introduction - Bob Carlitz

["Robert D. Carlitz" <bob@giotto.info-ren.org>]

Here's a quick introduction.  I hope others on the
mailing list will also introduce themselves.

I'm Bob Carlitz, a Pitt faculty member in the Department
of Physics and Astronomy.  I've been interested and active
in networking for the last decade, having set up an
Internet mailing list on the subject back in 1989 and
through this mailing list having met hundreds of people
who have launched innovative educational and social
projects online.

Locally I was involved with the Common Knowledge: Pittsburgh
project (CK:P) in the Pittsburgh Public Schools (in collaboration
with Pitt and the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center) and
with the Bridging the Urban Landscape project, which
extended the CK:P collaboration to include the Hill House
Association, the Carnegie Library, Digital Equipment and
TCI of Pennsylvania.

More recently I've been working through Information Renaissance
to develop local shared infrastructure, to create online
tools which facilitate collaborative projects, and to foster
online discussions like the one in which we are presently
involved.  This latter activity is what we are calling
"Network Democracy."

In the Pittsburgh I-Net I see a great opportunity to realize
the promise of the Internet to promote new collaborations,
to offer economies through shared infrastructure, and to
provide a democratic distribution of new technologies.
Pittsburgh is a good place to make this happen.  We have
a lot of technical know-how, a tradition of public/private
partnerships and a political awareness of the problems of
equity.

The timeline for planning and implementing the I-Net is
a very short one.  I hope that our group will be able
to energize enough people to map out the scope and content
of such a project and to foster the political climate
in which the project can be realized.

Cheers!
Bob Carlitz