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Welcome to the information superhighway.
While nearly everyone has heard of the information superhighway, even experts differ on exactly what the term means and what the future it promises will look like.
Broadly speaking, however, the superhighway refers to the union of today's broadcasting, cable, video, telephone, and computer and semiconductorindustries into one large all-connected industry.
Directing the union are technological advances that have made it easier to store and rapidly transmitinformation into homes and offices.
Fiber-opticcable, for example—made up of hair-thin glass fibers—is a tremendously efficient carrierof information.
Lasersshooting light through glass fiber can transmit , times as much data as a standard telephone wire, or tens of thousands of paragraphs such as this one every second.
The greatly increased volume and speed of data transmission that these technologies permit can be compared to the way in which a highway with many lanes allows more cars to move at faster speeds than a two-lane highway—hence, the information superhighway.
The closest thing to an information superhighway today is the Internet, the system of linked computer networks that allows up to million people in countries to exchange information.
But while the Internet primarily moves words, the information superhighway will soon make routine the electronic transmission of data in other formats, such as audiofilesand images. That means, for example, that a doctor in Europe who is particularly learned will be able to treat patients in America after viewing their records via computer, deciding the correct doseof medicine to give the patient, or perhaps even remotely controlling a bladewieldingrobot during surgery.
\out a message on a keyboard,\
The world is on \the Clinton administration's leading high technologyadvocate.
Gore wants the federal government to play the leading role in shaping the superhighway.
However, in an era of smaller budgets, the United States government is unlikely to come up with the money needed during the next years to construct the superhighway.
That leaves private industry—computer, phone, and cable companies—to move into the vacuumleft by the government's absence.
And while these industries are pioneering the most exciting new technologies, some critics fear
that profit-minded companies will only develop services for the wealthy.
\left in the hands of private enterprise, the data highway could become little more than a syntheticuniverse for the rich,\worries Jeffrey Chester, president of the Center for Media Education in Washington, D.C.
Poor people must also have access to high technology, says another expert.
\
So many transactions and exchanges are going to be made through this medium—banking, shopping, communication, and information—that those who have to rely on the postmanto send their correspondencerisk really falling behind,\
Some experts were alarmed earlier this year when diagramsshowed that four regional phone companies who are building components of the superhighway were only connecting wealthy communities.
The companies denied they were avoiding the poor, but conceded that the wealthy would likely be the first to benefit.
\in areas where there are customers we believe will buy the service. This is a business.\
Advocates for the poor want the companies building the data highway to devote a portionof their profits to insuringuniversal access.
Advocates of universal access have already launched a number of projects of their own.
In Berkeley, California, the city's Community Memory Project has placed computer terminalsin public buildings and subway stations, where a message can be sent for cents.
In Santa Monica, California, computers have replaced typewritersin all public libraries, and anyone, not just librarians, can send correspondence via computer.
Many challenges face us as we move closer to the reality of the information superhighway.
In order for it to be of value to most people, individuals need to become informed about what is possible and how being connected will be of benefit.
The possibilities are endless but in order for the information superhighway to become a reality, some concrete steps need to be taken to get the process started. Unit_passage_english_a
Here we are, all by ourselves, all million of us by recent count, alone in our rooms, some of us liking it that way and some of us not.
Some of us divorced, some widowed, some never yet committed.
Loneliness may be a sort of national disease here, and it's more embarrassing for us to admit than any other sin.
On the other hand, to be alone on purpose, having rejected company rather than been cast out by it, is one characteristic of an American hero.
The solitaryhunter or explorer needs no one as they venture out among the deer and wolves to tamethe great wild areas.
Thoreau, alone in his cabin on the pond, his back deliberately turned to the town. Now, that's character for you.
Inspirationin solitudeis a major commodityfor poets and philosophers. They're all for it.
They all speak highly of themselves for seeking it out, at least for an hour or even two before they hurry home for tea.
Consider Dorothy Wordsworth, for instance, helping her brother William put on his coat, finding his notebook and pencil for him, and waving as he sets forth into the early spring sunlightto look at flowers all by himself.
\
No doubt about it, solitude is improved by being voluntary.
Look at Milton's daughters arranging his cushionsand blankets before they silently creepaway, so he can create poetry.
Then, rather than trouble to put it in his own handwriting, he calls the girls to come back and write it down while he dictates.
You may have noticed that most of these artistic types went outdoors to be alone. The indoors was full of loved ones keeping the kettlewarm till they came home.
The American high priestof solitude was Thoreau.
We admire him, not for his self-reliance, but because he was all by himself out there at Walden Pond, and he wanted to be—all alone in the woods.
Actually, he lived a mile, or minutes' walk, from his nearest neighbor; half a mile from the railroad; three hundred yards from a busy road.
He had company in and out of the hutall day, asking him how he could possibly be so noble.
Apparently the main point of his nobility was that he had neither wife nor servants, used his own axeto chop his own wood, and washed his own cups and saucers.
I don't know who did his laundry; he doesn't say, but he certainly doesn't mention doing his own, either.
Listen to him: \
Thoreau had his own self-importance for company.
Perhaps there's a message here: The larger the ego, the less the need for other egos around. The more modest and humblewe feel, the more we suffer from solitude, feeling ourselves inadequatecompany.
If you live with other people, their temporary absence can be refreshing. Solitude will end on Thursday.
If today I use a singular personal pronoun to refer to myself, next week I will use the pluralform.
While the others are absent you can stretch out your soul until it fills up the whole room, and use your freedom, coming and going as you please without apology, staying up late to read, soakinin the bath, eating a whole pintof ice cream at one sitting, moving at your own pace. Those absent will be back.
Their waterproofwinter coats are in the closet and the dog keeps watching for them at the window. But when you live alone, the temporary absence of your friends and acquaintances leaves a vacuum; they may never come back.
The condition of loneliness rises and falls, but the need to talk goes on forever. It's more basic than needing to listen.
Oh, we all have friends we can tell important things to, people we can call to say we lost our job or fell on a slipperyfloor and broke our arm.
It's the daily succession of small complaints and observationsand opinions that backs up and chokesus.
We can't really call a friend to say we got a parcelfrom our sister, or it's getting dark earlier now, or we don't trust that new Supreme Court justice.
Scientific surveys show that we who live alone talk at length to ourselves and our pets and the television.
We ask the cat whether we should wear the blue suit or the yellow dress. We ask the parrotif we should prepare steak, or noodles for, dinner.
We argue with ourselves over who is the greater sportsman: that figure skateror this skier. There's nothing wrong with this.
It's good for us, and a lot less embarrassing than the woman in front of us in line at the market who's telling the cashier that her niece Melissa may be coming to visit on Saturday, and Melissa is very fond of hot chocolate, which is why she bought the powdered hot chocolate mix, though she never drinks it herself.
It's important to stay rational.
It's important to stop waiting and settle down and make ourselves comfortable, at least temporarily, and find some grace and pleasure in our condition, not like a self-centeredBritish poet but like a patient princess sealedup in a tower, waiting for the happy ending to our fairy tale.
After all, here we are.
It may not be where we expected to be, but for the time being we might as well call it home. Anyway, there is no place like home. Unit_passage_english_b
Identical twins Katie and Sarah Monahan arrived at Pennsylvania's Gettysburg College last year determined to strike out on independent paths.
Although the -year-old sisters had requested rooms in different dorms, the housingoffice placed them on the eighth floor of the same building, across the hall from each other. While Katie got along with her roommate, Sarah was miserable.
She and her roommate silently warred over matters ranging from when the lights should be turned
off to how the furniture should be arranged.
Finally, they divided the room in two and gave up on oral communication, communicating primarily through short notes.
During this time, Sarah kept running across the hall to seek comfort from Katie. Before long, the two wanted to live together again. Sarah's roommate eventually agreed to move out.
\ \
Sarah's ability to solve her dilemma by rooming with her identical twin is unusual, but the conflict she faced is not.
Despite extensive efforts by many schools to make good roommate matches, unsatisfactory outcomes are common.
One roommate is always cold, while the other never wants to turn up the furnace, even though the thermometersays it's minusfive outside.
One person likes quiet, while the other person spends two hours a day practicing the trumpet, or turns up his sound system to the point where the whole room vibrates.
One eats only organicallyproduced vegetables and believes all living things are holy, even ants and mosquitoes, while the other likes wearing furand enjoys cutting up frogs in biology class.
When personalities don't mix, the excitement of being away at college can quickly grow stale. Moreover, roommates can affect each other's psychological health.
A recent study reports that depressionin college roommates is often passed from one person to another.
Learning to toleratea stranger's habits may teach undergraduatesflexibilityand the art of compromise, but the learning process is often painful.
Julie Noel, a -year-old senior, recalls that she and her freshmanyear roommate didn't communicate and were uncomfortable throughout the year.
\was so timid,\
\
Although they didn't sawthe room in half, near year's end, the two did end up in a screaming fight. \
Most roommate conflicts spring from such small, irritatingdifferences rather than from grand disputes over abstractphilosophical principles.
%university in Ohio.
In extreme cases, roommate conflict can lead to serious violence, as it did at Harvard last spring: One student killed her roommate before committing suicide.
Many schools have started conflict resolution programs to calm tensions that otherwise can build