Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, January 21, 1992 TAG: 9201210261
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: CATHRYN McCUE and MADELYN ROSENBERG
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG LENGTH: Long
A LOOK INTO THE FUTURE
Robert Heterick grew up without a television. He remembers the years when a milkman left a bottle or two at his front door."I remember when you couldn't buy a beer in Blacksburg," said Heterick, one visionary behind a project that would zap this small university town into the 21st century.
He believes the time will come when the fiber-optic computer hookup will go the way of television and be a must for every American home.
"People will act like it's always been there and can't imagine what life was like without it," he said Monday after helping unveil a proposal at Virginia Tech for the "Blacksburg Electronic Village."
Perhaps within a just a few years every home, apartment, business and school in Blacksburg would be electronically linked with banks, pharmacies, grocery stores, libraries, stock markets and each other.
Even Hollywood.
Instead of going to the video store, viewers could select any movie from a menu on their computer screen at home, click a button, sit back and watch.
Instead of going shopping, a computer would walk down the aisles, stopping at whatever item the customer wanted.
"Then it would be delivered to your house, in theory, sooner or later," said Rep. Rick Boucher, D-Abingdon.
Most of these electronic services, however magical they seem, would cost real dollars.
Heterick likens the project to the baseball field in the movie "Field of Dreams." " `If you build it, they will come,' " he said. "The `them' we're talking about is ordinary citizens in an ordinary community."
Blacksburg has roughly 32,000 people, counting Tech students. There are 21,000 people with access to computers on the campus, which installed a computer/fiber-optic system about 10 years ago. The system, considered to be on the cutting edge among state colleges and universities nationwide, spurred C&P's interest in the project.
The telephone company, which needs to enhance its services in order to compete in the information age, is a partner with Tech and Blacksburg in the proposal.
The three formally announced the six-month feasibility study at Tech's Donaldson Brown Monday morning.
In a room not large enough for the 100 or so community leaders who gathered there, Heterick explained the plan for the town's future.
A row of 13 computers stood ready on one side of the room, a blue curtain covering a maze of plugs and cords. One computer showed a shuttle launch, another showed Heterick and other speakers at the lectern.
The technology isn't new, but it still seemed somewhat elusive to some who watched the demonstrations.
"Oh, gosh, I still have a rotary phone," said Frances Parsons, a veteran member of Town Council. "Some of us will have to go back to school, I think."
She was initially overwhelmed by the possibilities of the electronic village. "Are we going to get more information than we really need?" she wondered.
Blacksburg Mayor Roger Hedgepeth, in his comments to the group, seemed to sum it up: "We know what yesterday was, but tomorrow may not be what it used to be."
C&P and other agencies have set up a dozen or so experimental villages in the country already, but on a smaller scale.
The focus of this project is not the technology itself, but its application to the things we do every day, Heterick said.
Officials do not yet know what the experiment will cost - the study will tell.
C&P would pick up part of the initial tab and later charge monthly fees for the various services; only those who used it would pay.
"This is like when the telephone first came out," said Joe Wiencko, manager of advanced networks at Tech. "Not everyone had one at first, but later it was considered a necessity."
Heterick said the price of computers will eventually be as affordable as VCRs or TVs.
He said the monthly bills would be low for the amount of services received.
Probably the rates would be high until telephone companies are able to compete with cable television and bring fiber optics into the home.
Boucher recently sponsored a bill, now in a House sub-committee, that would help break the cable television monopoly.
"My bill is probably the cable industry's worst nightmare," he said. He gave it a 50-50 chance of passing.
There's an urgency to developing a widespread fiber-optic network, he said. The Japanese have vowed to get a similar network in place by 2015. They have invested billions of dollars toward that goal.
It would take the phone companies 40 years to catch up, unless they were provided a financial incentive and could compete for cable viewers.
The technology would give Blacksburg businesses an edge.
"A lot of us have wanted to see something like this for years," said Ken Anderson of Anderson & Associates engineering firm. "We're out here in the boondocks and this connects us in."
Some people are afraid the new technology could do just the opposite in this close-knit region. They fear a loss of human contact if people rely too much on computer forums.
"People always worry about that," Heterick said. "But that won't happen because people won't let it happen."
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