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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Soon Enough, Nearly All Of Us Will Be Cybernauts

Fred Davis Washington State Uni

I’m trying hard to get a handle on last week’s report that the ever burgeoning world of cyberspace has been given an official distinction - as a component of the mass media.

I thought it already was.

This country - indeed, the entire global community - has been part of a technological communications revolution for much of this decade, and the computer end of this metamorphosis is just getting its due.

Perhaps this latent, way overdue mass media nomenclature for cyberspace advancement is due to the still developing nature of the Internet, despite all of its hits and misses, chaotic on- and off-ramps and varying speeds.

Or perhaps it’s the eye-popping user statistics reported by USA Today the other day. IntelliQuest, an Austin, Texas, technology research company that follows the computer community closely, found that roughly one in four American adults, or 47 million people, is coming online and crowding the electronic superhighway at one time or another.

I still find it not so easily digestible: After taking years to get out of the starting blocks, cyberspace suddenly is reaching a lot more people - much in the same vein as television’s maturation period that brought on scintillating miniseries in the ‘70s and ‘80s and provocative news magazines in the ‘90s.

I could have sworn the medium had reached its apex, with its millions of users, a long time ago.

Now, we are told in the USA Today account that 12 million more people are online now than last year, with another 11.7 million expected to venture out into cyberspace before this year is over.

Surprised? Read on.

The fact that more than 42 million people, about one-fifth of the total U.S. population, log onto computers from home, work or school in a given period is sweeping testament to the widespread use of cyberspace as a dominant medium among the masses.

As a regular subscriber to a half-dozen or so computer network services, which I use in my various journalistic functions, I’m not surprised by these startling user statistics.

What I am surprised by, though, almost as much as the cyberspace mass media distinction itself, is the number of computer hackers in the important demographic group of people 25 to 34 years old. What a gold mine there is, as cyberspace advertisers are soon to find out, in an age group IntelliQuest describes as “the fastest-growing segment of the online population.”

That’s why I encourage students almost every day in my little homilies to take advantage of opportunities to get computer training. My purpose is to have them avoid being in a negative position, behind peers who are almost certain to enjoy an advantage in becoming or remaining employed because of their computer skills and cyberspace proficiency.

No wonder the Clinton administration has taken the laudable position of trying to bridge America’s global education gap - a chasm that has American youngsters considerably behind those in the world’s other leading industrial countries - by mandating that a computer be placed in every U.S. middle school and high school classroom by the turn of the century.

Even with mastery of computer skills by U.S. youngsters, there’s little doubt a yeoman’s effort on the part of everyone will be needed if we’re to keep pace with the cyberspace explosion.

Presumably, this will have to come about while users’ constitutional rights, in their participating countries, are being duly safeguarded.

As daunting as this prospect may be, there is no plausible reason for cyberspace junkies, or wannabes, to let up.

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The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Fred Davis Washington State University