Vincent Surf, president of the Internet Society and vice-president of data architecture for MCI Communications Inc claimed that the ‘Internet has become to data communications what CNN News became to TV’ on the opening day of INET’94 in Prague. Surf said that approximately 1,100 experts from more than 100 countries were attending the event, up on the 900 visitors that attended the third INET conference in San Francisco last year. Among our many missions is to spread the Internet where it has not gone before, Surf said. To aid in this mission, Surf announced that 160 participants from eastern Europe and developing countries in Africa and South America had attended a six-day intensive training course in the Czech Republic, designed to teach ‘people who occupy key leadership positions in those countries’ how to use, install and manage the Internet. Responding to the concerns of local commentators regarding the price of Internet services, Vincent Surf suggested that they should direct questions relating to competition in the market and government-sponsored educational initiatives in the field to their respective governments. Making a key-note speech at the opening plenary session, George Soros, financier and philantropist, who helped fund the training session declared Internet is a prototype of an ‘open society’ in that it is largely self-organised, dominated by users and not defined by borders. Soros argued that the overthrow of Communism in eastern Europe was a revolution that was not complete. He claimed that Because of the lack of support for an open society both outside and within these [east European] countries, things are unfortunately going in the wrong direction. Soros said that his foundation’s most ambitious programme in the field of data communications was in the former Soviet Union, where he said that in cooperation with the International Science Foundation, there was a ‘pretty good plan’ to establish 26 nodes in major population centres. Eventually, he says, he hopes to facilitate the connection of all Russian universities, secondary schools, libraries and media organisations into the Internet. We hope we will get co-operation from other funders, he declared. We are looking towards the US government for example, and we hope that the European Union will not be absent either. Romanian secondary schools
The Soros Foundation has also provided switching equipment for Estonia’s connection to Stockholm and assistance to Romanian secondary schools. In a speech marked by his stinging criticism of the overall political development of the region, Soros stressed, Internet is not purely a technical matter; there is a ‘content’ in having an organisation taht is itself a prototype of an open society. It was left to EUnet’s Glen Kowack to intervene to stress the importance of promoting Internet as a commercial tool. He conceded I think things are moving a little more slowly in central and eastern Europe than we would like. Warmest applause was reserved for one delegate who argued, If the bottleneck is in the telephone system, could I suggest organising a workshop for the PTT people? EUnet in the Czech Republic has eight phone lines connected to its node, but is waiting on SPT Telecom, the Czech PTT, to install a multiplexer. INET’94’s commercial sponsors were IBM Corp, Cisco Systems Inc, Novell Inc, Sun Microsystems Inc and 3Com Corp. The proceedings are up on the Internet, courtesy of MCI Communications Corp and British Telecommunications Plc.
