________________________________________________________ The Arachnet Electronic Journal on Virtual Culture __________________________________________________________________ ISSN 1068-5723 August 20,1993 Volume 1 Issue 5 EJVCV1N5 MONITOR THE CYBERSPACE MONITOR ====================== ///////////////////// / TABLE OF CONTENTS / ///////////////////// ONLINE INTERVIEWS: - BIG SKY TELEGRAPH AND A VISION OF VIRTUAL CULTURE: AN INTERVIEW OF FRANK ODASZ BY ERMEL STEPP HUMOR: - "HUMOR AND THE INTERNET" BY BOB ZENHAUSERN MEDIA REVIEWS BOOKS: - THE INTERNET PASSPORT: NORTHWESTNET'S GUIDE TO OUR WORLD ONLINE THESES: - NEURAL NETWORKS IN NATURAL LANGUAGE PROCESSING AND INFORMATION RETRIEVAL NETWARE REVIEWS (systems/hw/sw/services) SERVICES: - STUDENT GUIDE TO VAX/VMS ELECTRONIC CONFERENCING MEETINGS/CONFERENCES/EXHIBITIONS/EVENTS PROJECTS: - CMC RESEARCH PROJECT - IDEAS FESTIVAL, TELLURIDE, COLORADO, USA, JULY 23-25, 1993 - "GLOBAL LECTURE HALL", TRONDHEIM, NORWAY, AUGUST 21, 1993 - FUTURE PROSPECT OF VIDEOCONFERENCING VIA INTERNET - TELECOMMUNICATIONS AND VIRTUAL REALITY STUDIO FOR CREATIVE INQUIRY, CARNEGIE MELLON UNIVERSITY CALL FOR PAPERS/PARTICIPATION: - HYPERTEXT'93: CALL FOR POSTERS - CENTRAL EUROPEAN CONFERENCE AND EXHIBITION FOR ACADEMIC LIBRARIES AND INFORMATICS - SPECIAL ISSUE OF EJVC: COMPUTERIZED TOOLS AS INTERMEDIARIES IN THE COMMUNICATION OF MENTAL MAPS - EP94: THE CONFERENCE ON ELECTRONIC PUBLISHING, DOCUMENT MANIPULATION, AND TYPOGRAPHY - COLING '94 [][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][] /////////// / ONLINE / /////////// INTERVIEWS ~~~~~~~~~~ BIG SKY TELEGRAPH AND A VISION OF VIRTUAL CULTURE: AN INTERVIEW OF FRANK ODASZ BY ERMEL STEPP Frank Odasz, Director, Big Sky Telegraph, was interviewed on Wednesday, March 24, 1993 by Ermel Stepp, Editor-in-Chief, _Electronic Journal of Virtual Culture_ (EJVC). The interview was conducted by telephone between Dillon, Montana and Huntington, West Virginia. EJVC: Who is Frank Odasz? ODASZ: I am a native of Cody, Wyoming that in 1981 went back to school at the University of Wyoming to find out what happened to the promise of computers and telecommunications to bring opportunities to rural citizens. I received a masters in Instructional Technology in 1984 and during that time worked with modems and was intrigued with what benefits could be available to rural citizens with access to the interactive reading and writing capabilities that a modem can provide. I am the Assistant Professor of Computer Education at Western Montana College and I have been here since 1985. In 1987 I wrote a grant to create the Big Sky Telegraph which was a rural test bed to identify where genuine benefits can be derived from this online medium (Odasz, November 1, 1989). EJVC: What is Big Sky Telegraph? ODASZ: Well, the online medium is so abstract! Having come from a background that was very varied, including living both in the San Francisco Bay area as well as managing a ranch in the state of Wyoming, it became apparent that rather than just having access to the technology there needed to be some type of entry level program for self learning opportunities. Rural citizens needed to make first contact with the online medium and form an experiential base from which to judge its merits. So, the Big Sky Telegraph was created. We went online January 1, 1988 with free public access and free self teaching lessons that was also available for recertification purposes for rural teachers. Individuals would request a free packet and then they would go through the lessons at their own location and at times at their own choosing and they would learn the basics of using the modem: How to upload, how to download, and particularly how to use a modem cost effectively over long distance phone lines. Then, in 1989 we received a larger grant from the US West Foundation in Denver to expand the program and we offered free modems to rural citizens in exchange for innovative ideas on how we should customize Telegraph to better medium rural needs. We started by connecting one room schools in Montana and quickly found that you can't separate education from other aspects of the community. So, we readily adopted a community wide networking focus and as we refused access to no one we found many innovations have come to the Big Sky Telegraph from aspects of the community other than the K-12 arena. EJVC: The next question I want to ask is one that will continue throughout the rest of the interview. It pertains to vision. What is your vision of computer networking--for Big Sky Telegraph and for education? Of course, you will probably want to distribute your answers to this question throughout your responses to the other items as we move along. So, briefly what is your vision of computer networking? ODASZ: Well, let me answer that with a question. What is the potential on a illiterate planet with connecting the good hardiness with among persons world wide. That question is more or less has led me forward in that it seems to me that there is extreme power if we have the ability to link needs and resources on the global bases and can add to that the good hardiness of mothers and kids as well as you know the more male dominate components of society. I think my vision for Big Sky Telegraph is to set forth a model by which anyone anywhere any time can be welcome to an online community: To learn on their own pace in supporting master learning context, to become not only an on going student, but to turn around and to be able to actually teach others the same information that person has acquired. My vision for education is literally a plan where we all are students and we all are teachers and where we all are very conscious of our responsibility as global citizens and that the great power of the online mode, particularly Internet, and so forth. To link people together, in my view there is a matching responsibility. That is that we become aware of the capabilities that are literally at our finger tips and that we accept the responsibility that comes along with it to provide a level of community service to the global community to facilitate the encouragement of both learning and teaching among other people. EJVC: Let us return to Big Sky for a moment. I have recently been involved in creating and developing an electronic journal on virtual culture. The concept for virtual culture seems to be something that is undergoing refinement now, but it includes something about users, needs, services, usage, hardware, and so forth. What is the virtual culture of Big Sky Telegraph and what changes do you expect to occur in that culture in terms of short range, intermediate range, and long range? ODASZ: Well, when the Big Sky Telegraph project started in January 1, 1988 there was literally no online culture to speak of in Montana and it was clear to me that the opportunity was presented to the Big Sky Telegraph to literally explore how to create a culture from scratch and we started by providing the tools and the training: Free modems and training with an 800 number and the self training course That articulates rather specifically, not just the technical skills on how to sustain interaction on a shoe string budget from a rural school. More importantly it presented different ideas on how a rural teacher or citizen could serve as a community telegrapher shepherding information needs from citizens that do not yet participate in any virtual culture and to literally forward those questions to resource persons of the virtual community and guarantee quality response back to that citizen. So, I was looking for ways to identify how an individual with these skills might be able to conceptualize the importance of those skills in the community and possibility of that individual for sharing those skills. A person that goes through 10 lessons typically would be the only person in the entire community in rural Montana that would have a clue what a modem was capable of. If they could then set down with other people and show them in a friendly way what they are able to access and the level of friendly support they are able to receive from the staff of Big Sky Telegraph, then, through that method, I thought the virtual culture might be able to grow. An interesting component of this is I found that, and I'm sure I need to be careful here, legislator, administrators and leaders of all levels are typically the last to express interest in the online medium and are the first to disappear behind the bushes when the opportunities of participating in this virtual culture present themselves. Presumably rural teachers are among the first to realize the need for better information and access, particularly peer access, because peer covering of 8th grade levels with eight grade students in a rural school with minimum resources. There is a real information need as well as a very real social need for peer contact and we found that existing throughout Big Sky Telegraph the social need has been the predominate one that people have responded to, whereas providing educational content has definitely come in as a secondary interest among our rural teachers and rural citizens. The users on Telegraph are (one unique feature) 53% women. So, we are one of the few systems in the country that has more women than men. We refuse access to no one. So, we literally have members of the community from all over the country, not just in Montana, and from literally all walks of life. People come and go and they actually go through a number of different levels of internalization of the potential of Big Sky Telegraph. I have written a chapter about that which is posted in the class files areas on Big Sky Telegraph called Chapter1 and that was published on networks two years ago. The full title is _Empowering Networks: Using Computer Conferences in Education_ by Waggoner (Odasz, 1989). During the first six months of Big Sky Telegraph I expected rural teachers to get online, to learn how to message back and forth, and to quickly jump into creating detailed discussions and threads of interaction utilizing the medium. I perceived at that time to be its highest level discourse among educated peers. What I've found is that the level of discussion in this course has been very minimal in that most people don't see the broader potential of online interaction. As far as what people use to access Big Sky Telegraph, initially Apple IIEs where the predominate hardware platform in schools. Now we have people accessing Big Sky Telegraph with all types of computers. What changes do I hope or expect to occur? Well, its already started to occur as people have had more experience with the virtual capabilities of Big Sky Telegraph. Their expectation and vision of capabilities has started to expand a bit. For the past five years we offered Internet e-mail. However, most people have been quite satisfied with the services on Big Sky Telegraph and we actually had a very hard time offering teachers the global capability that Internet e-mail offers. I think conceptually that's a larger leap than most new comers to our online communications are ready to take, but more and more we're seeing increasing interest in just what the Internet might have to offer. Since January 1993 Big Sky Telegraph is now live on the Internet. So, our users can now telnet out, ftp, and so forth. It is very clear that if we don't have easy to follow self teaching lessons on how to do that no one will. So, in pretty much all aspects of Big Sky Telegraph we have assumed people know absolutely nothing about the technology or the potential and have had to instruct people literally one command at a time as to what's possible technically and to articulate the vision in a rural community context as far as why these skills might potentially be beneficial both in the short term and the long term. EJVC: What is the relative mix of telecommunications access in Montana: Big Sky, the Internet, BITNET, the use of electronic conferencing, for example through CoSNDISC. What is the relative mix? Is Big Sky the primary provider? ODASZ: Well, that's a good question. Let's see. When Big Sky started the seven university units--two of them had Internet capability, but only a very very small percentage of the faculty could even answer the questions in what is the Internet much less use it regularly--so there was virtually no real awareness for the use by K-12 citizens of Montana as far as Internet goes and there was actually market resistance by people at the University. Any K-12 teacher within a local phone call that requested an Internet ID was generally refused. That's generally nationally true. Right? That's right and that's a training feature. Who's going to show you how? Who's going to demonstrate it? The answer to that is nobody. In our educational culture, both higher ed and K-12, we do not assign the responsibility to anyone for training new users and, so, even though we have now more connectivity than five years ago, we had a few little bulletin board systems and a start up project called Big Sky Telegraph which then gave the lap tops and overhead projection system to a half dozen teachers and paid for three hundred community demonstrations. As the result of the grassroots awareness, Big Sky Telegraph grew very rapidly--so much that the state department of education made it a project to emulate Telegraph's local community bulletin board systems in a project called METNET [Montana Educational Telecommunications Network]. In METNET seventeen community bulletin board systems were to provide distributive conference and e-mail capability for a free local phone call. The problem is, though, that the money has never been forth coming to provide proper training or to bring resources on to that network. So, even though its a very cost effective model, the training still has not yet taken place and just recently the legislature has withdrawn all training funds from that project. So, the network is in place, but very little has been happening on the network because no one thought that maybe training and resource provision might be a part of the overall success. We now have T-1 lines linking all 7 units to the university system. Big Sky Telegraph is physically accessible free from all seven units but no one at the other seven units has received any training whatsoever as far as faculty teleliteracy so we have literally no traffic from any of the seven colleges on Big Sky Telegraph even though we have Indian reservations and very rural schools connecting into Big Sky Telegraph on a regular basis. That's not the point, which is the function of the training and the purpose of the productivity. When the state government created their METNET bulletin board systems, it's a point worth making that they did not make so much as a phone call to Big Sky Telegraph to identify what we had learned during this five years of experience. There is a great deal of turf concerns among state government and that an open system to share information or partner with anyone does not seem to fit the typical culture of state government which is more lookout for your own hind quarter and don't share everything with other people because it might cost you in the long run. EJVC: What was your recent contract study with the federal government. I understand that there was some concern with grassroots connections which was very close to the Big Sky model. Would you, then, give us some idea what conclusions and recommendations you've been able to make from that study and what impact you think it will have? ODASZ: All right. Dr. Fred Wood is the director of a study that's midway under completion for the Office of Technology Assessment. He toured with the group in the Pacific Northwest, in the state of Montana, seeing what different online applications were in place, and he contracted with Big Sky Telegraph to post a survey of questions on Big Sky Telegraph, a number of rural systems, and a number of Internet list servers to literally ask the questions. How can federal services and information best be disseminated to rural and small towns? This, of course, involves consumer acceptance. Do you know what people need from the federal government in small towns. Do they know what is already available from the federal government in small towns? The answer to that determined from the survey results as evidence of my 50 page report, which would be available for review but not for publication without their permission. Most people do not know now what the federal government offers in rural and small towns. If they don't know what's offered, often they don't know what they might need. So, we identified if there is a very real need for citizen teleliteracy, training people on the very basics of online information access. There is a very real need for proactive librarians for similar roles. One concern of the study was the government wants to know how to be more responsible to citizens. Well, through the convenience and functionality of interactive e-mail the federal government could, indeed, deal with people on a one on one basis and literally guarantee quality responses to questions citizens might ask. So, I think the off shot of the study was there are very real opportunities for the federal government to lead the national mission of generating and facilitating citizens teleliteracy by creating community networks in rural and small towns at very low cost. That model is articulated in the draft. A community bulletin board system would allow free local access to everyone within the local dialing area. They could leave messages on that system that could be either echoed as FIDO echo conferences, or as Internet new groups, listservers, or as simple Internet e-mail. So, an information request originating with the free local phone call in Bear Paw Montana ideally could find any governmental office that might have the information that any individual might require. To make all this work we would need trained librarians ideally at Bear Paw Montana and at the state level and nationally to facilitate the human interaction required to match citizens needs with the problem of information and services that are offered, already available and paid for by tax dollars but they yet remain inaccessible to most of us citizens. EJVC: Frank, what do you envision as the greatest needs, problems, and difficulties confronting computer networks in the schools? What should be done, can be done, and will be done? This might touch on strategic planning in education. ODASZ: What we are looking at as a nation is a paradigm shift of very fundamental proportions and this is just being realized as a result of federal study. I think that people are realizing that to train all citizens in the use of a brand new telecommunication medium is not a trivial task, particularly one that is visible, until people that have an experimental base from which to make judgements about the potential of the medium. In that study I included a model where by community bulletin boards systems could allow Internet e-mail access for all citizens at minimum cost in the short term without overloading the NREN backbone. So, if you ask about what are the greatest needs with computer networking in schools, I think that the first need is to raise the teleliteracy of leaders and decision makers and administrators as to what kind of activity options do actually exist and what are the benefits of this connectivity. Every school in the nation could create a community bulletin board system to provide free local access for everyone in the dialing area to include Internet e-mail. They could do that on aluminum cans collected from their own communities trash over a short amount of time. This awareness does not exist. Further, there's a great technophobia among decision makers, and I don't see anything being done to educate decision makers as far as what telecommunication options are available. In Montana we've found that the last people to show any consistent interest or effort toward their own learning in this area are the decision makers. They are too busy to learn what options exist. So, what should be done is that we should implement the affordable telecom options that now exist that have been demonstrated through Big Sky Telegraph, many many other networks, and bulletin board systems proliferating nationally--then growing from the bottom up from the teacher not from the administrative level top down. What can be done is Internet e-mail and self teaching--online lessons and help, community telecomputing on free local phone calls. That's all technically feasible now. That can be done. What will be done depends on which vision is articulated. I'm personally waiting for our new federal administration to stand up and articulate a national mission of citizen teleliteracy based on community networking and aimed at a national competitiveness. We have online resources relating to technical transfer of federal R&D, of global entrepreneurship information, of global connectivity and capabilities of the Internet. That all needs to be brought together whether at the K-12 entrepreneur level or at the community economic development level. All that information could be condensed and made available for self learning from the whole via-free local phone calls through community network. Strategic planning in education: I think the bulk of the educational establishment in this country, is more concerned about status quo than at looking at the reality of this paradigm shift and the technical capabilities for revising both access to learning and what it is that really represents survival skills in this quickly emerging information age. EJVC: You mentioned the NREN. What is the NREN to you? What are it's prospects? What is it's impact going to be? What will be the impact on Big Sky? ODASZ: Well, the NREN (National Research and Educational Network) started out as a high band network to link university and professional researchers and in it's original form that was to the exclusion of the regular people, including K-12 teachers, librarians, citizens, and so forth. Since then it has been very clear to the NREN planners that it is a politically inauspicious to disfranchise K-12 teachers, librarians, and the general public. The emerging national information infrastructure may not be the NREN that might actually be kind of mutually exclusive efforts and projects. The national information infrastructure could and should, and I think of practical necessity, will include these low end bulletin board systems that can provide in the short term Internet e-mail capability, FTP-mail, gopher mail, WAIS mail, and many information access options on a minimum budget in a scale of a model that any community in the country could implement in the short term. As the general public becomes more aware of the capabilities of Internet e-mail actually are, then, the demand for higher bandwith for options and connectivity will grow and I think that the phone companies and the federal government will find the missing public support for these high band with information highway infrastructures the impact of citizen teleliteracy on a our national competitiveness, I think that with in the next couple of years it will become clear that in the emerging information market place of global ramifications those nations with the highest percentage of teleliteracy citizenship will begin to gain very serious advantages. I think that nations around the world will soon realize they need to train in their general populations as quickly as possible and that education will become linked directly to national competitiveness. This has not been the case in the past. The prospects of all this for Big Sky Telegraph, now that Big Sky is on the Internet, we literally are a model training center and information clearing house for community networking K-12 telecurricular projects, and how to create and nurture a virtual culture from scratch. EJVC: You have mentioned several times the leadership and decision making of administrators. What leadership, decisions, and supervision are needed in order to create and direct the emerging virtual culture in education. Please touch on the visionary leadership in education particular. ODASZ: Well, that's a difficult question. Let me answer in this way: If an individual has never been online, they don't know enough and I don't feel that they are qualified to speak about it or to direct programs that involve the use of the on- line medium. If a person had never been on horse back I don't think they are qualified to teach horse back riding or to speak with any confidence about it. What I have found is that administrators typically say is: "Yes, that online stuff is good for you. You could go do that". But they refuse to participate in it themselves. I think that a requisite for visionary leadership is hands on involvement and first hand knowledge. I am constantly confronted with high level decision makers that don't have a clue about what rural teachers are doing on Big Sky Telegraph and that the teleliteracy of rural teachers in Montana is beyond that of our administrators, legislaturs, senators, and the governor. EJVC: So, some people are controlling things who don't know what they are controlling? ODASZ: Absolutely! I might even add we've had mentally deficient adults communicating online before any of the previous mentioned leaders have been online. Well, this is the bottom line of technology. I'm definitely still looking for the visionary leadership and I think the real leadership is coming from the grassroots and that the main reason that the state of Montana created a METNET system was pressure it felt by the popularity of Big Sky Telegraph being accepted by rural educators in rural communities all across the state. EJVC: Several times you have mentioned the global aspect of telecommunications. What impact will global connectivity have on education, the quality of life, the human condition, and culture in America and the world? That's a broad question! ODASZ: It's a broad question and as far as the verified reality and vision of the potential, I think we're somewhere in the middle right now. If any individual on the planet could learn without restrictions on any topic that they would like, match with people that share their interests, and form true communities of learning, I think that very quickly it would be realized that we have far more resources than our meeting the needs world wide The quality of life, I think, has quite a little bit to do with our helping meet the problems of the world through enhanced connectivity where caring people can help link existing resources with existing needs. High level online interactive discussions can become a part of everyone's life and we all elevate our own vision of our own individual, rural, and potential relation to the human condition. I think that culture is no longer limited to a particular geographic location or ethnic background, but that culture, as you have alluded with the term virtual culture, is moving on to higher intellectual plateaus in recognizing that telecomputing, linked with the good hardiness in human kind world-wide that has the potential to transform the world condition. I think that this could create a virtual culture of people that would include those traditionally unempowered people in society world-wide and that would be the literally without detailing the disadvantage groups that everyone would potentially have an equal voice in in turning around the problems of the world. EJVC: Frank, would you have some point that you would like to make at the end of this interview--now? ODASZ: What often comes to mind is the phrase, "the first will be last and the last will be first", and the phrase the meek shall inherit the earth". Well, I can't help but reflect that all the leaders that I have been in touch with that should have been leading the way have been almost nowhere to be seen and that those that they might say have no business messing with this technology or advocating national and global policy actually are the leaders. Many of them are mothers and individuals that are concerned, becoming involved with this technology because more of what they feel in their heart than what they might intellectually. I guess the point that needs to be made is that if the connectivity that this medium represents really does have the potential to empower the good hardiness in human kind, then, I think it more or less will shine the light on the real motives of virtually everyone on the planet by what they are showing or spot lighting what it is that people are actually doing to support use of this medium or discourage use of this medium. My last few sentences are not finally worded as I prefer but I think it will show the true colors of many many people by what they do with this potential. Literally, we now have in hand the potential to create world change, to learn without limit, to share ideas on a global basis without reference to our economy, our individual economic status. I think those that begin to use this power for positive good will more or less make a very serious point in that those who do not use this power literally will be resting on their laurels or not really demonstrating the intellectual rigor that should be required of our leadership. References Odasz, F. (November 1, 1989). _Montana Expansion of Big Sky Telegraph: A Proposal to the US West Educational Initiative Grants Program_. Dillon, Montana: Montana Western College of the University of Montana. Odasz, F. (1989). Grassroots Networking On Big Sky Telegraph: Empowering Montana's One-Room Rural Schools. In M. D. Waggoner, _Empowering Networks: Using Computer Conferencing in Education_. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Educational Technology Publications. Frank Odasz Internet: franko@bigsky.dillon.mt.us Ermel Stepp Internet: m034050@marshall.wvnet.edu BITNET: m034050@marshall Big Sky Telegraph telnet bigsky.bigsky.dillon.mt.us and login as bbs [][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][] HUMOR ~~~~~ "HUMOR AND THE INTERNET" by Bob Zenhausern A recent comparison of the Internet and the US Postal Service led to the conclusion that there is one US Post Office for every 8000 people and one Internet node for every 500 people. In addition to the email services such a system provides, an uncounted number of of these Internet nodes allow public access to their archives containing documents covering an almost unlimited number of topics and software for both mainframe and micro computers. Despite the magnitude of the information available, the men and women of the Internet have retained a sense of humor and the ability to laugh at the whole impressive structure. One of the earliest examples of this is the Internet manual that was was a parody of the Douglas Adams farce, called The Hitchhikers Guide to the Internet. Perhaps the most intricate and extended puns arising from Internet access grew from the use of the File Transfer Protocol (FTP). FTP is an interactive program that allows searching and retrieving of files located on certain Internet nodes that allow anonymous FTP. This means that anyone with Internet access can sign onto that site without an account, by using the Userid, Anonymous. (Either no password is required or the users will be asked for their Internet addresses.) FTP is a powerful tool, but it assumes the user knows the node and directory on that node in which the file resides. The are lists of anonymous FTP sites available which provide information on the types of files and the directories in which they can be found. There is, however, no "card catlog" of all files in all directories of all nodes that allow anonymous FTP. Archie was created to fill this need. It is a server that returns the nodes, directories, and names of files whose filename contains a specified search string. In its simplest form, the user gives the command: archie search-string. Email is returned containing the names and locations of files that contain that string. (This is a duplicated list and can be quite extensive if either the file is located at many sites or the search string is very general). The derivation of term Archie is the first step in an elaborate Internet pun. Archie the name of a teen-age comic book character and also the word "archive" with the letter "v" removed. The next step in this parade of puns started at the University of Minnesota, where the Internet Gopher was first created. Entering the command "gopher" at an Internet site that has a Gopher server or the command "gopher internet_address" will result in a menu of items which can contain documents, other menus, or Internet access such as telnet or ftp. The pun has three prongs: a) the animal, gopher, (a rodent known for its garden tunnels) is the mascot of the University of Minnesota; b) the software gopher is described as a means of tunneling through the Internet; c) in colloquial English, a gopher is the person in a business with the least seniority, who has to "go for" the coffee, lunch, paper, etc. As the number of gopher sites and topic areas increased, the problem of locating resources in FTP sites was echoed in gopher space. Archie was the solution to FTP and Veronica was the solution for Gopher. When the Veronica software is invoked and given a search string, it searches all registered gophers and produces a menu of gopher entries across the Internet that contain that string. The pun here is two-fold. Veronica is to Gopher as Archie is to FTP and, in the comic book, Veronica was a girl friend of Archie. Veronica is an acronym that stands for Very Easi Rodent Oriented Net-wide Index to Computerized Archives and ties together the comic book character with the triple pun of gopher itself. The pioneers of the Internet have developed some serious research tools, and at the same time, have a very creative sense of humor. Bob Zenhausern [][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][] ///////////////// / MEDIA REVIEWS / ///////////////// BOOKS ~~~~~ THE INTERNET PASSPORT: NORTHWESTNET'S GUIDE TO OUR WORLD ONLINE Date: Tue, 22 Jun 1993 20:59:00 CST From: NETTRAIN To: Multiple recipients of list NETTRAIN Subject: REVIEW: NorthWestNet's _The Internet Passport_ (1) REVIEW OF: Kochmer, Jonathan and NorthWestNet. _The Internet Passport: NorthWestNet's Guide to Our World Online_. 4th ed. Bellevue, WA: NorthWestNet, 1993. ISBN: 0-9635281-0-6 Price: $39.95 retail; $19.95 non-profit and educational Available from: NorthWestNet Attn: The Internet Passport 15400 SE 30th Place, Suite 202 Bellevue, WA 98007 USA voice: (206) 562-3000 fax: (206) 562-4822 (2) REVIEWED BY: Jim Milles, Head of Computer Services, Saint Louis University School of Law, and listowner, NETTRAIN (3) TARGET AUDIENCE: Beginning and experienced users (4) RATING: **** Essential reading (****=essential reading, ***=recommended, ***=worth reading, but others cover the material as well or better, *=save your money) (5) NUMBER OF LINES IN REVIEW: 48 lines (6) SUMMARY: A comprehensive guide to Internet resources, comparable to Krol's _The Whole Internet_ but even broader in scope. It covers a number of areas that other guides ignore. (7) TEXT OF REVIEW: _The Internet Passport_ is, at 515 pages, a greatly revised and expanded version of NorthWestNet's 300-page "User Services Internet Resource Guide," long available via anonymous ftp in PostScript format from ftphost.nwnet.net, directory /user- docs/nusirg. The older version is still available, but is no longer updated, having been replaced by the newly-titled fourth edition. _The Internet Passport_ is written in the breezy, conversational style that has become typical of guides to the Internet. Each chapter is introduced by one or two apt quotations from such sources as Shakespeare, _The Wind in the Willows_, and comic Steven Wright. What distinguishes this book from many of the other guides that have been published recently is the depth of its coverage of the essential tools (e-mail, telnet, ftp, gopher and so on), and its scope in including topics (like supercomputing) that are glossed over or ignored in most other Internet guides. For example, Chapter 2, "E-mail," includes descriptions of the RFC822 mail headers, a bibliography of relevant RFCs, and a list of Usenet newsgroups about e-mail and mail user agents. In addition, a separate six-page chapter is devoted to mail servers (for those with e-mail only access), and other chapters cover e-mail etiquette and gateways. Other unique features include the useful discussion of BITNET LISTSERV in Chapter 10 and the lengthy treatment of searching remote library catalogs, including a sample OPAC search session, in Chapter 14. Chapter 15, "Databases and Bibliographies," provides a selection of interesting resources similar to the "Catalog" section of Krol's _The Whole Internet_. And this takes us only halfway through the book--archie, gopher, WAIS, WWW, and many other topics are still to come. The last section, "Targeted Interests," cover K-12 education and supercomputing, two areas seldom explored in any detail in most Internet guides. If anything, the book includes too much information, and may be intimidating to beginning users; however, the information is organized into easily digestible chapters presented in a logical order, so it should not present difficulties. _The Internet Passport_ contains many sample screens, and uses distinctive typefaces to clearly separate computer output from user input. It is further enhanced by a lengthy glossary and a detailed index. At the $19.95 educational price, this excellent, comprehensive guide deserves a spot on any Internet trainer's bookshelf. ----------------------------------------------------------------- Jim Milles Head of Computer Services Saint Louis University Law Library millesjg@sluvca.slu.edu [][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][] THESES ~~~~~~ NEURAL NETWORKS IN NATURAL LANGUAGE PROCESSING AND INFORMATION RETRIEVAL ........REPRINT........ Ph.D. DISSERTATION AVAILABLE on Neural Networks, Natural Language Processing, Information Retrieval 292 pages and over 350 references =================================================================== A Copy of the dissertation "Neural Networks in Natural Language Processing and Information Retrieval" by Johannes C. Scholtes can be obtained by contacting: University of Amsterdam J.C. Scholtes Dufaystraat 1 1075 GR Amsterdam The Netherlands scholtes@alf.let.uva.nl Do not forget to mention a surface shipping address. Please allow 2-4 weeks for delivery. ABSTRACT 1.0 MACHINE INTELLIGENCE: For over fifty years the two main directions in machine intelligence (MI), neural networks (NN) and artificial intelligence (AI), have been studied by various persons with many dfferent backgrounds. NN and AI seemed to conflict with many of the traditional sciences as well as with each other. The lack of a long research history and well defined foundations has always been an obstacle for the general acceptance of machine intelligence by other fields. 2.0 NATURAL LANGUAGE PROCESSING: The study of natural language processing (NLP) exists even longer than that of MI. Already in the beginning of this century people tried to analyse human language with machines. However, serious efforts had to wait until the development of the digital computer in the 1940s, and even then, the possibilities were limited. For over 40 years, symbolic AI has been the most important approach in the study of NLP. That this has not always been the case, may be concluded from the early work on NLP by Harris. As a matter of fact, Chomsky's Syntactic Structures was an attack on the lack of structural proper-ties in the mathematical methods used in those days. But, as the latter's work remained the standard in NLP, the former has been forgotten completely until recently. As the scientific community in NLP devoted all its attention to the symbolic AI-like theories, the only use- ful practical implementation of NLP systems were those that were based on statistics rather than on linguistics. As a result, more and more scientists are redirecting their attention towards the statistical techniques a vailable in NLP. The field of connectionist NLP can be considered as a special case of these mathematical methods in NLP. 3.0 INFORMATION RETRIEVAL: The study of information retrieval (IR) was traditionally related to libraries on the one hand and military applications on the other. However, as PC's grew more popular, most common users loose track of the data they produced over the last couple of years. This, together with the introduction of various "small platform" computer programs made the field of IR relevant to ordinary users. 4.0 THE COMBINATION: As this study is a very multi-disciplinary one, the risk exists that it remains restricted to a surface discussion of many different problems without analyzing one in depth. To avoid this, some central themes, applications and tools are chosen. The themes in this work are self- organization, distributed data representations and context. The applications are NLP and IR, the tools are (variants of) Kohonen feature maps, a well known model from neural network research. [][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][] //////////////////////////////////////////// / NETWARE REVIEWS (systems/hw/sw/services) / //////////////////////////////////////////// SERVICES ~~~~~~~~ STUDENT GUIDE TO VAX/VMS ELECTRONIC CONFERENCING From: "Dr. Mark Alfino, Department of Philosophy" ANNOUNCING: Student Guide to VAX/VMS Electronic Conferencing The "Student Guide to Electronic Conferencing" is a Wordperfect formatted guide for teachers and professors who want to introduce electronic conferencing into their classrooms. There are three files associated with the guide: sysad.gde, vaxcom.gde, and readme.gde. These files are available via anonymous FTP from Gonzaga.edu (machine address: 147.222.2.2). Before retrieving these files, give the command "binary" to be sure that you receive them with all of the WordPerfect formatting codes. (Hint: Use the command "mget *.gde" to retrieve all three files at once.) Due to limited computing capacity, this FTP site will only be available during specific "windows", the first of which is roughly the Summer of 1993. Please send comments, questions, and advice for revisions to: Dr. Mark Alfino, Assistant Professor, Department of Philosophy Gonzaga University, Spokane, WA 99258 USA Bitnet: ALFINO@GONZAGA Internet: ALFINO@GONZAGA.EDU Voice: (509) 328-4220 x3353 Fax: (509) 484-2818 [][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][] /////////////////////////////////////////// / MEETINGS/CONFERENCES/EXHIBITIONS/EVENTS / /////////////////////////////////////////// PROJECTS ~~~~~~~~ CMC RESEARCH PROJECT CMC RESEARCH PROJECT Sheizaf Rafaeli and Fay Sudweeks A large group of people from several countries and many universities have been collaborating for the past twelve months on a quantitative study of electronic discussions. The research group is coordinated by Sheizaf Rafaeli, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel and Fay Sudweeks, University of Sydney, Australia. Members of the group include researchers from several dozen universities, representing numerous academic disciplines. Many of us have published on the topic in the past. We've gotten together to use the net in order to study use of the net. There are several intended results for this study: * We are interested in empirically testing a few hypotheses (see below). * We wish to collect descriptive data to document the state of the medium and communication over it. * We are interested in creating a baseline, shared database that can serve cross-method, cross-media or historical analyses in the future. * Many of us are fascinated by the process itself: the prospect and promise of conducting research by such a large group, so diverse in interests, time, age, status and geographical location, 'on a stage' (so to speak), is so far unprecedented. This, itself, is motivation enough. We are focusing on the following units of analysis: the single message, authors, the aggregate thread, and the lists themselves. We have randomly sampled a sizeable chunk of publicly available, archived computer mediated group discussions. We are in the process of content-analyzing the messages contained in the sample. At the conclusion of the data collection phase, subgroups of us will delve into the data to produce papers of interest on varying topics. We plan to maintain ownership of the data by the group who have participated in collecting it, for a period of two years. Thereafter, the data will be placed in the public domain. Rationale ========= We have chosen this method because we view it as dovetailing the large number of experimental (laboratory based) studies of CMC, and the plethora of nongeneralizable surveys of single groups. The alternatives in studying group CMC (computer mediated communication) are numerous. One can use quantitative or qualitative methods. One may study societies, organizations, groups, coalitions in groups, individuals, or single messages. One may study cross-sectionally, or across time. Of course, intellectual interest, availability, reliability and validity concerns should inform the choice. In our case, we perceive the largest opportunity residing in three facts: (a) we are a large group. (b) one-shot, one-list studies have been done numerous times. (c) a focus on the self-reports of participants (which typifies much of the literature) still needs validation from less obtrusive studies of the content. We have, therefore, chosen a method that is less sensitive to self report (content analysis). We chose to harness our numbers to the cause of producing a cross-list, cross-time account. And we chose to not limit the range of research questions and hypotheses that can be accommodated within the study. Ethics and Copyright ==================== We are concerned with the ethical implications of our study. Issues raised include informed consent, the violation of privacy and copyright, the integrity and autonomy of scholarship and inquiry. The quantitative analysis of the aggregate of publicly available, archived content of large group discussions that occurred voluntarily is subject to fewer of the ethical concerns. Nevertheless, groups of us have written up documents on ethics and copyright policies, that are informed by legal knowledge, human-subjects' committees positions, and opinions of members of the group. Individual researchers participating in this study will seek their own universities' human subject committees approval for their role in the study. Participants ============ We are a group of more than 120 researchers from 14 countries. Many of us have been involved in research on computer mediated communication, and have published on the topic. While some participants know each other, no participant has met or knows all others. Some of us have shared short biographies. A collection of these biographies is being maintained, and is available via ftp. Hypotheses and Research Questions ================================= The quantitative study is designed to accommodate a broad range of research questions. We do not believe it possible to provide a fair account of all hypotheses in a single document. Nevertheless, here is an attempt, representing the interests of several subgroups of us: 1) What are the characteristics of longer and lasting threads? Does longevity relate to number of participants, pace of discussion, interconnectedness of messages, amount and nature of metacommunication, emotic communication, interactivity/resonance/ chiming? 2) Are "communities" formed on CMC lists, and if so, how? Can social "density" be measured? Can it be predicted, and/or manipulated by structural qualities of the list? Are any of the previously mentioned variables related to community formation? How? Can one discern the emergence of leadership in CMC groups? Is leadership related to talkativity? 3) How do "free" or "subsidized" lists compare with costly ones? 4) Are there measureable differences between professional, academic and recreational lists? 5) How does editorial intervention (moderation, collation, leadership, censorship) affect the nature of CMC? 6) The gender issue, and all of the above questions. Historically, CMC studies documented almost only male participation. This has clearly (and positively) changed. 7) The metacommunication concept/problem: How big is it? Is this the real downside of e-groups? Is it really a problem? How does it relate to social vs. task breakdowns? How does metacommunication interact (statistically) with length of thread, intensity of social connection? Do all threads disappear down the metacommunication drain? 8) What is the relative role (in collaboration, community formation, thread length, etc.) of asking vs. telling, of info provision vs. info demand? 9) When and where does "flaming" occur? How dysfunctional is it? Is it? 10) Are there repeating patterns in the "life" of a group, list, thread? 11) How is the expression of emotion handled? 12) What is the role, frequency and place of shorthand, innovative forms of expression such as emoticons, smileys? 13) What does internet locus of organization "do" to more traditional forms of social organization: nation, culture, language? Variables and Codebook ====================== Each of us has chosen one or more variable(s) and written a set of instructions. The instructions include a definition, a couple of extreme case examples and a measurement scale. The instructions have been collated and form a comprehensive codebook. Pretest ======= We pretested the codebook, assessed the reliability of the measures, identified "holes", and improved the codebook accordingly. Before real coding, each coder codes the same 9 pretest messages as a practice run. Sampling ======== We used the following sampling procedure which we believe allows us to test both anticipated and unanticipated hypotheses: 1) We have three sub-strata of e-groups: a. Bitnet lists b. Internet/usenet lists c. Compuserve lists This stratification represents the most often mentioned distinctions of interest, while still leaving the numbers manageable. 2) In each sub-strata, we randomly selected 20 e-groups, drawing from universe lists-of-lists. Thus, each e-group had an equal chance of being selected. 3) For each e-group selected, we are coding an identical number of of messages. This method allows us to analyse at all levels: the individual message, the thread, and the list, with a reasonable opportunity to generalise findings. 4) In addition to the randomly selected e-groups, we will include e-groups of special interest to members of the group, subject to specified constraints. These additional list(s) will be specially marked to enable setting off in analysis. Reliability =========== Each list is coded by two coders to determine the reproducibility of results and this will provide us with full reliability figures. Lists are assigned randomly and the allocation is confidential. A threshold for an acceptable level of bi-coder agreement will be set. If the threshold is not achieved, we will allocate problematic corpora to a third coder. Oracles ======= To maintain independence of coding, specific coding queries are sent to appointed "oracles". Oracles are intended to give coders a sympathetic ear and a non-directive response to unusually difficult coding decisions. Unanticipated problems relevant to all coders and not list/message specific are discussed by the oracles and a general announcement/directive is posted. Coding ====== Corpora have been downloaded from 50 of the 60 lists selected. Of these, 30 lists have been distributed to 60 coders thus far. Each list is run through a precoding program from which a cumulative list of authors across all lists is extracted. Coding formats have been developed to accommodate all platforms: hypercard stack for Macintosh, database for DOS, and template for text editors and word processors. Questionnaire ============= In addition to message coding statistics, we are obtaining information about individual coders, the technology being used, and impressions of the lists coded. This information will provide descriptive data to complement statistical analyses of coded data. Bibliography ============ One of our shared efforts, started early on, is in identifying relevant literature. Some participants in this group have already published about CMC. Much literature is out there, in various journals and sources. We have a compilation of over 300 sources and are in the process of including some descriptive and evaluative information about each. FTP site ======== Key documents and coding formats are stored on an FTP site and available via anonymous FTP. These include the bibliography, biographies of participants, records of discussions in subcommittees, policy statments regarding copyright, reliability, and sampling, codebooks, message corpora, coding tools, and more. In part, we use ftp availability of our materials to enhance the public nature of this project, and to underscore the 'on stage' nature of our efforts. We also use other computer-mediated-communication means. Subsets of us have used synchronous tools, such as "talk", IRC, etc. All of our group discussions are archived and available for public scrutiny. E-conference and Workshop ========================= The massive cooperative effort of our research group will culminate in a forum in which members will have the opportunity to present research that has been stimulated by the collaborative process and collected data. The group is currently discussing a workshop combined with an electronic conference for those unable to participate in a face-to-face meeting. We are proposing to publish the workshop proceedings as a book. _________________________________________________________________________ (C) 1993 Sheizaf Rafaeli (sheizafr@shum.cc.huji.ac.il) Fay Sudweeks (fays@archsci.arch.su.edu.au) _________________________________________________________________________ Printed with the permission of the authors. [][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][] IDEAS FESTIVAL, TELLURIDE, COLORADO, USA, JULY 23-25, 1993 From: Gene Cooper 1993 Telluride IDEAS FESTIVAL "Tele-Community" July 23-25 Telluride, Colorado The Telluride InfoZone is a pilot project for broad spectrum community development and education in rural areas, using information and telecommunications technologies. It is being planned as a pragmatic answer to real issues facing this place, and as a test-bed for systems, services, and the long range social, economic and cultural implications of "telecommunities" in our "information society". This summer, the Telluride Institute eighth annual Ideas Festival will focus on "Tele-Community". On the weekend of July 23-25, the ideas Festival will host face to face discussions and teleconferences on the difficult issues: the politics, economics, technological, social and cultural implications of "Tele-Community." -------------------- (TELE-)CONFERENCE PRESENTATIONS, PANELS, AND ONLINE EXCHANGES: As government and corporate interests form alliances and position themselves to create a new National Information Infrastructure, there is a growing movement among regional and local communities and dedicated individuals to shape a more humane, socially serving direction for our tele-media-ted future. Participate in this vital conversation and help promote an ecology of the information environment. Technical Considerations: networks, hardware, software, standards. Applications and Implications: political realities; cultural uncertainties; economic opportunities; social responsibilities. Break-out work sessions will be held on critical public policy and access issues. Featured presentations include: Information Economics 101: The pay-per society Civic Networking: From information highways to home-town tele-communities. Science and the nets: The Human Genome Project (information mapping) Virtual Publishing: The medium is changing; what is the message? Native Nets: Talking drums on-line Colorado Initiatives: Setting the agenda DEMONSTRATIONS AND WORKSHOPS Join us in initiating the Telluride InfoZone, providing local access Internet connection to the world, and broadband community net services. Sample developing technologies and explore some of the many on-line applications and communities. SPECIAL EVENTS "Tele/Comm/Unity" - A tele-communication arts project: hosting interactive, multi-media connections with artists, universities and cultural centers around the world - featuring the Electronic Cafe International. Skyfield - Picnic on the West Meadows, site of the proposed new town of Skyfield, a ground-breaking, ecologically planned, tele-community. --------------------- The Ideas Festival is a program of the Telluride Institute, supported in part by Colorado Advanced Technology Institute & Colorado Supernet; The Colorado Trust; Apple Computer, Inc.; and the Town of Telluride, Commission on Arts and Special Events. The Telluride Institute is an eight year old non-profit corporation with 501(c)(3) tax exempt status, active locally, regionally and internationally in natural resources, arts and culture, and research. Amongst the purposes stated in its Articles of Incorporation is promotion of *the understanding of the information revolution and its adaptation to the improvement of human welfare and culture*. The InfoZone concept is the result of several years' study as to how best transform this purpose into action. ----- PRELIMINARY LIST OF INVITED PRESENTERS. (* means confirmed) BOARD OF DIRECTORS *John Lifton and Pamela Zoline - Tellluride Institute/Skyfield *John Naisbitt and Patricia Aburdene - Megatrends 2000 Amory and Hunter Lovins - Rocky Mountain Institute INFOZONE ADVISORY BOARD *Jonathan Aronson - School of International Relations, University of Southern CA *Ann Branscomb - Program on Information Resources Policy, Harvard University *Lewis Branscomb - Kennedy School, Harvard University Duane Elgin - Director, Choosing Our Future *Kit Galloway and Sherrie Rabinowitz - Electronic Cafe International *Ken Harmon - Director, Colorado Supernet Heather Hudson - University of San Francisco *Dave Hughes - Old Colorado City Communications *Ken Klingenstein - Dir., Computer & Network Services, UC, Boulder *Jeff Richardson - Director Rural Telecom Program, Colorado Advanced Tech. Inst. Richard Solomon - Research Lab on Electronics, M.I.T. INVITED PRESENTERS (preliminary) Albert Gore, Jr. - Vice President, USA *Richard Civille - Center for Civic Networking *Steve Cisler - Apple Library of Tomorrow Randy Ross - American Indian Telecommunications *Roger Fidler - Knight Ridder Information Design Lab *Stephen Berry - University of Chicago *Stephen Hull, TogetherNet *Gene Youngblood - College of Santa Fe *Andrezej Konopka - National Institute of Health Bill Washburn - Commercial Internet Exchange (CIX) *Howard Rheingold - Whole Earth Review *Lewis Rossetto - Wired *Douglas Carmichael - Metanet/Metasystems Design *Mark Graham - Pandora Systems *Judy Malloy - Leonardo/F.A.S.T. *Richard Lowenberg, Program Director ------------------- For Program Information contact: Telluride Institute, PO Box 1770, Telluride, CO 81435 (303) 728-4402 Email tellinst@csn.org Travel arrangements : Telluride Travel Company 800-833-8616 (inside Colorado 303-728-3044); Lodging: Telluride Central Reservations: 800-525-3455 (inside Colorado 303-728-4431) [][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][] "GLOBAL LECTURE HALL", TRONDHEIM, NORWAY, AUGUST 21, 1993 From: /PN=TUTSUMI/O=ASSOCIATES.TNET/ADMD=TELEMAIL/C=US/@sprint.com FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE June 22, 1993 CONTACT: TAKESHI UTSUMI Chairman, GLOSAS/USA 718-939-0928 PRELIMINARY ANNOUNCEMENT "Global Lecture Hall" (GLH) (TM) (multipoint-to-multipoint multimedia interactive videoconference) of The U.S.-Russian Electronic Distance Education System (EDES) at the occasion of TELETEACHING'93 Trondheim, Norway August 21, 1993 Videoconference Organizer: Dr. Takeshi Utsumi, President Global University in the U.S.A. (GU/USA) 43-23 Colden Street, Flushing, NY 11355-3998 Tel: +001-718-939-0928 utsumi@columbia.edu <@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@> Date: Saturday, August 21, 1993 ~~~~~ Time: 15:30 to 18:00 (Trondheim time) ~~~~~ 9:30 to 12:00 noon (EST/USA) Range: North, Central and South America; Western, Northern, Central and ~~~~~~ Eastern Europe, including the Commonwealth of Independent States and the Baltic. (Some areas depend on the satellites we are now confirming.) First 90 minutes: ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Panel Discussion: "Compressed Digital Video, Its Quality and ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Applicability to Instructional Television" Panelists: Dr. Lionel V. Baldwin ~~~~~~~~~~ President or Mr. Tom McCall National Technological University (NTU) Professor F. Lawrence Bennett, P.E., Head Engineering and Science Management University of Alaska Fairbanks One other panelist from NTU consortium member Their video will be uplinked to GSTAR-1 simultaneously to demonstrate the effectiveness of the new compressed digital video technology, and their composite video in analog will be broadcast to aforementioned areas. - 2 - Second 60 minutes: ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Demonstration of videoconference via Internet by: Professor Kevin Jeffay Computer Science Department University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Professor Jeffay will demonstrate full-color, full-motion videoconfer- ence through Internet data communication network, without use of satellite nor dish antenna. The video appeared on his computer screen will be broadcast via satellite to the aforementioned areas. Objectives: ~~~~~~~~~~~ (1) To demonstrate "Global Lecture Hall" (GLH) (TM) videoconference technol- ogy for TeleTeaching'93 conference attendees, (2) To hold "get-acquainted" face-to-face meeting via satellite between American instructors and prospective Russian students of the newly established U.S.-Russia EDES, (3) To demonstrate the effectiveness of the new compressed digital video technology, (4) To demonstrate the new technology of videoconferencing via Internet. Participation: ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ If you have a satellite downlink facility and our satellite foot-prints cover your area, receive our sateite signal. Other than participation fee, all participants have to be responsible for the costs of (1) down/uplinking from/to satellites; (2) telephone call to a videoconference center in the U.S. for Q&A; and (3) sending fax to the center for backstage coordination. Should you be interested in participating in this event, please contact Takeshi Utsumi to obtain registration form, instructions for participation and technical information. ********************************************************************** * Takeshi Utsumi, Ph.D. * * President, Global University in the U.S.A. (GU/USA) * * A Divisional Activity of GLOSAS/USA * * (GLObal Systems Analysis and Simulation Association in the U.S.A.) * * 43-23 Colden Street, Flushing, NY 11355-3998, U.S.A. * * Phone: 718-939-0928; EIES: 492 or TAK; * * SprintMail: TUTSUMI/GU.USA/ASSOCIATES.TNET * * INTERNET: utsumi@columbia.edu * ********************************************************************** [][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][] FUTURE PROSPECT OF VIDEOCONFERENCING VIA INTERNET From: /PN=TUTSUMI/O=ASSOCIATES.TNET/ADMD=TELEMAIL/C=US/@sprint.com GLOSAS/USA Memorandum Date: July 3, 1993 To: Electronic Colleagues From: Takeshi Utsumi, Ph.D. Subject: Future Prospect of Videoconferencing via Internet **************************************** Dear Colleagues: (1) I have previously announced our "Global Lecture Hall" (GLH) (TM) multipoint-to-multipoint multimedia interactive videoconference for our U.S.-Russia Electronic Distance Education System (EDES), which will be held at the occasion of TeleTeaching'93 in Trondheim, Norway, on August 21st. During the GLH, we will have a demonstration of videoconference via a packet-switching data telecommunication network, including Internet, albeit limited range yet, by Professor Kevin Jeffay of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. (2) Mr. Gary Welz, President of the Science and Engineering Television Network, Inc. in New York City responded to my announcement and kindly sent me an abstract of his talk on the future prospect of the videocon- ferencing via Internet which talk is to be given at a conference in Italy in a few weeks. Since I consider that this "cutting-edge" technology of videoconferenc- ing without use of satellite and dish antenna, will provide not only our Global (electronic) University project, but also entire Internet community with profound benefits, I obtained his permission to distrib- ute the abstract here. (3) There are now several pairs of universities around the world developing this technology, such as Cornell University; Columbia University with Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden; University of Milano, Italy, with University of Utah, etc. (4) Next week, Mr. Welz and I will meet to discuss how we can accelerate their development, in such a way that the technology will be available to every Internet users in very near future. Please respond me if you are interested in joining our attempt. Best, Tak **************************************** ATTACHMENT Date: Fri, 02 Jul 93 13:06:57 EDT From: "Gary Welz, President, SETN" Subject: Television on the Internet To: "Dr. Takeshi Utsumi" Dear Dr. Utsumi, Thank you for the materials you sent me concerning your work and the materials you forwarded concerning other television broadcasts. Below you will find the abstract of the talk I will be giving in two weeks at the Conference of the International Federation of Science Editors at Consorzio Mario Negri Sud. You have my permission to pubish this abstract in GLOSAS NEWS if the editor so desires. I would welcome comments and advice from any who read it. SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING TELEVISION ON THE INTERNET: Scientific Publishing in a New Medium July 2, 1993 Mr. Gary Welz, President Science and Engineering Television Network, Inc. Many scientists and engineers create moving pictures in their research. These pictures range from the dazzling supercomputer animations produced by mathema- ticians and physicists to the video images of living cells shot by biologists through powerful microscopes. Until recently they have not had a means of publishing these moving pictures and could only distribute them by mailing their peers self-copied videocassettes. Today the increasing capacity of the Internet and rapidly evolving computer hardware and software is beginning to make possible the production and global distribution of digital audio and video. These developments allow scientists to publish research documents in the medium of television. Computers are now commonly used for videoconferencing - video cameras are frequently mounted on the tops of computer screens for precisely this purpose. Soon cameras will be as standard a computer accessory as microphones and speakers are now. Manufacturers of computers and peripherals offer a wide range of video support hardware and software. Among the more popular and least expensive are IBM's Action Media II card and Apple's Quicktime. These were designed for the multimedia market and have yet to be fully exploited for scientific communication - though their potential is enormous. Two products that may play a pivotal role in this are multimedia authoring tools from Macromedia, Authorware Professional and Director. These offer the ability to create documents (multimedia programs) that can be viewed on both Macintosh and Windows platforms with video playback software supplied with the program itself - thus alleviating the need for the viewer to obtain additional hardware or software. At the higher end are the Silicon Graphics Indigo video card and the Xvideo card made by Parallax for use on Sun work-stations - Sun also sells a multimedia authoring tool. Using products like those mentioned above, an author can digitize and compress a 30 minute video presentation into 300 megabytes of data. This will be good quality video, full color and nearly full motion with screen resolution about equal to NTSC, the American broadcast standard. This program can be down- loaded across a T3 (i.e. 45 Megabit/sec) link to a distant viewer's computer in 53 seconds. When the NSFNet is upgraded to OC3 (i.e. 155 Megabits/sec) during the next two years the required download time will drop to 15 seconds. When the US "data superhighway" with a 1 Gigabit/second data rate is opera- tional - some say in 4 years or less - the download time for a 30 minute video program will be only 2.4 seconds. At that point virtually unlimited use of the Internet for the exchange of video documents and live video multi-casting will be possible. One can anticipate that a number of new publication models will arise. Some may be patterned after print journals, offering selected viewer submissions, others will be familiar television formats like talk shows, news reports and live viewer "call-ins". Many of these video publica- tions will be organized by discipline, much as the current bulletin boards are, some will be interdisciplinary, like the journals Science and Nature. We are entering the age of video email, video computer bulletin boards and ultimately video journals with the same degree of editorial quality control that now exists in print. The average scientist is now able to put a televi- sion reception, production and distribution center on his desk for under $10,000. This has turned the computer into the television equivalent of the ham radio set. Television will no longer be only a mass audience medium, instead, in a very short time, it will be the most common and the the pre- ferred form of scientific communication. Mr. Gary Welz President Science and Engineering Television Network, Inc. c/o Association for Computing Machinery 1515 Broadway 17th floor New York, NY 10036 Phone (212) 626-0555 email setn@acmvm.bitnet Your comments and suggestions are welcome. Addendum: Below is a chart showing the download time for a 30 minute video program compressed into 300 megabytes of data and transmitted across lines of various bandwidths 14.4kb/s 128kb/s 1.5Mb/s 45Mb/s 155Mb/s 620Mb/s 1Gb/s Dial-up ISDN T1 T3 OC3(2yrs) OC12(4yrs?) Data SuperHway(4yrs?) 46hrs 5.2hrs 27min 53sec 15sec 4sec 2.4sec (Science and Engineering Television Network, Inc. is a non-profit consortium of professional societies including the Association for Computing Machinery, the American Physical Society, the American Mathematical Society and others. It's purpose is to develop, produce and distribute scientific publications in the medium of television.) ********************************************************************** * Takeshi Utsumi, Ph.D. * * President, Global University in the U.S.A. (GU/USA) * * A Divisional Activity of GLOSAS/USA * * (GLObal Systems Analysis and Simulation Association in the U.S.A.) * * 43-23 Colden Street, Flushing, NY 11355-3998, U.S.A. * * Phone: 718-939-0928; EIES: 492 or TAK; * * SprintMail: TUTSUMI/GU.USA/ASSOCIATES.TNET * * INTERNET: utsumi@columbia.edu * ********************************************************************** [][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][] TELECOMMUNICATIONS AND VIRTUAL REALITY STUDIO FOR CREATIVE INQUIRY, CARNEGIE MELLON UNIVERSITY The Telecommunications and Virtual Reality project at the STUDIO for Creative Inquiry, CMU, investigates networked, multiuser immersion environments, with applications for immersive work stations, cultural and educational projects. Directed by Carl Eugene Loeffler, the project has completed the following networked applications: -The Networked Virtual Art Museum, a large scale environment supporting the display and distribution of artistic applications of virtual reality.Produced for Expedition 92, Munich, Germany. - The Fun House, an application designed for the museum which includes agents, mirrors, flying saucer and merry-go-round rides, and a game room articulating the attributes of physics. Produced for Expedition 92, Munich, Germany. - The Virtual Design Studio, a proof of concept demonstration for a networked virtual, industrial design studio. Produced for the FORD Motor Company. - The Virtual Showroom, an immersion environment featuring an automobile that can be entered, disassembled, and re-assembled. Multiple users. Produced for the FORD Motor Company. - The Virtual Test Track, an four mile in scale immersion environment for the test driving of automobiles. Multiple Users. Produced for the FORD Motor Company. New applications to be produced in 1993 include: -Virtual City, construction of a city, intended as a graphical user interface (GUI) for distributed virtual reality. -Virtual Ancient Egypt, the re-construction in scale of select Temples of Ancient Egypt. - Discover Virtual Reality, a series of educational applications--- Virtual Music Room, Virtual Construction Room, Virtual Painting Studio. *THE PROJECT The essential areas investigated through the project include world-building software; visual art and architecture in virtual environments; telecommunications; computer programming; human interface design and artificial intelligence; communication protocol; and cost analysis. *VISUAL ART AND ARCHITECTURE The fusion of disciplines is the basis for collaborative authorship of virtual worlds. The construction of worlds invites the participation of visual artists, architects, computer aided design teams, computer programmers, musicians and recording specialists as well as other disciplines. *WORLD BUILDING The project serves as a testing site for world building software and associated hardware. The programming teams have added considerably to the functions of the software tested. Public releases are in planning. *TELECOMMUNICATIONS Critical to the project is the development and implementation of networking approaches, including modem-to-modem, server, and high bandwidth connectivity. Telecommunications specialists collaborate with the design team to resolve problems of connectivity in immersion environments. Project achievements in this area are significant. *ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE The application of artificial intelligence, in the form of agents (or guides) and information objects, is an essential area of development. The inclusion of investigators in the areas of interface design, smart objects, and artificial intelligence is a major component. *GROUPWARE AND COMMUNICATION PROTOCOL The project documents multi-user interaction and groupware performance, establishes protocols within networked immersion environments, and suggests standards. The contribution of communication specialists addresses appropriate aspects of qualification, documentation, and standardization. *COST ANALYSIS Other planned study will address the practical nature of networked immersion environments, and investigate the potency of information access for the end user, and typify the end user experience. The project invites the participation of cost analysis specialists and formulates a practical cost basis for networked immersion environments. *INFORMATION: Carl Eugene Loeffler Project Director Telecommunications and Virtual Reality STUDIO for Creative Inquiry Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA. cel+@andrew.cmu.edu Tel: (412) 268-3452 Fax: (412) 268-2829 [][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][] CALL FOR PAPERS/PARTICIPATION ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ HYPERTEXT'93: CALL FOR POSTERS HYPERTEXT'93 CALL FOR POSTERS 1993 ACM Conference on Hypertext Seattle, Washington, USA November 14-18, 1993 Gary Perlman Poster Session Chair Computer & Information Science 228 Bolz Hall, Ohio State University 2036 Neil Avenue, Columbus, OH 43210-1277 phone: +01-614-292-2566, fax: +01-614-292-2911 email: perlman@cis.ohio-state.edu DEADLINE FOR RECEIPT: Monday, August 2, 1993: The deadline for papers, panels, and technical briefings has passed, but there is still time to submit a poster for presentation at Hypertext'93. Poster presentations will allow researchers to present late-breaking results, significant work in progress, or work that is best presented in conversation. Poster sessions let conference attendees exchange ideas one-on-one with authors and let authors discuss their work in more detail with those attendees most deeply interested in a topic. (There's also time to submit a demonstration, contact william@atc.boeing.com.) Posters will be accepted much later than papers in order to provide an opportunity for presenting and getting feedback on hot new ideas. Posters will be reviewed by a panel of subject-matter experts and will be selected on the basis of their contribution to research or practice. Because of the interactive nature of poster presentations, only one submission will be accepted per author. Submit an EXTENDED abstract of at most two pages emphasizing: * the problem, * what was done, and * why the work is important. Please provide cover information: * the title, * the name and affiliation of the author(s), * a few keyword phrases, * complete contact address for the author to whom correspondence should be addressed. (including telephone, fax, e-mail) For accepted posters, authors will be asked for an ABBREVIATED abstract for dissemination at the conference and in the poster session report for the ACM SIGLINK newsletter. E-mail and fax submissions will be accepted. E-mail submissions are PREFERRED over paper which is preferred over fax. PostScript and RTF are okay. LaTeX, troff, Scribe, Word, WP, etc. are not. Answers to some expected questions follow. Q: When will the posters be displayed? A: Posters will on display almost all the time during the conference. There will be one or two 2-3-hour blocks of time dedicated to the posters and demonstrations during which poster presenters will be expected to be available to answer questions. At other times, conference attendees will be able to view the posters. Q: Will the posters be published as part of the proceedings? A: No, but abstracts of the posters will be available at the conference. Posters will be technical "presentations" but not "publications". Some posters might make good papers for the SIGLINK newsletter, or other outlets. The Hypertext'91 poster abstracts were published in the ACM SIGLINK Newsletter, Vol. 1, No. 2, pp. 17-24. Q: How many posters will be accepted? A: We have room for 30-40 posters, but are prepared to accept fewer. For Hypertext'91 about 50% of submissions were accepted. [][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][] CENTRAL EUROPEAN CONFERENCE AND EXHIBITION FOR ACADEMIC LIBRARIES AND INFORMATICS CENTRAL EUROPEAN CONFERENCE AND EXHIBITION FOR ACADEMIC LIBRARIES AND INFORMATICS VILNIUS, LITHUANIA 27-29 September, 1993 EMPOWERING USERS IN THE 21ST CENTURY The patrons of academic libraries constitute the core of the country intellectual power present and future. The development of their countries depends largely on them. Academic libraries of Central and Eastern Europe thus may well become the centres of promotion of new technologies in information infrastructure. An academic library implementing new technologies today will produce thousands of empowered users in the 21st century. Three main themes of the Conference are: 1. New Technologies in Libraries. 2. Status of Academic Libraries in Central and Eastern Europe. 3. Implementation of New Technologies. Theme of concurrent sessions will depend on Your suggestions and abstracts You will send. Our aim is to provide an opportunity for Central and Eastern Europe libraries to get acquainted with new technologies in libraries and companies providing them, to review different projects of library automation, to discuss problems of Central and Eastern Europe libraries with an expectation of future collaboration and possible joint ventures. The major event will be the exhibition, where companies from USA and Europe will demonstrate their latest achievements in information technology. YOUR PAPERS ARE WELCOME! Announcement Papers on the topics of the Conference are invited. Prospective speakers are invited to submit an abstract of 300 words in English. Please mail Abstract by July 31, 1993 to: Vida Maceviciene, Vilnius Technical University Library Ausros Vartu 7a 2600 Vilnius Lithuania Fax: +370 2 765210 E-mail: Vida.Maceviciene@AIA.VTU.LT Authors will be notified of their acceptance by August 31. The Exhibition and the Conference is open to all academic, special, national libraries and documentation centres in ministries, research centres, information centres and producers, enterprises as well as to other interested persons. FOR COMPLETE INFORMATION CONTACT VILNIUS, LITHUIANIA: VIDA.MACEVICIENE@AIA.VTU.LT [][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][] SPECIAL ISSUE OF EJVC: COMPUTERIZED TOOLS AS INTERMEDIARIES IN THE COMMUNICATION OF MENTAL MAPS ---------------------------------------------------------------- CALL FOR PAPERS ---------------------------------------------------------------- Special Issue of the Electronic Journal on Virtual Culture COMPUTERIZED TOOLS AS INTERMEDIARIES IN THE COMMUNICATION OF MENTAL MAPS Guest Editor Donald L. Day, Syracuse University D01DAYXX@SUVM.ACS.SYR.EDU ---------------------------------------------------------------- BACKGROUND Traditionally, tools -- whether screwdrivers or decision support systems -- have been treated as static, in the sense that they facilitate application of a user's existing talents by implementation of a limited range of specific functions. In this view, regardless of how sophisticated a tool may be, it is considered a mere instrument whose purpose is to extend the user's capabilities. Tool and user are thought of as a unified entity, together acting within and upon a task environment. The alternative approach which frames this special issue holds that tools embody the experiences, biases and worldviews (mental models) of their developers. (Ask any left-handed person who has tried to use a pay telephone in a roadside booth.) In this view, tools transmit process preferences, procedural models and task success criteria from their developers to their users. Computerized tools form one especially apt instance of this latter, more cognitive approach. Whether they be CASE packages for the generation of software applications, network management systems that facilitate concurrent engineering, design support aids for architects, or voicemail sequencing programs, computerized tools can be dynamic intermediaries for the communication of mental maps between tool developers and tool users. [Further background to the concepts upon which the special issue is based is available in an article published in the April 1993 Electronic Journal of Communication. See the end of this call for access details.] SUGGESTED TOPICS For this special issue of the Electronic Journal on Virtual Culture, we solicit original papers addressing any aspect of cognitive communication between tool developers and users (or among networked users) which makes use of computerized tools as its medium. By this, we do not mean computer-mediated communication as it is typically understood (electronic messaging among users). Instead, we seek treatments of the behavioral and perceptual responses of users and the process engineering intent of developers. The following list of suggested topics is meant only to demonstrate the bredth of treatments possible within this approach. Any and all topics that fall within the framework described above will be considered. o case studies of specific tools which clearly communicate mental models among stakeholders o conceptual treatment of key factors in networked small- group behavior, the transfer of process knowledge, or cognitive encoding/decoding which are attributable to the effects of communication through tools o factors of situational specificity which affect the impact of computer-mediated communication among stakeholders (including the cultural context of tool use) o the relationship of the framework model to other major models of interpersonal communication o aspects of learning theory as they relate to knowledge augmentation due to tool use o comparison of essential communicative characteristics of tool use across domains (e.g., software engineering vs. publication design) o the role of perceived constraints and creativity in users' acceptance of developers' process models o the impact of tool communication upon users' decision- making processes. SUBMISSION PROCEDURES The language of this issue is English. Contributors are asked to draft a 400-word abstract of their proposed papers, including brief reference to key concepts, existing literature and methodological approach. Abstracts should be sent email to the guest editor no later than July 15, 1993. (Note that the second character in his account ID is a zero, not the letter "o".) Abstracts will be reviewed by the guest editor and by the EJVC editorial staff. Contributors will be notified by August 1 whether or not their proposals are accepted for the issue. Final papers conforming to the EJVC Guidelines for Authors should be submitted to the guest editor via email no later than October 1, 1993. The guidelines are available via anonymous ftp as the file author.guide in subdirectory /pub/ejvc at byrd.mu.wvnet.edu (case-sensitive). Each submission will be blind refereed by at least two qualified professionals. CONTACT INFORMATION Guest Editor: Donald L. Day, IST, 4-282 Center for Science & Technology, Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY 13244-4100. Internet: D01DAYXX@SUVM.ACS.SYR.EDU; BITNET: D01DAYXX@SUVM. EJVC Editor-in-Chief: Ermel Stepp, Marshall University. Internet: M034050@Marshall.WVNET.edu. EJVC Co-Editor: Diane Kovacs, Kent State University. Internet: DKOVACS@Kentvm.Kent.edu; BITNET: DKOVACS@Kentvm. CALL FOR REFEREES Although the Electronic Journal on Virtual Culture is fortunate to have a substantial number of consulting and associate editors on its board, critiques by specialists in disciplines related to the focus of the special issue would be a valuable addition to our screening process. If you would like to volunteer as one of these specialists, retrieve the file notification.ofinterest via anonymous ftp from the subdirectory /pub/ejvc at byrd.mu.wvnet.edu. Please use this file as a model for your offer to referee, sent via email to one of the contacts listed above. And, thanks. ACCESSING THE RELATED ARTICLE IN THE ELECTRONIC JOURNAL OF COMMUNICATION Send an electronic mail message to Comserve@Rpitsvm (bitnet) or Comserve@Vm.Its.Rpi.Edu (internet) with the following text on the first line: Send Day V3N293 No other words or symbols should appear in the message. After dispatching the mail to Comserve, you will receive a file containing the full text of the article. If you wish to find out more about other articles appearing in this issue of EJC/REC, send an electronic mail message to Comserve at one of the addresses above with the following text on the first line: Send EJCTOC V3N293 You will be sent the table of contents for that issue of EJC/REC, which contains abstracts of all the articles that appeared in the issue and information about how to retrieve them. [][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][] EP94: THE CONFERENCE ON ELECTRONIC PUBLISHING, DOCUMENT MANIPULATION, AND TYPOGRAPHY EP94, the Conference on Electronic Publishing, Document Manipulation and Typography will be held in Darmstadt, Germany, on April 13-15, 1994. This conference will take place the same week and at the same location as the third Conference on Raster Imaging and Digital Typography (RIDT), the workshop TEP94 (Teaching Electronic Publishing and Digital Typography), and the workshop PODP94 (Principles Of Document Processing). This conference will be the fifth in a series of international conferences organised to promote the exchange of novel ideas in the area of computer document manipulation. The first two conferences in the series, EP86 held in Nottingham, England, and EP88 in Nice, France, concentrated mainly on specific aspects of the production of documents by computer: from composition to printing. EP90, which was held in Washington D.C., adopted a broader definition of the term Computer Assisted Publication, and accordingly included more material on such new topics as hypertext and hypermedia systems, document recognition and analysis, and application of data-base techniques to document handling. EP92, held in Lausanne, Switzerland, confirmed the trend for documents to impact more and more areas of computer science; EP94 is expected to follow this trend. A day of tutorials is planned just before the Conference. Suggestions for contributions with introductory and survey topics are sollicited. Demonstrations of research prototypes and experimental systems will be organized during the conference. Proposals of such demonstrations are sollicited. For details, please contact the conference secretariat. Authors are invited to submit papers describing original research results. Submissions will be refereed by the programm committee. Accepted papers will be collected in a proceedings that the organizers intend to make available at the conference. Complete papers in English on the following topics are welcomed: TOPICS - Modelling and representation of documents Document structures Integration of text, images, graphics, sound and video Integration of document manipulation systems with other software tools Standards: evaluation and implementation Active documents, documents as user agents Object oriented approaches - Document management Document preparation systems Hypermedia and multimedia: production, editing and visualisation Large document collections Distributed documents: parallel algorithms, multi-user documents User-machine interfaces - Document recognition and interpretation Structural recognition of documents Filtering and image handling techniques Multi-lingual documents Semantic document structures Indexing and retrieval techniques - Typography and graphics Graphics and imaging Pagination and layout Papers that are ambiguous or misdirected will be forwarded to the RIDT94 program committee. MAIN DEADLINES These deadlines are common to EP94 and RIDT94. Today Fill out and mail the reply form to the conference secretariat August 16, 1993 Full paper received by the secretariat. October 15, 1993 Notification of acceptance or rejection. November 1993 Distribution of the program. December 3, 1993 Final versions of accepted papers received by the Secretariat. April 13-15, 1994 EP94 Conference. INSTRUCTIONS FOR SUBMISSION: The proceedings of the conference will be published as a special issue of the journal "Electronic Publishing - origination, dissemination and design". Submitted papers should preferably follow the style of the journal. Information about submission can be obtained from the conference secretariat or by FTP: ftp ipsi.darmstadt.gmd.de or ftp 141.12.39.2 UserID: anonymous Password: then: cd ep94 get EP94.README get epoddmac.ps (the instructions to authors as PostScript File). This file exists as well in LaTeX: epoddmac.tex get epodd.sty [][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][] COLING '94 COLING 94 CALL FOR PAPERS August 5-9, 1994 Miyako Hotel, Kyoto, Japan General Chairman: Prof. Makoto Nagao Department of Electrical Engineering Kyoto University Tel. +81-75-753-5344 Fax. +81-75-751-1576 Email. coling94@pine.kuee.kyoto-u.ac.jp The International Committee on Computational Linguistics invites the submission of papers for COLING 94, the 15th International Conference on Computational Linguistics, in Kyoto, Japan. TOPICS OF INTEREST: Papers are invited on substantial, original, and unpublished research on all aspects of computational linguistics, including, but not limited to, the followings. - syntax - parsing - semantics - generation - phonetics - language understanding - phonology - speech analysis/synthesis - morphology - computational lexicons - discourse - electronic dictionaries - pragmatics - terminology - quantitative/qualitative linguistics - text database and retrieval - mathematical linguistics - documentation - contrastive linguistics - machine translation - cognitive linguistics - machine aids for translation - large text corpora - natural language interface - text processing - dialogue systems - hardware/software for NLP - multimedia systems REQUIREMENTS FOR SUBMISSION: Papers should be either topical papers (maximum six pages in final format) or project notes with demonstration (maximum four pages), preferably in English. Both should describe original work. The project note should specify the computer platform that will be used. They should emphasize completed work rather than intended work, and they should indicate clearly the state of completion of the reported results. A paper accepted for presentation at the COLING Conference cannot be presented at another conference. FORMAT FOR SUBMISSION: Authors should submit four copies of preliminary versions of their papers with the page limits above, on A4 paper with the title, author(s), addresses (including email if possible), affiliation across the page top, a short (five line) summary, the words: topical paper or project note, and a specification of the topic area preferably drawn from the list above. As well, authors are strongly urged to email the title page information by the deadline date. Send the papers and emails to: COLING 94 Department of Computer Science University of Sheffield Sheffield S10 2UH, England Email: coling@dcs.sheffield.ac.uk IMPORTANT DATES: Preliminary paper submission due: 6 January, 1994 Acceptance notification: 15 March, 1994 Camera-ready copies due: 1 May, 1994 REVIEW SCHEDULE: Preliminary papers are due by 6 January 1994. Papers received after that date will be returned unopened. Notification of receipt will be mailed to the first author (or designated author) soon after receipt. All inquiries regarding lost papers must be made by 27 January 1994. Designated authors will be notified of acceptance by 15 March, 1994. Camera-ready copies of final papers prepared in a double-column format, preferably using a laser printer, must be received by 1 May 1994 at Prof. Makoto Nagao Department of Electrical Engineering Kyoto University Sakyo, Kyoto, Japan along with a signed copyright release statement. Papers received after that date may not be included in the proceedings. [][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][] Boilerplate of Editorial Board *********** Copyright Statement **********************