The consequences were tremendously empowering for both the students and the teachers. There is a great national interest in expanding the experiment more fully to the educational community at the K-12 level, but there are issues of financial cost. Local school districts do not have the money. We have to think of education in a global way, in terms of financing widespread networking within the educational community. The whole issue is the NII's cost and how to keep that cost down.
People think the Internet is free.
This is untrue. The nice thing about the Internet is that because the users pay a flat fee, use is encouraged. But we are going to go through a big struggle in the next five years over whether this pricing system which encourages usage will continue. The vision is only the first step. It must be translated into a technical framework, corresponding technology must be developed or improved, and it must be expressed in detailed standards.