The stage of Sanders Theatre, the usual venue for a capella concerts and lectures on Shakespeare or Introductory Economics, was transformed last week into a four-day display of the latest in computer technology.

Many giants of the computer industry delivered their visions on the future of the Internet as part of the Harvard Conference on the Internet and Society held in Sanders and the Science Center from May 28 to 31.

The conference was designed to present a multidisciplinary perspective on the Internet and to discuss its future implications and effects on society, according to chair of the conference H.T. Kung, who is the McKay professor of electrical engineering and computer science in the Division of Applied Sciences.

"Trying to understand the global picture of the Internet and not just a single perspective is very important," he said. "It is difficult without having a conference like this to understand the other viewpoints."

In addition to the physical conference on campus, there was a parallel virtual conference taking place on the World Wide Web (http://www.harvnet.harvard.edu) giving attendees and Web surfers the opportunity to read summaries of panel discussions and speeches.

The Web site will also provide attendees with the opportunity to continue discussion for weeks after the conference.

"The conference has made tremendous use of the technology it is talking about," said attendee Patricia C. Mitchell, director of corporate benefits at Aetna, Inc.

Kung began organizing the conference 14 months ago, and the Law, Business, and Public Health Schools participated in addition to the FAS.

The conference drew about 1,100 participants from 37 countries with expertise in areas such as business, law, medicine and public policy.

Attendees included registered participants from business, academia and government who paid $995 for the four-day events, as well as speakers selected for their expertise, sponsors, and also members of the Harvard community selected from a lottery.

A high percentage of the attendees, including many of the keynote speakers attended Harvard, according to Kung.

"Selecting Sanders and the Science Center as venues is definitely one of the right decisions we made," Kung said. "You can't buy Sanders and no hotel even comes close," he added, emphasizing that the idea of holding the conference on campus appealed to many alumni.

Many more people sought to register for the conference long after the registration over the Internet had closed and the conference had been filled to capacity, according to Kung.

Some conference attendees said that they valued the multi-disciplinary nature of the panels and discussions. "I think it's a great opportunity to hear diverse views of a lot of different people approaching the Internet from different perspectives and with different objectives," said Joy D. Covey, a conference attendee.

Rudenstine's Speech

Over the next five years, novel use of the Internet will play an increasingly integral role in teaching and research at the University, President Neil L. Rudenstine said Wednesday in an address.

"Fundamentally there is in fact a very close fit--a critical interlock--between the structures and processes of the Internet and the main structures and processes of university teaching and learning," Rudenstine told the Sanders Theatre audience.

He addressed the importance of the Internet in providing greater communication between professors and students through such novel concepts as on-line office hours and by providing added resources for both teaching and learning.

"The Internet virtually requires and even demands that the student be an engaged participant," Rudenstine said.

The last time such dramatic strides affected the University, Rudenstine said, was in the late 19th century when the modern research university and large library system emerged.

"The changes are more dynamic and pervasive than any other technological breakthrough in the 20th century," Rudenstine said.

Undergraduates here receive about 215,000 e-mail messages every day and the Harvard home page on the World Wide Web received 2.3 million hits in March alone, Rudenstine said.

The University will invest about $125 million over the next five years to expand its computer technology and more comprehensively incorporate the Internet into the curriculum, according to Rudenstine.

Rudenstine also addressed the societal dimension of the conference and said that the human aspects of change and development are equally important to progress.

"All the information in the world will be of no use to us, unless we can use it intelligently, wisely and humanely," Rudenstine said. "In the end education is a fundamentally human process; it is a matter of values and significant action, not simply information or even knowledge."  --By Amita M. Shukla

Gates Says Internet, PC Will Dominate Communications

The personal computer and the Internet will dominate communication in the future, according to William H. "Bill" Gates, chair and CEO of Microsoft, who spoke to a packed house in Sanders Theatre Wednesday.

"The key factor that arrived with the Internet is a low cost of communication," Gates said. "The overheads you can take out and the efficiency you can bring to it are dramatic."

Gates also mentioned technological innovations such as the increasing power of the chip, optical fibers connected to digital switches, larger storage, faster processors and high-speed connectivity which will improve the quality and expanse of communication over the 'Net.

"The machines involved here are going to continue to improve," Gates said. "The PC of the future will essentially be on all the time."

At the same time, Gates acknowledged that the Internet and personal computers have only made contact with a small segment of the U.S. and world populations.

Gates addressed the differences in computing and Internet experience between the "have and have not's" as well as rural and urban residents and the developing and developed worlds.

Gates enrolled at Harvard College in 1972, but left the University two and a half years later. He founded Microsoft in 1975 with Paul Allen. While attending school he lived in Currier House and concentrated in Applied Math.  --By Amita M. Shukla

Pesatori Says 'Net Has Changed American Business

The proliferation of the Internet is forcing American companies to change the way they do business, said Enrico Pesatori, vice-president and general manager of the Computer Systems Division at Digital Equipment Corporation, in an address on Thursday.

"The Internet is creating new business models and new measures for success," Pesatori said.

Business over the Internet presents numerous advantages for businesses from lower infrastructure costs and greater flexibility in management to increased power in the hands of consumers, according to Pesatori.

At the same time, Pesatori said that the Internet itself is so vast and complex that experts characterize it in a number of different ways.

"There is not a single vision of the future of the Internet; in fact; the number of visions roughly equals the number of speakers," Pesatori said.

Pesatori admitted that the Internet alone is not sufficient to guarantee the success of an organization. "We have learned that technology alone does not create opportunities or solve problems," he said.

"We are finding new ways of harnessing this power," Pesatori said in reference to Alta Vista, a tool designed by Digital that has become more frequented than Yahoo for conducting searches on the 'Net.

"The AltaVista Search Service (altavista.digital.com) is accessed 12 million times a day," Pesatori said.

The Digital executive also emphasized that much of the power of the Internet has emerged from the fact that it has expanded freely in its early years.

Today there are 14,000 newsgroups and about 30 million Web pages on the 'Net, according to Pesatori, and the numbers are rapidly expanding.

"We fully expect the Internet to become as pervasive as the telephone is today," he said.  --By Amita M. Shukla

McNealy Plugs Sun's Programming Language, Java

Scott G. McNealy '76, the 40-year-old CEO, president and chair of Sun Microsystems, Inc., on Tuesday enthusiastically introduced Java, a universal programming language that will created enhanced access to the Internet.

"Right now Java obsoletes every programmer on campus," McNealy said.

But he cautioned that the Internet is a relatively new concept to which society will gradually need to adjust itself.

"We have to get used to being online," McNealy said. "There are a lot of privacy issues that need to be sorted through."

McNealy espoused a more libertarian perspective for approaching the Internet and emphasized that extensive regulation will hamper freedom of communication.

"We cannot let the Internet become a planned ecosystem, economy or market," McNealy said.

McNealy admitted that the Internet is far from being a pervasive means of communication--especially considering that two-thirds of the world's population has never even made or received a phone call.

The Sun CEO presented a number of projects which could help make future societies more computer and Internet literate. One of McNealy's proposals involved putting as many primary and secondary schools as possible on-line.

"We understand that the kinder-garden through 12th grade environment is really critical," McNealy said. In the future, universities may also use the Internet more extensively for student registration and handing in papers, he added.

Sun will launch a state-wide effort in Massachusetts in October, similar to projects in California which have connected many schools to the Internet.

McNealy interspersed his delivery with reference to both his alma mater and his chief rival in the computer industry, William H. "Bill" Gates, the CEO and chair of Microsoft, Inc.

"I'd like it to be known that I actually graduated from here," McNealy joked in reference to Gates, who did not finish his undergraduate education at Harvard. "I'm still trying to make up for the two-and-a-half year head start," he added in jest.  --By Amita Shukla

Balancing Regulation, Privacy Rights

The need for personal security on the Internet will become increasingly important and increasingly difficult as we try to balance privacy rights and government regulations, according to a panel of experts who spoke on Thursday, May 30.

"People from all over the world can attack you, and it's very hard to find the source of the attack," said panelist Butler Lampson, who is an architect at Microsoft Corporation.

The panelists agreed that the problems with security are not technical.

"The basic technology for making the information highway definitely exists," Lampson said.

According to Lampson, many different reasons account for the lack of security on the 'Net. "Few people understand it, companies don't want to pay for it and many vendors don't provide it," he said.

Many security issues involve the government's interests in surveiling citizens and the desire of businesses to market and conduct transactions over the 'Net.

"A lot of the work on information security has been done by the government and the military, but they face threats very different from the ones you and I do," Lampson said.

The panelists also agreed that the government, which has advocated tighter encryption--or coding--policies, has been one of the main obstacles to developing international Internet security.

"We call government regulation of encryption the Bosnia of technology," said panelist Clint Smith, who is an attorney with Steptoe and Johnson, a Washington law firm.

The government has proposed a system called key escrow in which all financial and other personal information transmitted over the 'Net is also stored with a trust company or a government agency.

However, panelist Jeff Schiller, a network manager at MIT, argued that the key escrow proposal makes many experts uncomfortable.

"We have to balance the requirements of law enforcement with those of public privacy," Schiller said.  --By Amita M. Shukla

Panelists Debate Universal Access

Panelists discussed the merits of universal access to the Internet before a crowd of about 125 at Science Center C on Thursday.

"Universal access is a new tool for creating understanding and wisdom," said Jock Gill, president of Penfield Gill, Inc. and former director of special projects at the White House Office of Media Affairs.

Gill described the Internet as a storytelling machine, saying, "We must have universal access in order that all of us may be storytellers."

"This is a democracy. If we want more access, we can vote for it," Gill said. "Forget the American dream. Let's create the new American story."

Other panelists agreed with Gill, but for different reasons.

"The more people you hook up to the network, the more valuable the network becomes--not only for the provider of the network, but the individual private user too," said Richard Civille, the executive director of the Center for Civic Networking, who cited the economic benefits of universal access.

Universal access is generally defined as service to 100 percent of the universe, but moderator Nolan Bowie, a visiting lecturer in public policy at the Kennedy School of Government, said the phrase often means far less than that.

Civille emphasized the difference between merely allowing universal access to the Internet and actually teaching people how to use the Internet.

"You need to think about the resources that need to be brought to the table in order to have a network-literate population," he said.

And Prudence Adler, the assistant executive director for external relations of the Association of Research Libraries, turned the discussion into a question of what is actually being accessed on the 'Net.

Exploring the issue of regulation on the Internet, she asked how the government is going to enforce copyright protections on a system which is based on the free flow of information.

She suggested that the copyright protections of the print medium be extended to that of electronic media.  --By Douglas M. Pravda

Accuracy of 'Net Content May Decline

The high accessibility of the Internet could well lead to the decline in relevance and factual accuracy of its content, members of the "Press and the New Media" panel told a packed Science Center C audience last week.

Eyewitness amateur journalists and advertisers masquerading as writers are particularly blameworthy, speakers said at the panel.

"I wouldn't believe half of what I read or even three-quarters or 90 percent of what I read on the 'Net," said Denise Caruso, the director of digital commerce for The New York Times.

Panelists pointed to the proliferation of company-sponsored Web sites, which serve two functions: advertising their own products and providing content aimed at their target audience.

"The model that is least likely to work is advertisers coming up with their own Web sites," said Janice Kaplan of News Corp. "As if you're going to see an ad for Jeep and run to their Web page to see if you can buy one."

As an alternative, panelists praised AT&T's "Lead Story."

John Markoff, a reporter for The New York Times, said that this site offers a choice of several themes, and then offers a series of pointers to other pages related to those themes.

But Brock Meeks, chief Washington correspondent for Wired magazine, said the site is far from perfect. He pointed out that during the Nynex/Bell Atlantic merger, the AT&T site provided links to negative articles on the deal.

As another alternative, Microsoft is trying to develop a "cable model," which would allow Web surfers to choose different packages varying on how many and which sites they want to access, panelists said.

"The Microsoft Network is trying to go out and create [popular] Web sites. They're financing a number of content companies," Caruso said. "They're going to sell this aggregation of content to advertisers."

Caruso said the network will then offer users basic, premium and pay-per-view packages to access the sites.

But Caruso said that this model will limit the independent and individual content which makes up much of the Web today.

"Alternative voices drop off the end of that," she said.

These alternative voices drew criticism as well. Panelists pointed out that amateur journalists who report events on their Web pages are highly unreliable.

"The good news about the Web is that everybody has a voice. The bad news about the Web is that everybody has a voice," Kaplan said. "There's role for a good journalist to make sense of those voices."  --By Elizabeth T. Bangs

Internet Can Help Those With AIDS

The Internet is a valuable tool for the thousands of Americans living with AIDS, speakers said at a panel on "AIDS and the Internet: Networks of Knowledge and Infection" last week in Science Center C.

"I use the Internet daily to get vital information on treatment," said Kiyoshi Kuromiya, founder and director of the Philadelphia-based organization Critical Path, who is HIV-positive. "This information may make the difference between life and death for me."

Representatives of the Harvard AIDS Institute, the AIDS Action Committee and Critical Path described the information they have made available on the Web.

The AIDS Action Committee has put its resource index, including evaluations of recent clinical trials, on the Web, said Mike Immel, AIDS Action Committee information manager.

"By the time...information is published in a book, it is historic, some would say ancient," Kuromiya said. "A newsletter can publish information in two to eight weeks. This year we have seen the future of AIDS information on the Internet."

Kuromiya pointed out that Critical Path updates its site daily.

Nancy Marks, a community organizer for the AIDS Action Committee, is using the 'Net to encourage people to respond to public policy initiatives.

But Marks expressed some reservations about using the Internet to fight the spread of HIV and to treat those living with AIDS.

"I'm not clear yet that the use of the Internet...is of the greatest value," she said. "The problem with the Internet is once you...sign on, you cease to have any contact with me."

Likewise Geoff Eisen, the international data manager for the Harvard AIDS Institute, said he doubted that the Internet could be of much use in the fight against AIDS because it is inaccessible to so much of the world's population.

But James Marks, president of the New York AIDS action group The Body, pointed out in response that AIDS is now the leading killer of young American males--the very demographic group most likely to use the Internet.

Also on the panel were Lauren Ferguson, who runs the Harvard AIDS Institute's Web page, and moderator Richard Marlink, executive director of the Harvard AIDS Institute.  --By Elizabeth T. BangsCrimsonGabriel B. EberCybersmith president JED SMITH