About this Issue

In posting the August issue of Interface, we finish our first year of production. Editing a journal is always a strange affair. Editors, notoriously, often go insane. I choose to assume that this is because the necessary attention to detail that editing requires is in and of itself literally maddening. But it may also be that editing, like teaching, at its best requires that one take positions and draw lines, and this is never easy, if done appropriately.

Those of us attracted to editing in an electronic environment are usually passionate about this great new medium that we have discovered. For me, this leads to a frequent defense of the promises of the Internet, and to a celebration of its constantly increasing importance in our lives. But a good editor must always be aware of opposite viewpoints and contrary evidence lest a journal degenerate into one long personalized rant.

Fortunately at the Berglund Center we have many built in safeguards. An important one is the built-in skepticism of our many student assistants who look at every position with a critical eye. Another is the stability and moderation of Steven Boone, our Director, who is always willing to give his well-considered opinion when asked. But perhaps the most important safeguard is the ability to quickly publish a wide range of opinions.

In this issue we publish Gary Gillespie's piece, "Message in an Electronic Bottle: The Internet after 9/11." It seems an appropriate balance to some of our own past editorials on related issues and we are pleased to have the opportunity to present it.

Perhaps toward the other end of the political perspective, we publish Jeff Cooper's "Politics & Economics of Open Source Learning." Jeff, the educational technology specialist at Pacific University, gives us a highly personal view of his own life-long quest for education and his emerging perspectives on the importance of the Internet as an educational tool.

On a less partisan note, we publish Professor David Boersema's "The Internet, Epistemology and Ontology." David, a scholar of some standing, a noted participant in international conferences and a frequent contributor to published volumes, examines "information" found on the Internet as a mode of "knowing," and its impact on his field, philosophy.

In my own editorial "The Digital Divide in the Fall of 2002" I analyze a current controversy on the degree to which the Internet is available to particular groups, and what the role of the federal government should be in encouraging access.

Coincidentally, our K-12 Education Editor Mark Szmansky also discusses the digital divide. Mark, however, also walks the walk in that he goes on in this and subsequent pieces to steer educators toward useful sources of information and possible resources with which to bridge the divide.

In our Reviews section we examine both an important recent book, Roger C. Schank's Designing World-Class E-Learning, and the World Wide Web site of the Pew Charitable Trust. Pew is one of the leading sources of studies of the impact of the Internet, as well as analyses of many other important issues affecting American society. Anyone interested in a better understanding of the Internet should be familiar with the many studies produced by the Pew Trust.

One of the truly pleasurable returns of our work at Berglund is seeing our student assistants develop their own interests within the framework we can provide. Recently we sent Matt Ernst, one of our two student technical editors, to a major technical conference. He reports here on "ACM SIGGRAPH". For those who wonder what goes on when geeks gather in the thousands, Matt's piece will be useful. On a more serious note, he also tells us where the industry appears to be going in many important regards as shown at the conference.

We look forward to our break in September, but intent to publish in early October rather than toward the end of the month as become our practice. As always, we hope that you will find this issue of Interface both interesting and useful.

Jeffrey Barlow,
Editor, Interface
(barlowj@pacificu.edu)