TECH STUDENT ALREADY HAS `GLOBAL TOWN HALL' OPERATING

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, January 21, 1992                   TAG: 9201210187
SECTION: CURRENT                    PAGE: NRV-6   EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY 
SOURCE: MADELYN ROSENBERG
DATELINE: BLACKBURG                                  LENGTH: Medium
TECH STUDENT ALREADY HAS `GLOBAL TOWN HALL' OPERATING
To Brian McConnell, technology that would create an "electronic village" doesn't seem so futuristic.
McConnell, a senior in electrical engineering at Virginia Tech, has been working with computer systems since he came to the university.
He set up a system a year ago in which student governments from all over the United States - and all over the world - could communicate.
"It's the electronic equivalent of a global town hall," McConnell said Monday after professors at the university announced the study of a system, similar but much-expanded, that would link the town's homes and businesses through fiber optics and other communications technologies. "You have several hundred people and you bring them together so their ideas are transmitted - only it's to 42 countries and several hundred universities."
McConnell, who has served on the student government at Tech for years now, said the system helps the schools discuss ideas and problems that are facing them.
"If you have a good idea at one school, sometimes it takes months or years to trickle over," he said. Through the computer system, the idea can get out immediately on SGANET.
The system is run by McConnell and six other students from the Northeastern United States, Europe and Asia.
The students who use the system discuss legislation affecting students, lobbying tactics and financial aid.
"Financial aid is a big issue - not just in the United States, but in other countries, too," he said.
There are discussions, too, about access to higher education. In other countries, the governments handle more of the burden, he said. "Even in Australia, it's not tuition-free, but it's heavily subsidied."
McConnell eyes the row of computers in Donaldson Brown, part of a demonstration of what computer technology can do.
"You see those models?" he asks. "Five years from now, what they can do is going to seem mild."
All in all, it doesn't seem too farfetched, he said. "It's the same as if it were 100 years ago and we had all dirt roads," he said.
The computers, experts said, will pave the way for a system that is destined to become common as a highway, used just as much.

by Archana Subramaniam by CNB