Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, October 26, 1994 TAG: 9410260042
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DAVID REED ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG LENGTH: Long
Jenny Moore dreaded shopping day. Weaving through the aisles with four young children in tow. Comparing cereal prices while one kid begs for sugar flakes, two fight to be cart driver and the toddler ... Where is he?
She also dreaded learning to use a computer. But now the white box with the black hole is her friend, because it's making her life easier.
With two clicks on her computer mouse, Moore begins her shopping trip in the Blacksburg Electronic Village, a computer network that marked its first anniversary Tuesday with one-fourth of the town's 36,000 residents on line.
She scrolls through the computerized inventory at Wade's Grocery, checks out what's on sale, makes her list and prints out coupons she'll use at the checkout counter.
Soon she'll be able to use electronic mail to place her order, then come to the store to pay her bill and pick up her bags.
``It's a lot easier than taking the kids through the aisles,'' she said.
Andrew Cohill, manager of the Blacksburg Electronic Village pilot project, said the technology will allow people to have a standing order at the grocery store and even get it delivered.
``I think we are going to see an explosion of highly customized personal shopping services,'' Cohill said. ``We're getting back to the days of the milkman with the little wire basket who used to come behind the house.''
More than 1,000 homes, five apartment buildings and 40 businesses are linked to the network, as are Virginia Tech, the public schools, the public library and the city government. Most users have an Ethernet connection that allows information to travel to and from the personal computer about 100 times faster than dialing in on telephone lines.
All are linked directly to the Internet, a worldwide link of various computer networks, databases and electronic mail.
The project directors hope that when a large percentage of residents and businesses begin using the information services regularly, the computer link will be viewed as a necessity, like the telephone, rather than a luxury.
``It's like my microwave,'' Moore said. ``Before I had one, I didn't think I'd ever need it. Now I go, `Gosh, how could I have done without it?' And I don't even use it to its fullest.''
She could use the electronic mail system to order flowers but, she said, ``That's my husband's job.'' She could make airline reservations and appointments with a family doctor, a tax preparer, an attorney and numerous other professionals.
She could check movie theater and bus schedules and could see what new stuff has come into a video store, a book store, a museum and the library.
Through the use of specialized software, she could hunt for books, documents and software scattered on thousands of computers at universities and government agencies.
But mainly, she uses the electronic mail to communicate with her husband when he's on the road and using a portable computer; friends; and people interested in dairy goats, which she raises. She also talks electronically with fellow members of the Great Books Club and with the president of the Parent-Teacher Association.
In the coming months, she'll be able to check homework assignments by calling the school computer and to see if bad weather is closing schools or roads by calling a community bulletin board, which also would list ongoing events.
``I was intimidated by the computer as a whole,'' Moore said. ``Now I've gotten several other people on line and encouraged others who are a little more hesitant.''
One goal of the community computer network is to demonstrate what kind of information services people would like to receive, what they would pay and how they want it delivered. It will teach how to package, market and price services.
``It's incredibly easy to learn and navigate,'' said Laura Byrd, a Virginia Tech student who uses the network a few hours a day - even to complain about the anchovy and pineapple pizza she had at a restaurant that offers coupons on line.
``All I have to do is click on something, and I get it,'' Byrd said.
Federal Communications Commission Chairman Reed Hundt said at a telecommunications conference at Virginia Tech this year that the Blacksburg Electronic Village is a model for other communities to emulate.
Bell Atlantic President Hugh Stallard, whose company has invested more than $6 million in the project, calls Blacksburg ``a test bed for the electronic age.''
The university town on a plateau in the Blue Ridge Mountains attracted federal grants and corporate sponsors because it's compact and more than 50 percent of its residents have personal computers.
A pilot project in a section of a large city wouldn't have worked as well, designers said, because people's daily routines naturally spread out throughout the wider metropolitan area.
Also, Virginia Tech was one of the first universities in the nation to rig its campus with fiber-optic cables, which allow information to travel faster and in much greater volume than do standard telephone lines. About 8,300 of Blacksburg's residents live on the campus.
Bell Atlantic has laid another 42 miles of fiber-optic cable and installed a digital electronic switching center, which allows voice, data and full-motion video to pass simultaneously over the same lines.
The Blacksburg project is more comprehensive than other telecommunication experiments around the country because it includes a cross section of an entire community, said Rep. Rick Boucher, D-Abingdon, chairman of the subcommittee on science of the House Committee on Science and Technology.
But Cohill, manager of the Blacksburg Electronic Village pilot project, said going into uncharted cyberspace was not like he imagined a year ago.
``The biggest surprise to me is that when I started, I looked at it as a technology project,'' he said. ``But it turned out there was nothing complicated about hooking people up. We now realize it's an education project.''
He calls it the reverse ``Field of Dreams'' syndrome, or, ``You can't say, `Build it and they will come.' You have to give people and businesses some pretty compelling reasons to change their habits.''
People aren't impressed by the vast resources of the Internet, he said.
``They want to use the technology to make their lives easier and to gain time for them,'' Cohill said. ``They want to talk with the grocer, the doctor, the bank tellers and their child's teacher. They want to know, `How is this really going to change my life?'''
by CNB