And with communications costs lower than in the '80s, high-tech is a perfect medium for cultural exchanges at a mass level. Electronic libraries, moreover, are no longer quite so novel. In an era of the Web, Gopher and similar tools, people in developing countries can track down information on their own without quite so much help from the States. Most of all, computers are no longer such novelties to the elites of Sri Lanka and other developing countries. And yet, if anything, the need is even greater today for an Electronic Peace Corps than in the 1980s.
Epidemics can spread more rapidly.
And the fates of Americans are more intertwined than ever with people in the Third Word, some of whom have come to our shores to escape wars and find new opportunities here. Indeed it has been suggested, quite correctly, that some of the best participants in an EPC might be our recent immigrants and their children. There are other changes in the idea I'd make today. Just as the existing Peace Corps is doing already, an electronic version could help Eastern Europe, not only Asia, Africa and Latin America. Certainly the EPC could play in important role in monitoring and coping with pollution and other threats.