In a hands-on demonstration of the "information superhighway" technology he has been promoting, Vice President Al Gore conducted the first computer-based news conference from the White House on Thursday night. He made history and only a few typographical errors.
Gore, appearing comfortable at the computer keyboard and displaying more than a passing acquaintance with the electronic realm known as cyberspace, spent 45 minutes reading and responding to typed questions that scrolled down his screen from unseen questioners from California to France.The questioners were not journalists. And with the exception of a single question on the strife in Bosnia, all the questions concerned the administration's proposed "national information infrastructure" and its possible effects on people's everyday lives.
The unseen questioners revealed their diversity.
"I'm handicapped and spend a lot of time on the Net," wrote Larry H. Lewis from Alta Loma, Calif.
"Hello from Reynoldsburg, Home of the tomato!" typed in Ben Huntoon, apparently from Ohio.
In all, about 900 computer users were crowded - electronically speaking - into the the news conference, which Gore conducted from his White House office in the West Wing.
It was sponsored by U.S. News & World Report, which has an electronic version that is carried over Compuserve Information Service.
With the exceptions of his clicking keyboard, the reading of the questions by Gore and his typed responses for the benefit of a dozen onlookers in his office and countless others watching via C-Span, the news conference seemed eerily silent by White House standards.
The questioning was interrupted only a few times by apparent technical glitches.
In an exchange, for instance, with Aaron Dickey, a 23-year-old student in Huntington, W.Va., the questioner's message dissolved into garble. "Line snoise sorry," the student typed. "Line noise was my father picking up an extension, VP, sorry. (grin)"
"I think it was my fault," the vice president said. His words reached the student's ears as quickly as the electrons sped across the computer network from the the White House to Compuserve's mainframe computer in Columbus, Ohio, and then on to West Virginia.
"No, sir," the student wrote, "it was my father, not your fault."