When 8-pound, 8-ounce Cameron Kenneth Gaylord was born in December, his dad,
Clark, did what any other proud parent in Blacksburg, Va., would do. He went
to his computer and typed: "It's a boy!" He added a few more details, pressed
a few keys, and electronically zapped the joyous message to some 14,000
residents of this tidy town on the edge of the Blue Ridge Mountains -- and,
potentially, to any of the millions of users of the Internet, who, by typing
in the address http://www.bev.net, could
venture into the Blacksburg
Electronic Village (BEV), a town within a town.
Before 69-year-old Dennis Gentry and wife Kathleen head out to dinner, he
sits at the computer in a sunny corner of his family room and clicks on a few
key words on his screen. Within seconds his printer spits out a "buy one, get
one free" coupon for the restaurant.
In Blacksburg (pop. 35,000), home of Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State
University and its indefatigable Hokies sports teams, you can check the price
of toothpaste at Wade's Supermarket, apply for a credit card at First Union
Bank, hear a sound bite of the local quartet No Strings Attached, view
pictures on display at Art of the Sol gallery, ask the police to keep an eye
on your house while you're on vacation, check the start time for church
services, share your views on local funding issues with your county
supervisor, or let everyone in town know you hate the way restaurants try to
save money by turning down the heat -- all online.
"We're giving people a new way to communicate with friends, family, neighbors
and local businesses. It's making a stronger community," says Andrew Cohill,
the Virginia Tech assistant professor who heads the BEV project. "We're
providing an analogue of the old general store front porch."
But Joseph McVoy, a family therapist with Virginia Highlands Health
Associates in Blacksburg, isn't convinced: "My fear is the electronic village
will further erode the real village. The more time you spend buying groceries
[online], the less time you spend meeting your neighbors in the aisles of
Wade's."
Love it or hate it, Blacksburg is the USA's most wired town. On the outside,
this postcard-perfect southwestern Virginia town looks pretty much like any
other thriving community of its size -- prettier, perhaps, because of the
presence of the stately Virginia Tech, whose 22,000 students make up 62
percent of Blacksburg's population. The town has low unemployment (just 3.5
percent), and one book rated it one of the top 20 places in America to retire.
But inside, Blacksburg is humming. The BEV project -- an experimental joint
venture involving Virginia Tech, the town and Bell Atlantic -- has put 40
percent of the population on the Internet, the global information network,
and given 62 percent access to electronic mail. The French newspaper Le Monde
has pegged Blacksburg as "La capitale du tout-communicante." German national
radio has reported on the phenomenon. And the Japanese are so intrigued that
Blacksburg is now a major U.S. site on the itinerary of Japanese government
officials. "They go to Disney World, California and here," says Susanne W.
Huff, who trains town employees to work with computers. Eight groups of
Japanese officials have visited Blacksburg in the past two months.
Two years into the BEV project, Bell Atlantic deems it a success, citing a
"tremendous demand" for the new telecommunications services offered through
BEV. Townspeople are behind it: In a survey for this article of 219 BEV
users, 185 said being online has brought the community closer together.
Virginia Tech believes BEV will bring more high-tech businesses to town. But
the experiment has raised issues other communities are bound to face: Can
computers improve the quality of people's lives? Will more time spent in
front of a computer mean less face-to-face interaction? Will the Internet
dramatically alter day-to-day life, or is it a mere novelty?
The online revolution "forever will change the way we live, learn, work and
communicate," answers Vice President Al Gore. "It's already changing the
lives of residents in Blacksburg."
It's no accident Blacksburg is ground zero for this electronic revolution.
The local mix -- a technologically sophisticated academic community and town
leaders who have been active in attracting research-and-development companies
-- was exactly what Bell Atlantic wanted when it searched for a prototype
community. Today 600 off-campus apartments are wired with Ethernet ports,
giving residents direct Internet access. For others in town, all it takes is
a computer with a modem, a trip to the Blacksburg Electronic Village office -
- the "physical" one -- to sign up, and $8.60 a month for unlimited access.
So far 150 businesses are on the electronic village mall, accessed through
BEV's Internet site. In just one month this winter, 3,996 electronic visits
("hits" in online jargon) were paid to Raines Real Estate's computer site --
far more than a year's worth of physical visits to its office in a historic
former boardinghouse.
While the number of computer dealers in town (19) hasn't yet approached the
number of churches (48), computers are everywhere in Blacksburg. On a sunny,
cold Sunday afternoon this winter, as much of the rest of the country watched
sports on TV, Blacksburg residents had their own ideas about how to spend the
day.
In Bogen's bar and restaurant, Melissa Carr, 23, a Virginia Tech interior
design student, played solitaire (she plays up to two hours a day) on Bogen's
computer. She was waiting for a friend who uses the computer to play
backgammon with people around the world via the Internet. At the library,
four men were seated at a computer kiosk that provides Internet access for
those who lack it at home. One man was checking out help-wanted ads in six
major out-of-town newspapers. Another was shopping for an attorney. The third
was "trying to figure this whole thing out." The fourth wouldn't say what he
was up to, but possibly it had something to do with what was happening in the
"Private Place" online chat room on his screen:
Dennis Gentry, a retired U.S. Army artillery officer, says the electronic
meeting ground has been instrumental in getting members of Blacksburg's
senior community to be more organized -- and more diligent -- about arranging
face-to-face social gatherings. Gentry, who plays tennis three times a week
and is co-editor of BEV's page for seniors, extols the virtues of e-mail:
"You can get up at 4 in the morning with a cup of coffee, send e-mail and
answer questions others have posted so they can read it when they wake up."
Younger people, such as Cortney Vargo, 28, say the online connection actually
has led them to meet neighbors they ordinarily wouldn't get to know. As part-
time BEV information manager, Vargo was helping a woman post information for
the Jewish community when the woman, recognizing Vargo's name from her
mailbox, asked, "Are you the Vargo down the street with Pennsylvania plates?"
In Blacksburg, people start young. As his brand-new son, Cameron, naps,
computer consultant and statistics graduate student Clark Gaylord sits at the
computer with his older son, Carter, 3, playing a game designed to teach kids
to identify letters. In Blacksburg it's common to see parents at the library
computer kiosk, children on their laps.
Is all this emphasis on computers a good thing? Not according to Clifford
Stoll, author of "Silicon Snake Oil," who says: "Being proud of being the
most wired town in America is a little like saying, 'Our community has the
most television watchers in America.' Might it be we are being sold a bill of
goods, that we would be better served learning to get along with one another
than getting along with our computers?"
That view is echoed by local therapist McVoy, who, it should be noted, was
interviewed while setting up a World Wide Web page for a therapy group.
"We'll be exchanging real human intimacy for the computer screen," he says.
In California's Silicon Valley, where many have been on the Internet since
the days when it was used primarily for academic and scientific research,
psychologists have treated patients who were spending more than 80 hours a
week online. McVoy believes computer dependency may eventually take its toll
on Blacksburg's families. For instance, a husband who isn't available much,
McVoy says, will be even less available if he's hooked on the 'Net.
Still, the electronic village is as much an object of curiosity as it is hard
evidence of tomorrow's routine. And while the 14,000 BEV subscribers get
110,000 e-mail messages a day, and the project has launched 18 new local
businesses -- such as those that design Web pages -- all the electronic
communicating may simply involve residents who already were inclined to chat
or do business electronically. Doug Hampton, owner of a store named Computers
We Got 'Em, says "it's mostly people who already have computers. People
aren't buying computers because of BEV." Regardless, Cortney Vargo says only
about 2 percent of subscribers drop out. "The main reason people throw in the
towel," she says, is that "they can't get their equipment to work."
Bell Atlantic rates the project a success. John Knapp, director of external
affairs for Bell Atlantic-Virginia, says "there's been tremendous demand for
the new type of services" being tried in Blacksburg. The company offered
residential high-speed phone lines to BEV users, with such positive response
that it now offers those lines to most customers in its seven-state region.
As for bringing people together, BEV subscribers are true believers. Sixth-
grade teacher Rich Beamish says it has helped him reach students and parents.
"I really like getting notes, comments and questions online. How many other
teachers get homework via e-mail?"
Carter Elliott, a retired law enforcement and foreign service officer,
welcomes the return to the art of writing letters (via e-mail), which, he
notes, "had all but died before the advent of the Internet." Elliott says he
and his wife have met scores of local people through BEV. "The way the 'Net
has opened up the outside world is like a fairy tale. We've started visiting
the BEV business pages before buying goods or services. I have an old upright
piano I was hesitant to put in working order, because I feared the cost. I
found a piano tuner through BEV, chatted with him via e-mail and worked out a
deal that would have been put off indefinitely without the electronic
village."
Proponents of the Internet way of life say it's especially suited for
Blacksburg and other small communities. "People in rural areas see the
Internet as a way of overcoming geographical isolation," Cohill says. But
detractors point out it also may contribute to isolation -- and a class of
computer have-nots. Here in Appalachia, you don't have to travel far to meet
people who've never heard the term "Ethernet" and don't know the Web is the
multimedia portion of the Internet.
In Riner, 12 miles from Blacksburg, about 40 percent of residents live below
the poverty line, says Bob Miller, principal of Auburn Middle School and High
School there. The community received a $266,000 grant from the U.S. Commerce
Department's National Telecommunications Information Agency, which earlier
this month financed the installation in the school of 24 computers with
Internet access for after-hours use by the community. But the effort may not
go far toward establishing access equality. "Some of our kids are terminally
disadvantaged and will never have a computer," Miller says. "Two families
were living in a car."
A community like Blacksburg has a "two-tier system," says McVoy, the
therapist. "You have the upper middle class and college people, and then you
have everybody else. The real people don't know about the electronic village."
"They are very lucky nerds to live there," says Paul Saffo, director at the
Institute for the Future, in Menlo Park, Calif. While the rest of America is
not likely to be wired any time soon, Saffo adds: "I'd save any brochures
from the Blacksburg Electronic Village, because they'll be fun to look at in
a few years."
Mr. T: Oh, baby!
Alixis: Hot yet?
Mr. T: Steamin'.
If the Blacksburg experiment provides a glimpse of the future, it also is
providing immediate insights. For one thing, none of the originators of the
project anticipated the ardent interest among the town's senior citizens, who
make up 40 percent of the non-college population. "Most people figure senior
citizens are afraid of technology," Cohill says, "but we've seen the
opposite. They're the most active and vocal." On their own, Blacksburg's
seniors have organized a system for tutoring one another in computer
literacy, an activity that in itself gets them socially involved.
TELLURIDE, COLO.
In 1992, this town of 1,800 became the first rural community to offer
Internet access via a local phone call. The non-profit Telluride Institute's
InfoZone program has signed up 1,200 people. Designed in part to improve
education and health care services, InfoZone provides a special electronic
bulletin board system for certain American Indian communities and
environmental groups. Users can log on at terminals in the library, a bank, a
coffeeshop, the regional hospital and the state agricultural center.
Address:
http://infozone.telluride.co.us/InfoZone.html
GLASGOW, KY.
The local electric utility, the Glasgow Electric Plant Board, wired the
15,000-population town with coaxial cables that provide not only cable TV and
telephone, but also e-mail, high-speed Internet access and a local network.
So far 150 homes and 50 businesses have signed up for HomeLAN, which
eventually will allow residents to program household appliances to run at the
times of day when rates are lowest.
Address: http://www.glasgow-ky.com/
TAOS, N.M.
With the help of two financial grants, the La Plaza Telecommunity Foundation
provides free public access to everyone in the region. Almost 25 percent of
the area's 10,000 residents have signed up. For those without computers, the
La Plaza Telecommunity Center, with 15 computers, is open 12 hours a day.
Residents use the program for e-mail, research and home schooling.
Address:
http://laplaza.taos.nm.us:80/home_main.html
PALO ALTO, CALIF.
Palo Alto is the birthplace of Silicon Valley. So it's fitting that the city
of 56,000, more than half of whom have access to the Internet at home or at
work, was the first to have full presence on the World Wide Web. In early
1994 Palo Alto set up a home page and auxiliary pages providing everything
from real estate listings to crime statistics. During the last city council
elections, residents logged on for results, updated every 15 minutes
Address:
http://www.city.palo-alto.ca.us/
UNITED STATES COMMUNITY PAGE INDEX
This site provides links to wired communities across the country. Visit
these communities and learn how the WWW has affected their lives.
Address:
http://www.nsbol.com/nsbol/comindex/us_index.htm#SWA
By David Diamond Copyright 1996 USA WEEKEND. All rights reserved. Issue date: 2-25-96