GIGO

Global Links

We began the New Zealand Science Monthly with the commitment to letting New Zealanders know about the important and interesting science and technology going on in this country. It's a commitment I believe that we are fulfilling, but we've found that we are providing a conduit to the wider world as well.

The Beyond 2000 research team ask us for story suggestions and further information on our articles, Japanese scientists request contacts, the British Council asks for help in publicising international science education awards.

Those global links have been boosted even further this year with the arrival of the NZSM on-line, as part of the international community of electronic mail, and with the establishment of our own computer-based bulletin board system, FaXination BBS.

These mail systems provide an electronic form of the market square or village common, but it's a square which encompasses the world. It is rather mind-boggling to post a message on some topic and find answers, comments and ideas coming in from Cray Research, NASA, Oxford University and the Wollongong Science Centre.

We've become part of a broader community and, in the process, are helping others to become part of that community too. One group which has benefited from the electronic village common is the sight-impaired, who can use large-size screen characters or screen-to-voice conversion to participate in global friendships. The same holds true for other people with disabilities which interfere with the sort of social interaction which many of us take for granted. In an electronic meeting place, it's of little consequence what the other person looks like, sounds like, earns or is.

Science fiction writers have predicted the development of an electronic World Net that will be open and available to all. Given on-going developments in computers and telecommunications, such a development is not that far away.

We're getting closer and closer to a 2,000-year-old ideal, exemplified by Socrates when he said "I am not a citizen of Athens, but of the world".

Vicki Hyde is the editor of New Zealand Science Monthly.