Communications is critical in establishing that kind of unified relationship so that distances won't divide us and keep us apart as they have in the past. This makes geography nearly irrelevant, if not irrelevant. If you have your public television and your telecommunications system in place, people don't have to travel 500 miles to testify at legislative hearings at the state capitol. They can do it from offsite locations across the state. Expanding that kind of technology really does bring the state together because it makes geography irrelevant.
Education is also a good example.
Being in a rural school or a small school in a sparsely populated area doesn't matter because you can connect to the Internet. Or, if you can have distance learning and be able to learn Japanese in a school of 200 students or less, then you don't have disadvantages based on size. You have the same opportunities as larger schools. We're well on our way to connecting all of Nebraska's schools to the Internet by 2000. My next question has to do with LB1190, the recent legislation providing funding for the year 2000 database conversion.