[Hi all, this issue will be especially relevant to those interested in the
relationship between ICTs and children. John.]

==============================================
From: Stephen Talbott [mailto:[log in to unmask]] 
Sent: Tuesday, September 12, 2000 5:52 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: NetFuture #111


                                 NETFUTURE

                    Technology and Human Responsibility

==========================================================================
Issue #111     A Publication of The Nature Institute    September 12, 2000
==========================================================================
             Editor:  Stephen L. Talbott ([log in to unmask])

           On the Web: http://www.oreilly.com/~stevet/netfuture/
     You may redistribute this newsletter for noncommercial purposes.

NetFuture is a reader-supported publication.


CONTENTS:
---------

Editor's Note

Fool's Gold: A Critical Look at Computers in Childhood
   Excerpts from a new publication of decisive importance

Children and Computers: A Call for Action
   Position statement of the Alliance for Childhood

DEPARTMENTS

Announcements and Resources
   Alliance for Childhood -- International Conference

About this newsletter

==========================================================================

                              EDITOR'S NOTE

"Mass delusion" is about the only term I know that is adequate to describe
our society's compulsion to sink untold billions of dollars into the
computerization of education -- against all reason and without any clear
sense of the supposed educational need being addressed.  Every voice
raised against the delusion has been swallowed up like a whimper in a
hurricane.  Until now.

Finally, I believe, there is beginning to sound a collective voice with
the force and gravity to counter the delusion.  This morning the Alliance
for Childhood conducted a high-profile news conference at Washington's
National Press Club, and released its report:  "Fool's Gold: A Critical
Look at Computers in Childhood".  Personally, I think this report is the
most significant publication about computers and children since the
delusion first seized hold of us.  You'll find some excerpts from it
below.

The Alliance simultaneously issued a "Call to Action", which we reprint
here along with a partial list of its initial signers.  The Call concludes
with seven recommendations, the first of which, restoring some long-absent
common-sense to the public discussion, urges:

   a refocusing in education, at home and school, on the essentials of a
   healthy childhood: strong bonds with caring adults; time for
   spontaneous, creative play; a curriculum rich in music and the other
   arts; reading books aloud; storytelling and poetry; rhythm and
   movement; cooking, building things, and other handcrafts; and gardening
   and other hands-on experiences of nature and the physical world.

You will find the full text of *Fool's Gold* (which is also available in
printed, nicely bound form) at www.allianceforchildhood.net.  For further
information send email to [log in to unmask] or call
301-513-1777.  You can register your interest or support at the website --
something I urge you to do.

For some additional background about the Alliance, see NF #99
(http://www.netfuture.org/1999/1999/Dec0999_99.html).

One final note:  I have never been quite so moved by a press conference as
I was while listening in to this one.  What struck me so forcefully was
the quiet conviction and depth of sincerity evident in all the
presentations -- not exactly what we've learned to expect in most press
conferences, especially in an election year.  It appeared that all the
major journalistic organizations were represented, and you are sure to
hear more about this development over the next few days.

SLT

==========================================================================

          FOOL'S GOLD: A CRITICAL LOOK AT COMPUTERS IN CHILDHOOD

                   Report of the Alliance for Childhood

(Following are a few tidbits selected pretty much at random from *Fool's
Gold: A Critical Look at Computers in Childhood*.  I am not able to give
any sense for the development of the argument in any of the chapters in
this 99-page report, nor for the rich variety of sources and research
reports it draws from.  An outline of the document follows these excerpts.
SLT)

** Children ages 2 to 18 spend on average about 4 hours and 45 minutes a
day outside of school plugged into electronic media of all kinds.

** "We have the most sedentary generation of young people in American
history," warns U.S. Surgeon General David Satcher.

** "My observations in schools are that drugs, crime, hostility,
indifference, and insensitivity tend to run rampant in schools that
deprive students of instruction in the arts.  In the process of
overselling science, mathematics, and technology as the panaceas of
commerce, schools have denied students something precious:  access to
their expressive communicative beings and their participation in creating
their own world [Charles Fowler]."

** Thomas Sherman of the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State
University has pointed out that educators sensitive to young children's
developmental needs actually try to "limit children's access to
information by simplifying messages and sequencing contents."  Their
intent is to avoid overwhelming children with information that is so
outside their experience they can neither understand nor assimilate it.

** In early childhood and at least throughout elementary school, [we
should] concentrate on developing the child's own inner powers, not
exploiting external machine power.

** Behavioral optometrists recommend that children [in first or second
grade] learn about letters first through direct physical engagement with
them -- perhaps by drawing or painting the letters as big as possible.
This takes advantage of the deep perceptual learning that coordinating
vision with gross motor skill encourages.

Expecting beginning writers to poke a letter key and then passively watch
a letter appear on a screen ... may actually hamper the process of
learning to write and read.

** Supportive social interactions with more competent language users is
"the one constant factor that emerges" in studies of how children become
able speakers, readers, and writers, research psychologists Alison Garton
and Chris Pratt concluded after an extensive review of the literature ....
Too few chances for such communication, if extended throughout childhood,
may permanently limit children's ability to express themselves in speech
or in writing, to comprehend fully what they read, and even to understand
themselves and to think logically and analytically.

** The late Jeanne Chall, who was a leading expert in reading research,
observed in more than 300 schools before concluding that the critical
factor in interesting children in reading was not the particular method or
technology but the teacher.  "It was *what the teacher did* with the
method, the materials, and the children rather than the method itself that
seemed to make the difference."

** Schools should get serious about ergonomic issues now, says Dr. Margit
Bleecker, a neurologist and director of the Center for Occupational and
Environmental Neurology in Baltimore...."We know that these things can
happen with children," she says, based on the reports of children who
injure their hands playing video games.  She expects the incidence of
repetitive stress injuries in childhood to rise.  "It's probably a time
bomb waiting to go off."

** Educational psychologist Jane Healy ... notes that creativity involves
the ability to generate "personal and original visual, physical, or
auditory images -- `mind images' in the words of one child."  But she
adds: "Teachers find that today's video-immersed children can't form
original pictures in their mind or develop an imaginative representation.
Teachers of young children lament the fact that *many now have to be
taught to play symbolically or pretend* -- previously a symptom only of
mentally or emotionally disordered youngsters."

** "It's not that children are little scientists, but that scientists are
big children [Alison Gopnik]."

** Many studies have demonstrated the relevance of what researchers call
"sociodramatic play" -- make-believe play involving more than one
individual -- to scholastic achievement in many subjects, including
reading, writing, science, and arithmetic.  Studies have shown, for
example, that make-believe and other kinds of play help young children
learn to classify objects and group concepts in hierarchies, skills that
have proven resistant to formal instruction.  Children also test and
revise their immature ideas about space, time, probability, and cause-and-
effect relations during play.  They test hypotheses, draw generalizations,
and find creative, divergent ways to solve problems.

** [Arkansas master teacher Sheila G. Flaxman:]  "Children have never
before been exposed to so much, so early.  Play not only allows them to
practice with all the new concepts -- social, emotional, moral, and
intellectual -- they are learning so rapidly as they develop, but also
helps them make sense of, and internalize, all the stimuli to which they
are exposed."

** Teachers report that many children of all income levels who have been
exposed to heavy diets of television, computers, and other electronic
media now enter kindergarten not knowing how to play.

** Studies suggest that children who engage spontaneously and often in
make-believe tend to be proficient at solving problems that have no one,
simple solution.

** Marilyn Benoit, president-elect of the American Academy of Child and
Adolescent Psychiatry, has coined the term "dot-com kids" to describe the
negative impact on children of being able to command so many entertaining
images and messages with just a click of the mouse.  Children's brains,
she suggests, are overstimulated by the pace and attention-grabbing nature
of multimedia technology.  She notes the rise in diagnoses of attention
deficit hyperactivity disorder and asks whether it is related to
"children's constant exposure to rapid-fire stimuli to the brain."

** Nature trains all of a child's senses, and encourages reflection and
acute observation, which later support scientific insight and precision in
thinking.  The noise and flash of electronic media demand the child's
attention.  In contrast, the silence and subtle beauties of the natural
world encourage children to focus their attention for themselves.  This
kind of self-motivated attention is critical for persisting in learning
tasks of all kinds.

Traditional cultures have long recognized the subtle qualities of nature
as powerful teaching tools.  Among the Lakota people of North America, for
example, children "were taught to use their sense of smell, to look where
there was apparently nothing to see, and to listen intently when all
seemingly was quiet [William Crain]."

** [Regarding the educational essentials discussed in Chapter 3 of the
report:]

   Each supports the development of the full range of a child's human
   gifts, not just the intellect.

   Each is strongly supported by research and practical experience.

   Each was already endangered in schools before the current enthusiasm
   for computers.

   Each is even more threatened by the new emphasis on computers.

   Each is especially critical to the education of our most socially and
   economically disadvantaged children.  Likewise, when computers replace
   them, the loss most harms our most at-risk children.

** "Nearly half of the staff development courses are now basic computer
training," observed Lowell Monke in 1997, speaking of the Des Moines
(Iowa) Public Schools, where he was then teaching advanced technology
classes.  "As I listen to teachers and administrators discussing
educational issues now, as opposed to three years ago, I hear much less
attention directed toward what is going on inside our students, and much
more toward what goes on with the tools they use."

** There is absolutely no evidence that the lack of computer technology in
elementary school poses any threat at all to a child's development.

** Once we recover from the illusion that technical innovations will
revive education, the really critical conversation can begin:  How can we
tackle the social obstacles to children's healthy development with renewed
social commitment?


Chapter outlines
---------------
Chapter 1.  Healthy Children: Lessons from Research on Child Development
   The beginnings of life
   Emotions and the intellect
   The essential human touch
   The dangers of premature "brain" work
   Learning about the real world

Chapter 2.  Developmental Risks: The Hazards of Computers in Childhood
   Hazards to children's physical health
      Musculoskeletal injuries; vision problems; lack of exercise and
      obesity; toxic emissions and electromagnetic radiation
   Risks to emotional and social development
      Isolated lives; new sage on the stage; less self-motivation;
      detachment from community; the commercialization of childhood
   Risks to creativity and intellectual development
      Stunted imagination; loss of wonder; impaired language and literacy;
      poor concentration; little patience for hard work; plagiarism;
      distraction from meaning
   Risks to moral development
   A massive national experiment

Chapter 3. Childhood Essentials: Fostering the Full Range of Human
           Capacities
   Close, loving relationships with responsible adults
   Outdoors activity, gardening, and other direct encounters with nature
   Time for unstructured play, especially make-believe play
   Music, drama, puppetry, dance, painting, and the other arts
   Hands-on lessons, handcrafts, and other physically engaging activities
   Conversation, poetry, storytelling, and books read aloud with adults

Chapter 4.  Technology Literacy: Educating Children to Create Their Own
            Future
   Develop the young child's own inner powers
   Teach ethics and responsibility
   Teach the fundamentals of how computers work
   Teach the history of technology as a social force
   The goal of technology literacy

Chapter 5.  Real Costs: Computers Distract Us from Children's Needs
   The real costs of educational technology
   Flawed assumptions
   The politics of technomania
   The commercial blitz: a mega-scam
   The dog that didn't bark
   Children's real unmet needs
      Eliminating lead poisoning
   Other pressing needs of our most at-risk children
      Critical needs of our public schools
   A new conversation

Chapter 6.  Conclusions and Recommendations

==========================================================================

                CHILDREN AND COMPUTERS: A CALL FOR ACTION

               Position Statement -- Alliance for Childhood

Computers are reshaping children's lives, at home and at school, in
profound and unexpected ways.  Common sense suggests that we consider the
potential harm, as well as the promised benefits, of this change.

Computers pose serious health hazards to children.  The risks include
repetitive stress injuries, eyestrain, obesity, social isolation, and, for
some, long-term damage to physical, emotional, or intellectual
development.  Our children, the Surgeon General warns, are the most
sedentary generation ever.  Will they thrive spending even more time
staring at screens?

Children need stronger personal bonds with caring adults.  Yet powerful
technologies are distracting children and adults from each other.

Children need time for active, physical play; hands-on lessons of all
kinds, especially in the arts; and direct experience of the natural world.
Research shows these are not frills but are essential for healthy child
development.  Yet many schools have cut already minimal offerings in these
areas to shift time and money to expensive, unproven technology.

The emphasis on technology is distracting us from the urgent social and
educational needs of low income children.  M.I.T. Professor Sherry Turkle
has asked: "Are we using computer technology not because it teaches best
but because we have lost the political will to fund education adequately?"

Given the high costs and clear hazards, we call for a moratorium on the
further introduction of computers in early childhood and elementary
education.  We call for families, schools, and communities to refocus on
the essentials of a healthy childhood.  And we call for a broad public
discussion about these critical issues.

Let's examine the claims about computers and children more closely:

*
* Do computers really motivate children to learn faster and better?
*

Children must start learning on computers as early as possible, we are
told, to get a jump-start on success.  But 30 years of research on
educational technology has produced just one clear link between computers
and children's learning.  Drill-and-practice programs appear to improve
scores modestly -- though not as much or as cheaply as one-on-one tutoring
-- on some standardized tests, in narrow skill areas, notes Larry Cuban of
Stanford University.  "Other than that," says Cuban, former president of
the American Educational Research Association, "there is no clear,
commanding body of evidence that students' sustained use of multimedia
machines, the Internet, word processing, spreadsheets, and other popular
applications has any impact on academic achievement."

The sheer power of information technologies may actually hamper young
children's intellectual growth.  What is good for adults and older
students is often inappropriate for youngsters.  Face-to-face conversation
with more competent language users, for example, is the one constant
factor in studies of how children become expert speakers, readers, and
writers.  Time for real talk with parents and teachers is critical.
Similarly, academic success requires focused attention, listening, and
persistence.

The computer -- like the TV -- can be a mesmerizing babysitter.  But many
children, overwhelmed by the volume of data and flashy special effects of
the World Wide Web and much software, have trouble focusing on any one
task.  And a new study from the American Association of University Women
casts doubt on the claim that computers automatically motivate learning.
Many girls, it found, are bored by computers.  And many boys seem more
interested in violent video games than educational software.

*
* Must five-year-olds be trained on computers today to get the high-paying
* jobs of tomorrow?
*

For a relatively small number of children with certain disabilities,
technology offers benefits.  But for the majority, computers pose health
hazards and potentially serious developmental problems.  Of particular
concern is the growing incidence of disabling repetitive stress injuries
among college students who began using computers in childhood.

The technology in schools today will be obsolete long before five-year-
olds graduate.  Creativity and imagination are the prerequisites for
innovative thinking, which will never be obsolete.  Yet a heavy diet of
ready-made computer images and programmed toys appears to stunt
imaginative thinking.  Teachers report that children in our electronic
society are becoming alarmingly deficient in generating their own images
and ideas.

*
* Do computers really "connect" children to the world?
*

Too often, what computers actually connect children to are trivial games,
inappropriate adult material, and aggressive advertising.  They can also
isolate children, emotionally and physically, from direct experience of
the natural world.  The "distance" education they promote is the opposite
of what all children, and especially children at risk, need most -- close
relationships with caring adults.

Research shows that strengthening bonds between teachers, students, and
families is a powerful remedy for troubled students and struggling
schools.  Overemphasizing technology can weaken those bonds.  The National
Science Board reported in 1998 that prolonged exposure to computing
environments may create "individuals incapable of dealing with the
messiness of reality, the needs of community building, and the demands of
personal commitments."

In the early grades, children need live lessons that engage their hands,
hearts, bodies, and minds -- not computer simulations.  Even in high
school, where the benefits of computers are more clear, too few technology
classes emphasize the ethics or dangers of online research and
communication.  Too few help students develop the critical skills to make
independent judgments about the potential for the Internet -- or any other
technology -- to have negative as well as positive social consequences.

Our Conclusion: Those who place their faith in technology to solve the
problems of education should look more deeply into the needs of children.
The renewal of education requires personal attention to students from good
teachers and active parents, strongly supported by their communities.  It
requires commitment to developmentally appropriate education and attention
to the full range of children's real, low-tech needs -- physical,
emotional, and social, as well as cognitive.

Therefore, we call for:

1:  A refocusing in education, at home and school, on the essentials of a
healthy childhood: strong bonds with caring adults; time for spontaneous,
creative play; a curriculum rich in music and the other arts; reading
books aloud; storytelling and poetry; rhythm and movement; cooking,
building things, and other handcrafts; and gardening and other hands-on
experiences of nature and the physical world.

2:  A broad public dialogue on how the emphasis on computers affects the
real needs of children, especially children in low-income families.

3:  A comprehensive report by the U.S. Surgeon General on the full extent
of physical, emotional, and other developmental hazards computers pose to
children.

4:  Full disclosure by information-technology companies about the physical
hazards to children of using their products.

5:  A halt to the commercial hyping of harmful or useless technology for
children.

6:  A new emphasis on ethics, responsibility, and critical thinking in
teaching older students about the personal and social effects of
technology.

7:  An immediate moratorium on the further introduction of computers in
early childhood and elementary education, except for special cases of
students with disabilities.  Such a time-out is necessary to create the
climate for the above recommendations to take place.

Signed by:  (Organizations included for identification purposes only.)
[Editor's note:  this is not the final list of signers.]

Joan Almon, former kindergarten teacher and U.S. coordinator, Alliance for
Childhood

Jeffrey Anshel, O.D., Corporate Vision Consulting, and author, *Visual
Ergonomics in the Workplace*

Alison Armstrong, author, *The Child and the Machine: How Computers Put
Our Children's Education at Risk*

Marilyn Benoit, M.D., child and adolescent psychiatrist, Howard University
Hospital, and president-elect of the American Academy of Child and
Adolescent Psychiatry (Dr.  Benoit's signature, as noted above, does not
reflect an endorsement of this statement by the academy.)

Margit L. Bleecker, M.D., Ph.D., neurologist, specialist in repetitive
stress injuries, and director, Center for Occupational and Environmental
Neurology in Baltimore

Hank Bromley, Ph.D., associate professor of education and director, Center
for the Study of Technology in Education, State University of New York at
Buffalo; editor, *Education/Technology/Power: Education Computing as a
Social Practice*

Chet Bowers, educator and author, *Let Them Eat Data: How Computers Affect
Education, Cultural Diversity, and the Prospects of Ecological
Sustainability*, and *The Culture of Denial: Why the Environmental
Movement Needs a Strategy for Reforming Universities and Public Schools*

Sandra Campbell, researcher on computers in education, and the role of the
arts and imagination in positive social learning; and educational
consultant, Viva Associates

Fritjof Capra, Ph.D., physicist and author of *The Tao of Physics*, and
*Web of Life*

Ian Chunn, program director, Centre for Distance Education, Simon Fraser
University

Rhonda Clements, Ed.D., President, The American Association for the
Child's Right to Play

Brendan Connell, student, Harvard University (Mr. Connell developed
repetitive stress injuries related to computer use while a student at
Blair High School in Montgomery County, MD)

Colleen Cordes, writer, co-coordinator of Task Force on Computers in
Childhood, Alliance for Childhood

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, professor of psychology and management and
director of the Quality of Life Research Center at Claremont Graduate
University, and author, *Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience*

Larry Cuban, Ph.D., professor of education, Stanford University, and
former president, the American Educational Research Association

O. Fred Donaldson, Ph.D., play specialist, Moreno Valley Unified School
District

Hubert L. Dreyfus, professor of philosophy, University of California at
Berkeley, and author, *On the Internet: Nihilism on Line* (in press)

Elliot Eisner, Lee Jacks professor of education and professor of art at
Stanford University; former president of the American Educational Research
Association, the National Art Education Association, and the International
Society for Education Through Art; and author, *The Kind of Schools We
Need*

Oscar H. Gandy, Jr., Ph.D., Herbert I. Schiller professor of communication
at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of
Pennsylvania

Simson L. Garfinkel, chief technology officer, Sandstorm Enterprises,
Inc., and author, *Database Nation: The Death of Privacy in the 21st
Century*

Claire Ryle Garrison, director, Whole Child Initiative, State of the World
Forum

John Taylor Gatto, former New York State Teacher of the Year, and author,
*Dumbing Us Down*, and *The Underground History of American Education: A
School Teacher's Intimate Investigation Into the Problem of Modern
Schooling* (in press)

Chellis Glendinning, Ph.D., psychologist and author, *When Technology
Wounds*

Jane Goodall, Ph.D., primate researcher and founder, Jane Goodall
Institute -- U.K.

Harold Howe II, retired educator, former U.S. Commissioner of Education
and vice president of Ford Foundation for Education, Harvard education
faculty

Philip Incao, M.D., primary care physician and founder, Colorado Alliance
for Childhood

Henry C. Johnson, Jr., Ph.D., professor emeritus in education theory and
policy, Pennsylvania State University

Jeffrey Kane, Ph.D., dean, School of Education, C.W. Post Campus, Long
Island University, and editor, *Education, Information and Transformation:
Essays on Learning and Thinking*

Stephen Kline, Ph.D., professor in the School of Communication, Simon
Fraser University, and author, *Out of the Garden: Toys, TV, and
Children's Culture in the Age of Marketing*

Diane Levin, Ph.D., professor of education, Wheelock College, and author,
*Remote Control Childhood*

Susan Linn, Ed.D., associate director, the Media Center at Judge Baker
Children's Center, and instructor in psychiatry at Harvard Medical School

Jerry Mander, program director, Foundation for Deep Ecology; president,
International Forum on Globalization; and author, *In the Absence of the
Sacred: The Failure of Technology and the Survival of the Indian Nations*

Bill McKibben, author of *The Age of Missing Information*

Deborah W. Meier, principal, Mission Hill School, Boston Public Schools

Edward Miller, Ed.M., educational policy analyst, former editor of the
Harvard Education Letter, and co-coordinator, Task Force on Computers in
Childhood, Alliance for Childhood

Marita Moll, researcher and analyst of educational-technology policies,
and author, *Tech High; Globalization and the Future of Canadian
Education*

Lowell Monke, Ph.D., former award-winning teacher of advanced technology
classes in the Des Moines Public Schools and former member of Des Moines'
Technology Steering Committee, now assistant professor of education,
Wittenberg University; co-author, *Breaking Down the Digital Walls:
Learning to Teach in a Post-Modem World* (in press)

Thomas Moore, former psychotherapist and author, *Care of the Soul: A
Guide for Cultivating Depth and Sacredness in Everyday Life*

David Noble, Ph.D., professor of social science, York University, and
author, "Digital Diploma Mills" and *The Religion of Technology*

Douglas Noble, Ph.D., senior research associate, SUNY-Geneseo, and author,
*The Classroom Arsenal: Military Research, Information Technology, and
Public Education*

David Orr, Ph.D., chair, Environmental Studies Program at Oberlin College,
and author, *Earth in Mind: On Education, Environment and the Human
Prospect*

Maria Papadakis, Ph.D., director, Institute for the Social Assessment of
Information Technology, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State
University. (Dr. Papadakis was the author of Chapter Eight: Economic and
Social Significance of Information Technologies, for the U.S. National
Science Board's official biennial report, Science & Engineering Indicators
-- 1998. The chapter summarized the research on the impacts of information
technology on K-12 student learning.)

Mary Pipher, Ph.D., psychologist and author, *Reviving Ophelia: Saving the
Selves of Adolescent Girls*, and *The Shelter of Each Other: Rebuilding
Our Families*

Neil Postman, Ph.D., chair, Department of Culture and Communications, New
York University, and author, *Technopoly*, *The End of Education:
Redefining the Value of School*, and *The Disappearance of Childhood*

Alvin F. Poussaint, M.D., director, the Media Center at Judge Baker
Children's Center and clinical professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical
School

Deborah Quilter, RSI prevention consultant and author, *The Repetitive
Strain Injury Recovery Book*

Raffi, singer, founder, the Troubadour Institute

Diane Ravitch, Ph.D., research professor, New York University, and former
assistant secretary of education, responsible for the U.S. Office of
Educational Research and Improvement

Beth Rosenberg, consumer technology journalist, especially on issues
involving young children and CD-ROMs

Theodore Roszak, Ph.D., professor of history, California State University-
Hayward, and author of *The Cult of Information*

Rustum Roy, Ph.D., Evan Pugh professor of the solid state and director of
the Science, Technology, and Society programs, Penn State University

Gary Ruskin, M.P.P., director, Commercial Alert

Dorothy St. Charles, leadership specialist for the Milwaukee Public
Schools and former principal

Barry Sanders, Ph.D., professor of English and history of ideas, Pitzer
College and author of *A is for Ox:  The Collapse of Literacy and the Rise
of Violence in an Electronic Age*

Richard Sclove, Ph.D., M.S., founder, The Loka Institute, and author,
*Democracy and Technology*

David Shenk, author of *Data Smog: Surviving the Information Glut*; and
*The End of Patience: Cautionary Notes on the Information Revolution*

Douglas Sloan, Ph.D., professor of history and education, Teachers
College, Columbia University and editor of *The Computer in Education: A
Critical Perspective*

Clifford Stoll, Ph.D., astronomer and author, *High Tech Heretic* and *The
Cuckoo's Egg: Tracking a Spy Through the Maze of Computer Espionage*
(October, 2000)

Stephen Talbott, senior researcher, The Nature Institute, and editor of
NetFuture, an online newsletter on technology and human responsibility

Betsy Taylor, executive director, Center for a New American Dream

Frank Vespe, executive director, TV-Turnoff Network

Joseph Weizenbaum, Ph.D., professor emeritus of computer science,
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and author, *Computer Power and
Human Reason: From Judgment to Calculation*

Frank R. Wilson, M.D., medical director, Health Program for Performing
Artists, University of California at San Francisco, and author, *The Hand:
How It's Use Shapes the Brain, Language, and Human Culture*

Langdon Winner, Ph.D., professor of political science at Rensselaer
Polytechnic Institute and author, *The Whale and the Reactor: A Search for
Limits in an Age of High Technology*, and *Autonomous Technology*

Pei-hsuan Wu, lab manager and technology assistant, Saint Mark's School,
San Rafael, CA

Arthur Zajonc, Ph.D., professor of physics, Amherst College, and author,
*Catching the Light: The Entwined History of Light and Mind*, and co-
author, *The Quantum Challenge: Modern Research on the Foundations of
Quantum Mechanics*

==========================================================================

                       ANNOUNCEMENTS AND RESOURCES


Alliance for Childhood -- International Conference
--------------------------------------------------

A large-scale conference on "The Rights of Children -- A Bridge to the
Future" will be held October 11-14 in Brussels, Belgium.  Organized by the
Alliance for Childhood and sponsored by a long list of European
organizations that are Alliance "partners", the conference is founded upon
this shared concern:

   The environment in which our children live is under threat and needs to
   be protected .... Do we not ... need a new global consciousness of the
   right to childhood .... Hasn't the time come to form a worldwide lobby
   on behalf of children, who cannot do this for themselves?

The conference features an impressive array of speakers on topics related
to child development, children's rights, medical issues (addictions,
attention deficit disorder), family life, technology, violence, play, and
various other topics.

For further information, contact:

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                          ABOUT THIS NEWSLETTER

NetFuture is a freely distributed newsletter dealing with technology and
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Copyright 2000 by The Nature Institute.

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