The Electronic Identity by Robert Parson Information Storm Dark, rolling clouds. Strong winds. Brief flashes of lightning. The rain pours down. A tornado crashes through the community. Everyone dashes for cover. The information storm is blowing through and construction on the ark has hardly begun. This has been an extraordinary month for information technology. Two cable firms are battling for control of a Hollywood studio. Bell Atlantic and cable giant TCI have announced plans for a merger. Confusion follows implementation of new cable regulations. Apple CEO John Scully calls it quits. IBM continues its struggle for profit. Microsoft CEO Bill Gates is interviewed, not in Businessweek or the Wall Street Journal, but in Newsweek. More national news outlets crank out online versions of themselves. Constitutional questions are raised following a raid on an Oklahoma City BBS. Obviously, the biggest news was the Bell Atlantic/TCI merger. Bell Atlantic is bringing it's two-way communications knowledge into the marriage, TCI is bringing multiple channel capability. Not only that, but TCI also owns chunks of a number of cable channels, in some cases large chunks. This further blurs the lines of what is a cable company and what is a phone company. This is going to be a regulatory nightmare. Once the merger gets the government's blessing, the resulting company will be the largest information services firm in the nation. Have your PINs standing by. The most interesting comments I've read in the mainstream media came in a Los Angeles Times article written by Amy Harmon, which was syndicated nationally (giving credit where credit is due). Specifically, the article examined the current state of the art in interactive television. In essence-- a pretty nifty idea, but no one is sure how to go about it. Vice President of Technology for General Instruments Matt Miller is quoted as saying "This is the biggest unwritten operating system on earth." Nothing on this scale has ever been attempted before. One of the biggest concerns is reliability because as Viacom (a major cable system owner) Vice President Ed Horowitz says "The Joe Six-pack people that will be the buyers of the products and services we're seeking to offer are not ready for this." And ol' Joe won't have any patience when the network crashes just as the Manila Envelopes are about to kick the game winning goal. Has anyone bothered to call CompuServe or Prodigy? Or maybe Mustang Software, the maker of Wildcat! BBS software? Admittedly we're talking about something much larger than any of those companies have ever handled before. But these are people with expertise in delivering information to multiple sites simultaneously. Someone in the cable business does have some idea though. There's a least one firm that plans on making the Internet available to cable subscribers. I'm sure they'll learn something and work that knowledge into interactive television. I keep thinking of QUBE, an interactive system built in Columbus, Ohio in the 1970s. It held many of the same promises we are hearing now. But it failed, not because it was a bad idea, but because the average person at home was unsure what to do with it or why they needed it. Today's television viewers are more sophisticated than those in the '70s. But they aren't asking for mail, banking, or multi-player games. They need to target the computer users and entice them to use these new systems. We already know how important electronically delivered information can be. Then we can teach the uninterested and uninvolved the advantages of these new gadgets. *** Because of the flurry of activity involving information and communications technology there's been a flurry of news stories and features about the Information Age. A few weeks ago I almost fell out of my chair when I read an article that used the same analogy I did, almost word for word: "These services are being targeted at people who can't even program their VCRs." There's been an explosion of articles about how new information technology is going to change our lives. USA Today has a story on a fairly regular basis. ABCs World News Tonight had a feature on the coming Information Highway. More local newspapers are picking up columns about computers and technology. Jones Computer Network, which takes up much of the time on cable's Mind Extension University, is planning on going 24 hours sometime in 1994. Most of these stories are fairly complimentary toward the new information technology. Some are cautionary fables. Others are quite negative. Keep in mind that a large number of reporters are not techno-savvy and may not fully understand what this new industry is all about. That's not an excuse, just a statement of fact. With that in mind, I have written the Computer Bulletin Board Guide to Public Relations. This is a primer on how to promote a good image for BBSs outside the BBS community, and especially with the News Media. If you are a Sysop, it might be worth an evening to read it. If you aren't a Sysop, you might still find some ideas for publicizing an event or group you are involved in. It is available on Paradox of Arkansas BBS in Fort Smith, AR (501 484 0944 node 1/501 484 1043 node 2 Fred Ayers, Sysop) as BBS-PR15.ZIP. It is also available on many other BBSs nationwide under the same filename. Support for BBS-PR is available on Paradox BBS in the BBS Public Relations Conference (I promise this is the only time I'll promote my own products in this column!). (c) 1993 Robert Parson