from the New York Times

      April 11, 1998

Studies Explore Possibilities of E-mail for Everyone

      By REBECCA FAIRLEY RANEY

     I n Minneapolis, Steven Clift makes a living wrangling 700 e-mail
     messages a day. He subscribes to more than 100 discussion groups
     with names like TownTalk and CyberTelecom, monitoring the chatter
     about the possibilities of virtual communities.

     He sends the striking ideas he sees to the John & Mary R. Markle
     Foundation in New York, a philanthropic organization that is
     investing millions to explore the possibilities of a society that
     provides e-mail for everyone. Clift is one of dozens of people the
     foundation has put to work on the idea.
     _________________________________________________________________

   The thinking behind Markle's initiative goes that if the government
   and corporate sectors provide better services online, the gap between
   "haves" and "have-nots" will be more likely to close.
     _________________________________________________________________

     In Santa Monica, C. Richard Neu and a staff of six at the Rand
     Corp. sort through surveys of government employees, assessing their
     impressions of the obstacles and benefits to providing Medicare and
     unemployment insurance information to people by e-mail.

     Down the California coast, in San Diego, 50 executives from
     companies including IBM and Starbucks gathered this week to ponder
     big-picture questions about the impact of technology on society. Is
     the Internet hype? Should computer literacy become part of the
     school curriculum? Will innovators pose a risk to corporate America
     by delivering their products on the Web?

     Major studies funded by the foundation started in 1994, and several
     studies are still in progress. Researchers at Rand, Bellcore,
     Carnegie Mellon University and the Brookings Institution have
     explored the formation of friendships in cyberspace, community
     development online and barriers to Internet use. So far, more than
     $2 million has gone into the project.

     The objective is to create a national dialogue about universal
     e-mail access, an idea predicated by findings of a Rand study that
     said universal access will not happen without social intervention.

     "The goal is not to predict what will happen, but to encourage uses
     to enhance a democratic society," said Zoe Baird, president of the
     Markle Foundation. "Why be passive? We're hoping to have people
     thoughtfully inspire uses."

     The research and the roundtables are geared to build that
     inspiration. One of the early Rand studies showed a gap between the
     "haves" and the "have-nots" in information society, and that the
     disparities persisted despite the falling price of computers. The
     thinking behind Markle's initiative goes that if the government and
     corporate sectors provide better services online, the gap between
     "haves" and "have-nots" will be more likely to close.

     "They're trying to prevent a society with an underclass," said
     Catherine Gay, a principal in the International Advisory Group in
     New York, a publishing company that is coordinating roundtables and
     publicity for the foundation's universal e-mail project.

     Studies on the issue, funded by Markle, will continue to appear in
     the next few months. Meanwhile, the foundation is sponsoring events
     to keep people thinking.

     In the most recent event, the corporate leaders forum in San Diego,
     the goal was to touch influential people with ideas. The stage was
     set with a hypothetical case study to work out how a traditional
     company, a chain of record stores, should respond to a new company
     that sells music online, and the discussion expanded to consider
     how people would work, shop and live in a wired society.

     "The idea is to inoculate these people with social venture
     capital," said Jonathan I. Zemmol, a principal in the International
     Advisory Group. The hope was that these 50 people would talk to 50
     more people, and that the word would spread.

     The participants came from traditional industries, like the steel
     industry, and from Internet start-ups. Many were intrigued by the
     notion that online communities can drive purchases. In other words,
     get people talking about a product online, and more people will
     buy. For Shabbir Safdar, a longtime Internet advocate who is now a
     principal in Mindshare Internet Campaigns in Washington, D.C.,
     seeing leaders of traditional industries considering online
     communities was cathartic.

     "All it does for me is validate the medium," he said.

     The Markle project is encouraging government leaders to consider
     online communities as well. Neu, a senior economist at Rand, is
     investigating what it would take for agencies that administer
     Medicare and California unemployment benefits to communicate with
     people online. Medicare alone, he said, sends more than 500 million
     notification letters to people a year.

     This study started after earlier findings in 1995 by Rand that
     touted universal e-mail's potential benefits to society -- that
     e-mail "might therefore lead to new social and political linkages
     within U.S. society, reduce the feelings of alienation that many
     individuals in the United States feel and give them a new sense of
     'community,' revitalize the involvement of the common citizen in
     the political process, etc., and in general strengthen the cohesion
     of U.S. society," according to the study.

     "That became kind of a best-seller," Neu said of the study. "The
     reaction was, well, cool, but where do we go from here?"

     One way, he said, is to get government agencies to offer essential
     services by e-mail. "We say, 'Hi. We're from Rand,'" Neu said. "'We
     want to find out if you can use e-mail.' When they gasp, we say,
     'Why did they gasp?'"

     The value of the study, he said, is to get the issues on the table.
     The biggest barrier he has found so far is the agencies' lack of
     ability to conduct secure online transactions on a large scale.
     Ultimately, he argues, if several large government agencies, such
     as Social Security and the Internal Revenue Service, need to
     conduct secure online transactions, their business will be enough
     to drive the market to create a way to do secure transactions on a
     large scale -- a development that will enhance all types of e-mail
     use.

     As the foundation's efforts to inspire corporate and government
     leaders continue, Clift is keeping an eye on the online communities
     themselves. His experience in the area started several years ago as
     the creator of a discussion group on Minnesota politics, and now he
     spends half his day, every day, taking in the talk from listservs
     around the world for the foundation.

     He said the value of listening to people on the Internet is
     immense; the people who practice the craft of communicating online
     provide great expertise.

     "Tapping what the Net is having to say for a foundation-supported
     effort is very unique," Clift said. "Often, the people in the
     audience know a lot."

                 Copyright 1998 The New York Times Company