books

The first sentence of this book shares the rhetoric familiar from the debate about the National Research and Education Network in the US:

"Development of the pro- posed National Research and Education Network (NREN) may be the single most important factor affect- ing the abifity of the United States to manage informa- tion resources effectively in the 1990s."

This is not characteristic, as a major thrust of the book is to question the 'technopho- ria' of much of that debate, and to emphasize how much needs to be done before the networks com- fortably enter everyday use by the majority of the aca- demic/ research community.

This book has a triple purpose: "it is intended to serve as a handbook on NREN development, a sourcebook of important NREN policy statements, and as a report on research conducted at Syracuse University on topics related to electronic networks." It is partly based on reports to the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment.

Chapters 2 and 3 address the first purpose. There is a summary of recent debate, a historical sketch of signifi- cant legislative/government activity, and a digest of NREN benefits, problems and policy issues gleaned from recent literature. This section- suffers from the defect that it only refers up to early 1991, before the legislation authorising cre- ation of NREN was passed. Now that this has happened, and as commercial IP ser- vices expand rapidly, one senses that the debate has now shifted noticeably.

Summary of NREN views and data The second purpose, to

act as a sourcebook of NREN policy statements, is approached by including as appendices the full text of some 17 official reports and acts. The book is in a large format, soft covered, over 700 pages long, and difficult to read comfortably. The appendices occupy over two thirds of its length; they are undoubtedly interesting to some, but might have been better included in a separate sources volume.

It is in the report of research into the use of net- works that the work's great- est interest lies. Chapters 6 and 9 report the results of research at the School of Information Studies at Syracuse. Chapters 4 and 7 survey and comment on rel- evant literature.

There is much here to consider. Recurrent themes present themselves as con- trasts or imbalances There is intensive use of computer- mediated-communications within the 'initiate' comput- ing community, much lower use outside it. There is some relationship between use and age: the full benefits of networking may only be felt when current users reach managerial positions. There may be some mismatch between the interests and perceptions of network planning and support staff and those of their users. It is suggested that the former do not understand user con- cerns, or are intolerant of their technical ignorance. Researchers at high-prestige, resource-rich institutions take services for granted; users elsewhere often may not have such access. The majority of researchers, it is

claimed, do not make much use of networks. For some they are invaluable tools but "many comments from researchers suggest an opposite, perspective; net- works are putting researchers in 'technical bondage' and may, in fact, restrict their productivity."

The bringing together in one place of these views is the major achievement of the report. However, some points can be made about the particular approach taken. The text is based on survey, interview and litera- ture review, and stays too close to the mass of, often conflicting, options uncov- ered. More analysis and dis- cussion of preferred directions would have been interesting, as would more description of actual pro- jects and services. Some anecdotal evidence from the Syracuse research is pre- sented about researcher atti- tudes to the possible impact of networks. There is no mention of the Grand Challenge research topics or, for example, to the inter- esting role of the networks in the Human Genome Project. Nor is there any speculation about how such developments or network publishing activities might acquire the prestige of print- based publishing, or whether this is desirable. Despite the fact that the context for the book is the NREN, there is very little discussion of how high- speed networking might transform research. The focus is very much on exist- ing character-based use, there is little about multime- dia or other applications which will benefit from the

NREN: Research and Policy Perspectives by Charles R McClure et al. Ablex, NJ (1991), 750pp

continued on p. 549

548 computer communications