Oct./Nov. 1983 RAIN Page 19 population on the farms is feeding the other 99 percent through the miracle of modem technology is being shattered. This is rapidly becoming a nation that feeds itself. The family garden and good, fresh food are becoming new status symbols—a trend with survival potential for us all. People have now begun looking beyond their backyards to assess the productive potential of entire neighborhoods and cities. The Massachusetts Fmition Project is one example of where people are being encouraged to establish public access food plants throughout their communities. Our greatest challenge is to continue making sustainable agriculture an element of public policy. Publication of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Report and Recommendations on Organic Farming (1980) was a major step in making the need for new approaches to agriculture a political issue. This has been followed by the introduction of legislation in Congress to fund research on less energy-intensive farming practices. The Institute for Alternative Agriculture (9200 Edmonston Road, Suite 117, Greenbelt, MD 20770) was formed last year to assist in the coordination of such political efforts as well as the exchange of technical information on a national level. Preserving the land and encouraging the involvement of more people in food production is the goal of the sustainable agriculture movement. Realizing the promise of the Earth will require re-visioning of the role of agriculture in our communities. It will also require that we overcome the specialization of the Industrial Era and heal the rift that has separated producers from consumers, and almost everyone from intimate association with the land. Mark Musick is one of the founders of Tilth and edited that association's newsletter for several years. He is currently applying natural farm concepts on a small farm in western Washington state. r Sf 5 ■ Information/ Communications by Sandy Emerson Today, on the eve of Big Brother Year, neither the fondest dreams nor the most paranoid nightmares about the social effects of microcomputers have come to pass. When last we spoke, the information revolution— two computers in every home—was just around the corner. Predictions of a few years ago would have had us believe that, by now, doing business and pleasure with a microcomputer or, at the very least, via some sort of TV-to-network hookup would be a fact of life for most American families. If you read any of the ever- increasing number of computer magazines, you know the Information Revolution is still seen as just around the corner. Perfervid prose notwithstanding, the experience of active, habitual computer use is far more common today among secretaries, computer programmers, and teenage males than among the public at large. Today, on the eve of Big Brother Year, neither the fondest dreams nor the most paranoid nightmares about the social effects of microcomputers have come to pass. For one thing, the hardware and software are still too expensive, the phone lines and modems too unreliable, and the connect charges far too high for easy, widespread networking. Long after they might have become commonplace, each new Videotex trial or new service from The Source is still perceived as an experiment, a novelty for the self-chosen few. Of course automatic tellers and word-processing equipment have made substantial incursions into everyday life. Be this good or bad, the more significant fact is the road not yet taken—networking. Such projects as the Community Memory public-access computer network in San Francisco, although vastly overdue by the timelines they continue to publish every few years, are still not too late. (As Tom Robbins says in Still Life with Woodpecker, "It's never too late to have a happy childhood.") Community Memory Project Since I have been affiliated with Community Memory for the past five years, I will try (but fail) to resist this opportunity to tell you what's happening with us these days. Community Memory is designed as a powerful and public system for communications and information exchange. Its medium will be computer technology: a network of relatively small and cheap computers, each connected to a dozen or more terminals located mostly in public places such as neighborhood centers, cafes, bookstores, and libraries. Messages on the Community Memory system might include: aimouncements and comments on current events, entertainment, and restaurants; debates about community and political activities; listings of community resources; information about bartering, buying, selling, and renting; notices about groups being formed; or grafitti, poems, dialogues, and group discussions ("multilogues"). Since the users themselves are the source of information in the Commu-
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