An Interview with John Gage, Sun's Chief Science Officer by Steven Davis, Network Management Associates		As an originator of the NetDay concept and as one of the most active workers on NetDay and the NetDay web site, John Gage offers us his insights into this "High-Tech Barnraising" How did NetDay start? Why wiring? Who can help with NetDay? What does wiring a school cost? What are the school and teacher reactions? What is Internet Connectivity? How do I get involved? What happens on and after March 9th? How is Net Day being organized? What are Sun and other high-tech companies roles? Is there resistance to wiring schools? What about the Internet censorship issue? What will be the effects of the new Telecommunications Bill? Steve: Let's start at the beginning: How did you get involved with this NetDay project? John: In April of last year I was sitting at a meeting of the Federal Networking Committee Advisory Commission, a 30-person panel that helps the federal government decide how to spread networking throughout all federal missions. It was boring, and people kept showing up from Capitol Hill to tell us that money for the Department of Education had been eliminated and the chance of getting schools networked, among other things, had gone to zero. The discussion centered on how expensive it is - about $10,000 per school. Someone from MIT stood up and multiplied the number of classrooms times $10,000 per classroom, and came up with a gigantic number to put all the nation's schools on the Internet. At Sun, we had just gone through construction of our new Menlo Park campus, where we ran 50 kilometers of category 5 wire into every office. The cost of that wire was about six or seven cents a foot in volume. It struck me that we could easily take that same wire and yield a wired school for $500. If we could donate the wire, the rest - the computer and the network connectivity, the other two components of putting the school on the Internet - might be donated as well. We might be able to get all the pieces together for far less than what anybody thought. During the meeting, I was trying to get a grip on the new table components of HTML. So I thought, "Well, I'll sit here in the meeting and I will learn how to do tables by writing up a Web page that calls for volunteers from every high technology company in the state of California. I'll write my Web page, listing all the companies - about 100 - and I'll put it in tables and see how it works." So I sat through this meeting and I built two pages. One was a call to action to go out on a certain day and pull category 5 wire in a few classrooms, and a second was a list of companies. Steve: Why did you decide that wiring was a good place for volunteers to come into the picture? John: It's a simple task that we could isolate from the rest of the elements of getting schools on the Net. A simple task, which in my experience as a member of my own school's technology committee, was the point at which all progress stopped. In schools across the country, you get people in a room, you have a parents' meeting, or a committee to deal with the technology in the school. In that room you have one person that works for a computer company, another works for the phone company, one is an electrical contractor, another a lawyer. You talk about what to do for the school, but no one really knows. They make it up and each of the different components chimes in. The computer guys says it's expensive for the computers, the electrical contractor says it's expensive for the conduit, the telephone company person says it's expensive for the links to the outside world, the lawyer says it's expensive to have anybody do this because there will be lawsuits. And you end up with nothing happening! Steve: So the results of all these resources in the room is that everybody says no. So with NetDay, you want people to be able to say yes? John: That's exactly right. We want to have a project to which everyone can say yes! It's a simple project, pull phone wire into five classrooms, and we're off! Steve: So this is something that anybody can do? John: That's the plan. Do something that anybody can do. Now, can anybody put a termination on a category 5, eight-conductor phone wire? The answer is yes, absolutely! You get the kit, you unwind the wires, you place them into the small receptacles for the wires, you squeeze it together, and you're done. Steve: So do I have to be technical to help out here? John: You can make coffee if worst comes to worst. You can hold the ladder. You can climb up the ladder and throw the telephone wire across a dropped ceiling--that's a higher level of capability. The organizers and volunteers at each school can determine where everyone fits in, and how to get some help if all the necessary skills aren't inherent in the group. Steve: So, given the tools, the materials, and a little bit of instruction, basically any parent could help wire their kid's school? John: Exactly! I've watched parents walk into a room and with 15 minutes of instruction , be capable of terminating a category 5 wire precisely according to spec. It tests out perfectly. Steve: Can you estimate what costs a school can save with donated wiring? John: The simplicity of NetDay 96 is to keep the wiring within one building. That's why we restrict it to five classrooms. We usually find in the normal-style California school construction, buildings have five classrooms all under one roof. So there's no need for conduit and no need for fiber to link from one building across an open space to another. The difficulties we have in running copper from building-to-building are electrical. There's a grounding problem in case lightning strikes. So what we've tried to do is avoid that problem, keeping all wiring inside one physical space. About 60 percent to 70 percent of the time, California schools are dropped-ceiling buildings built from the late '40s to the early '60s. These have easy passageways from classroom to another. With that, the cost falls to 2000 feet at roughly 10 cents a foot, plus jacks and a patch panel, which is about $75 or $100. The total cost of our kits ranges from $350 to $450. Steve: That's the cost of the kits, the labor is free. So how much would it cost if the school board went in with union labor to do the wiring of five classrooms, a lab, and the library? John: If they contracted for this they'd be spending probably $5000. There are drawings, scheduling, a whole set of things. It turns out that you don't need all that. This is the difference between older and newer ways of doing things. In many cases, basically no matter what the cost, this wouldn't get done. Steve: So you've started this grassroots movement - a "Hi-tech Barn Raising" - getting all the folks in the community together to get one piece of connectivity to the school. You're pushing the school bureaucracy which is not doing the job itself. Is this having any effect? John: Very much so. This is probably the fundamental change brought about by NetDay. What we said is, it's such a simple project, it's something that we all agree should be done. Can we unify all the different elements in the educational environment to do it? That's the challenge, not the wiring itself. It turns out now that we have the endorsement of the California School Employees Association, which has 180,000 members. Ninety-five percent of the employees in the California schools support it, and waive any union restriction where this wiring is going on. The only restriction remaining from their point of view is that, under their union agreements, they cannot allow someone whose job it is to pull wire to do it for free on this day. Any other union member who has a different job can do anything they want for free. Steve: What is the reaction of teachers and other school personnel? John: The first reaction of every school we've met with is, "Who are these guys and how can they come in and say that our school, which we tried to get wired for so many years is now suddenly, on one day, going to be wired?" And when we explain that we're not doing the wiring, they're doing the wiring, well, it's just what they've always wanted to do, except now we're getting permission for them to do it. They don't have to file any reports with the county or the school district. It's a way to bring their efforts together through a common community awareness. They say, "We've been trying to get permission to go through that ceiling for the last three months. No one ever listens to us, but now we have the opportunity." And I always say, "Yes, with the power vested in me as a parent of a child in California, you are now authorized to go out and pull wire in that school." Steve: In addition to the wiring, what is needed for real Internet connectivity? John: They need computers in the classroom, and we believe that most schools have access to some machines. The wonderful thing about the WWW browsers is that they run on all computers, so you no longer have this barrier of, is it a PC or is it a Mac? So we think that computers are a problem that's solvable by the school, each with their own set of circumstances. The other part is reaching from the school to the outside world. And for that part we are working with the telecom companies and Internet service providers to get cheap or free access for schools. There are a lot of cost-effective ways to get the telecommunications part of this going once the wiring is in place. Steve: So how does one get involved in NetDay? John: You go to the Web page, www.netday96.com , and you select one of the 13,000 home pages on the site. We've put a home page up for every school whose name we could find in the state of California. Every week we add dozens more because many schools are not listed anywhere, they let us know that they're not on the list. So you find a school home page, it tells you about the school, and then you attach yourself to that school by volunteering. You enter your name and your e-mail address, and anything you'd like to say about the school, and it appears on the school's home page. This allows the school and the other volunteers and organizers for that school to see who you are and what you can do. You're ranked by technical competence, you choose what level you can participate. Steve: Can anyone be a sponsor by buying a kit for their local school, even a parents' group or a small business? John: The local electrical contractors, the local data communication contractors, anyone in the Yellow Pages - the Kiwanas, the Rotary Club, the PTA, a group of parents. Steve: So parents can do their kid's school? John: Absolutely. You should do your own school because you have an interest in that school. We're doing every school--public, private, religious, non-religious--it doesn't matter. The legacy of this one day will be groupings of people interested in helping a particular school whose expertise will remain available to that school as the school continues to get on a network and then to utilize network resources in education in changing the curriculum. Steve: Okay. So exactly what do you hope to accomplish on March 9? John: We expect to have some activity focused on wiring for the Internet at 8000 schools out of the 13,000 in California. Activities will range from full-bore, all classroom fiber and category 5 wiring projects with routers and network access at hundreds of schools: to pulling category 5 wire to five classrooms - thousands of schools will do that, to meeting and planning what to do next. So our goal is to have activity at every campus, every school in California. Steve: What happens after March 9? John: This is the power of the Web. The information gathered between now and March 9 about volunteers, sponsors, organizers, who is interested, what resources there are, is added to on March 9 by the uniform collection of information about the schools on NetDay. You fill out a form on who showed up, what the resources of the school are, and how many classrooms there are. You begin to create an on-line database of technical capability for the school, which, for the first time, is visible to everyone in the world. Steve: How long will the www.netday96.com server stay up? John: It stays up until we have network access to every school and every classroom. March 9 is the kick-off day for an ongoing process. Steve: One of the interesting aspects of this project is like the Internet it's decentralized, it's almost ultra-democratic. How is this all happening with no office, no phones? John: Anarchic some say. I think the essence of it is the spirit of the Internet. There's no one in charge, there's personal responsibility but no collective responsibility. You volunteer for a school which you care about, and you work on that school. You make that school's resources and needs visible on the Net so others can decide if they'd like to help. But there is no central authority telling you what to do. It's all organized on your own self-motivation. If you want to do it, we'll help you any way we can. If you don't want to do it that's your judgement - don't do it. Steve: So what is Sun's role in NetDay? John: Sun, as a corporate sponsor, has urged all Sun employees to volunteer for NetDay by going to whatever school in the state where they think they can have the most leverage. Not just the ones that have money and lots of volunteers now, but to the rural schools, to the central city schools, to the small schools. Anyone at Sun who can look at a room or a building and know by experience where category 5 wiring should go and where it shouldn't, should instantly go to a school and lend their expertise in drawing up the plans for NetDay. Steve: So you're helping Sun make it's slogan, "The network is the computer," a reality for all the kids in school? John: Making it a reality to all the schools--that's exactly right. For too long, "The network is the computer," was true only for those with money. And now we're bringing the network everywhere. Students in these classrooms are tomorrow's citizens and customers. And the capabilities we build in the classrooms are how they'll learn to be parts of companies such as Sun and Sun's customers - companies that utilize the things we make in building new industries, new markets, and new commercial relationships. Steve: NetDay seems similar in some ways to things like Bike to Work Day and food drives, where companies compete with each other in a community service. Is there any competition going on between the employees of Sun and other Silicon Valley companies? John: There certainly is, take a look at www.netday96.com corporate pages. It's a very simple calculation. The database lists the company for all volunteers. I know from the SEC 10K forms the number of employees in every major company in California. I have asked companies to tell me how many of their employees are in the state. So I built a page for each company in California that shows the number of employees in the state - that's the denominator, and the numerator is the number of volunteers. It will be evident on the Net to all concerned who has their priorities straight. Steve: Have you run into any resistance from folks who don't want the schools, i.e., their children, to have access to the Internet? John: Yes, there are some people who called us and said, "This is bad. We've heard that there's obscenity and pornography on the Internet and we want our children shielded from it." Our view of this is very simple. The technology itself is like any other technology. It offers new human communications capabilities. It is just like the telephone, which made it possible for someone to call you and say offensive things, and TV and the video tape recorder which allowed images to be brought into your home that you might find offensive. Each of these devices brings new levels of communication, along with new responsibilities for parents and children. Children don't remain children - they have to go out into the world and choose from this vast magazine rack of alternative methods of communication. They need guided exposure to this vast availability of information. That's the point of putting these networks into the schools. If you leave it to the malls and the video game rooms as the centers of access to the Internet, there's no guidance. If instead, the schools allow this window into the world, the Internet, to enter their curriculum, then teachers become guides and use their wisdom to channel the desire of the students to find interesting new things. Steve: There's been a lot of talk lately about censoring the content of the Internet. What's your opinion of the censorship issue? John: I think that fundamentally, censorship destroys what it seeks to protect. The goal of education, is to create citizens who are able to utilize their own talents to get jobs, become part of the economic world, support a family, and make their own decisions: to become adults. And that's what censorship defeats, because it does not allow anyone to become an adult, it precludes them from making choices. We're attempting to provide a world where people can make choices ... the best choices possible. Steve: You've had some exposure to government and the special interest groups. Can you give me any estimate as to how many of these people have actually been on the Internet and have looked at the content? John: My experience with parents and governmental entities is they don't have Internet access and so have opinions about things they have never seen. But it's always hard to tell how many have been on the Internet. People will complain about things in every field of human activity even those they know nothing about. So I often can't tell if someone is just making it up. I'll ask people, "Do you have a specific instance of something that bothers you?" If they do, it often turns out that their understanding of it is incomplete. I generally find that those who truly use the Internet find far more of value than of anything else. Steve: What effect do you think the new telecommunications bill is going to have on schools and their access to the Internet ? John: I think that in the current political environment in Washington, Clinton took the practical and expedient path, not the courageous one I wished he had taken. But nonetheless, he decided that the provisions of the Communications Decency Act were so egregious, and so patently unconstitutional, that he didn't need to veto them - the courts would strip them from enacted legislation. I think he's right, because the foundation of America's liberties lies in freedom of expression and freedom of speech. It's the power in some sense of our economic system. You do not make money and create new businesses in an environment that doesn't allow you to speak about and examine new ideas. Steve: What do you think about the effect of the telecommunications bill on the nature and cost of Internet service? John: Insofar as the telecommunications bill allows entry using new technologies for telecommunications, it will benefit all of us in the long run. We've had these very large monopolistic organizations, often captives of the public utilities commission, expecting rates of return that are guaranteed. And now, with the realization that all information is just bits, it's digital, it can move on any pathway, allowing multiple competitive pathways brings the costs down. Competition with standards allows us to make everything work at ever-decreasing cost. Steve: Thanks John! :)