Nerds, especially creative, artsy nerds, may have been into the Mac because it was the best computer around for doing what they wanted to get done, but the general public thought good things about Apple as well, and much of the credit for that goes to gestures like the computer literacy for kids idea. In other words, it's more than just getting PCs and connections up and running. How much more is outlined in Gary Chapman 's speech delivered to the White House Conference on Libraries and Information Services this August. It whirs and flashes and spits out the sort of answer Alta Vista is famous for, that is, more often than not, it makes sense to a machine but no one else. But even before the computer comes up with its useless print-out, one of the human librarians finds the actual answer in a book.
Chapman does eventually land on the inevitable.
The Net is the future of info delivery, but again, the human factor will be as vital as ever. Part of that would be getting librarians worked up about the idea of helping people see the Net as something other than a trickle down info device. First by getting the communities involved in building the network from the ground up, that is, not just calling in the experts and technicians to build it for them and expecting that simply by plugging themselves in, they've got themselves a wired community. And third, by generating their own content instead of just kicking back and taking in Time Warner Turner's, civic culture is kept alive and kicking. Besides a genuine sense of place, there's another reason to get people creating their own content.