Memo from the World: On TOP of the World

by David K. Roland

Lately I have gotten interested in the Internet and the power it could have for positive change. (You have time to think about these things after you retire.) By chance I heard a speech by a Department of Commerce top official last year, when I was visiting family in Denver. That's where my curiosity began to be piqued. The speaker, then-Assistant Secretary of Commerce Larry Irving, talked about how technology can foster the arts and how the federal government has been quietly helping since 1994 to bring more communications technology to people in what they now call "underserved" areas of the US, both urban and rural.

Now the proud owner of an iBook laptop computer, I am getting more comfortable with using the Internet and looking things up, like these programs I found, all funded by the Department of Commerce and its "TOP" grants. TOP stands for Technology Opportunities Program, of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) of the Department of Commerce (DOC) of the government of the United States of America (USA). TOP was called TIIAP (Telecommunications and Information Infrastructure Assistance Program) until recently. (Enough already.) The grants go to state, local, and tribal government and nonprofits, to be used for specific programs designed to bring people the benefits of the new economy of information.

A group of libraries in Florida and Georgia got together to organize and share information about their localities. They are called Southeastern Library Network (SOLINET) but don't hold that against them. One of their programs is CommunityPlanet, working with local community libraries to increase access to unique local records (birth, marriage and death certificates, rare documentation of local history, information on local public programs, etc.).

Dancers teach dancers and non-dancers, including the disabled, using television, the Internet and telecommunications. There is a program for this at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and with a Minnesota group that also works with a university in Ohio. They like to connect very old and very young people, to learn from each other. Snowbound Vermonters can hook up with artists, composers and writers who are mentors to students in isolated rural areas. This Vermont program also trains the artists on how to mentor, and they give the art students a showcase on the Internet to display their artwork.

In and around Taos, New Mexico, a program called La Plaza is an "electronic plaza" to meet, share information, or do research. One of their economic development programs gets regional crafts, from Hispanic, Native American and Anglo artists, into the global marketplace. Berea Kentucky is home of Mountain Association for Community Economic Development, Inc. (yes, MACED, although I don't know how to pronounce it). They had the terrific idea of introducing high school computer whizzes as consultants to local small-town businesses. Talk about a win-win situation.

Then I looked at the Zeum program, funded in fall 1997 by TIIAP. Larry Irving actually talked about this one in that speech I heard in Colorado, and now I can see why. Its website is really impressive. It is designed to involve underprivileged children and youth from the San Francisco area in the latest in multimedia and the Internet. They learn how to put special effects in movies, how to do animations, how to work with digital cameras, and then they get to see their finished product on the Internet. The electronic rhythm class project is a music CD each student gets to keep, made by them during the course. Skills like those could change a young person's future.

The other thing I wanted to say was that the TOP is still active, spinning, you could say, and the deadline for this year's applications is mid-March. So if you have a good idea and can find someone who knows the language of grant proposals (I hear it's just as bad as the language of abbreviations in government), it's time to get to work.

I have listed some URL's (I don't even know, or care, what that one stands for) here, for anyone who wants to go look it up. [We have amplified this list slightly. Ed.] Looking it up is what got me writing this thing - I was just looking for that speech by Larry Irving when I ran into all this other information. So anyway, here it is.

Resources: 

Former Assistant Secretary of Commerce Larry Irving spoke in February 1999 at the Rocky Mountain Arts & Technology Conference, in Denver, Colorado. The text of his remarks, Capitalizing on the Power and Promise of Technological Innovations, may be found at http://www.ntia.doc.gov/ntiahome/speeches/rockymtn.htm Mr. Irving was at that time in charge of TOP (then called TIIAP) and shared his experiences and hopes for the future. He has since left the government, reportedly to co-found with basketball hero/entrepreneur Magic Johnson a new organization, UrbanMagic.com, to put into practice the advice Irving used to give to others. The site is expected to open in April 2000.

The home page for NTIA is at http://www.ntia.doc.gov/

For a searchable database of all TIIAP / TOP grantees since 1994, see
http://www.ntia.doc.gov/otiahome/tiiap/index.html
A good deal of detail is available here, with information, including copies of successful grant proposals, on specific grantees and their programs throughout the US.

SOLINET's CommunityPlanet is described at http://www.solinet.net/monticello/intro2.html

New Mexico's La Plaza is based around its site:
www.laplaza.org

Zeum, San Francisco, www.zeum.org ,
has a site with schedules and descriptions of the classes it holds for youth aged eight to eighteen.

The application deadline for this year's TOP grants is 16 March 2000. The application process is explained at
http://www.ntia.doc.gov/otiahome/tiiap/Application/applyindex .html

About our Correspondent:

David K. Roland retired from the civil service in 1991, and makes his home in Florida, where he is learning about the Internet. He visited Denver last year, and was in the audience when Larry Irving spoke about arts and technology.