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

DATE: MONDAY, August 22, 1994                   TAG: 9408220075
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

TELETECH

For instance, the original point of the Internet - the center lane of the fabled information highway - was to link all manner of government and university data bases, so that scholars and researchers could become better scholars and researchers. Yet its greater use so far seems as a forum for chitchat among people who otherwise might never find another soul in the world who shares their highly specialized, not to say exotic, conversational interests.

The phone in its more traditional guise is not exactly being left behind in the technology dust, either - as Southwest Virginians are reminded in a notice with their Bell Atlantic bills this month.

First came answering machines, to be used for taking and recording messages when the recipient of a call was out of the office, away from home, out to lunch, whatever. It didn't take folks long to figure out another useful service of the machines: screening calls. Let the answer message come on, wait for the caller to start talking, then decide whether you want to pick up the receiver.

If all you hear is a hang-up click, you can be reasonably sure it was someone you didn't want to talk to anyway, like a salesman making cold calls.

Then came Caller ID services, straightforwardly designed to do what had been a secondary purpose of answering machines. For a monthly fee (natch) to the phone company, a subscriber can see the number from which an incoming call is made and decide whether to answer.

The new option announced in the August phone bills is that you now can sign on to get a name with the number.

But wait ... If you're a caller, according to the notice, you can dial *67 (1167 on a rotary phone) and your number won't flash for the callee. If, however, you're a callee with Caller ID, you can dial *77 (1177 on a rotary phone - see a pattern?), and callers who've blocked their numbers will be blocked from calling you.

Checkmate!

Eagerly awaited are devices for alerting callees without Caller ID that

whoever's calling wouldn't have shown you their numbers if you did have it. And ways to allow callees with Caller ID to specify the blocked-identification numbers from which they'll take calls and the ones they want blocked.

The possibilities are dazzling. Or is it dizzying?