Someday, Barcrofters may conduct meetings, elect board members and even trade gossip from the comfort of their dens and living rooms. But Allard is hopeful. It 's only the computer nerds. But in Barcroft and other communities throughout the country, that is changing quickly as commercial on-line services scramble to provide access to the Web. According to officials at the Internet Society in Reston, the number of people on-line worldwide has grown by about 10 million just since the year began, to about 50 million.
Experts say it's only a matter of time before hundreds more follow suit.
The process of building a home page is so simple, and there is an explosion of interest. The newsletters, however, often are time-consuming to assemble, expensive to publish and even more costly to mail. And since most come out only monthly or even quarterly, they are out of date almost from the moment of publication. Visitors to the on-line home page can download the names and phone numbers of block captains or read reports of neighborhood crime. I figured this would be handy, rather than reproducing the newsletter every month.