By Lars Kongshem
JUNE 1999 -- If the 1970s were known as the "Me Decade" and the
1980s were dubbed the "Greed Decade," what should we
call the 1990s? Here's my suggestion: The "Free Decade."
In the 1990s, the traditions and culture of the Internet influenced
a new generation of business models based on giving stuff away.
The computer industry looked at the Internet's phenomenal growth
and began to realize it could make money by offering many Internet-related
services and products for free -- betting that high market share
would boost stock valuations, elevate sales of online advertising,
and draw customers to pay for premium services. Just think of
all the free services, information, and software on the web today
that would have been prohibitively expensive -- or unavailable
at any price -- a decade ago.
The latest twist on this roller-coaster ride is free hardware.
Now that giving away content and software is old hat, a company
called Free-PC has begun
giving away free PCs and Internet access to consumers in return
for demographic information and prominent on-screen advertising.
Others are bundling free computers with paid Internet access.
Naturally, this trend was bound to hit the K-12 market. An outfit
called ZapMe! has been providing
free computers and Internet access to schools for about
a year now, offering a full computer lab and satellite-based broadband
Internet access. Price: Zilch. The catch: Students have
to pay with their eyeballs, because part of the screen
is reserved for advertising. It sounds ominous, but in fact the
ads take up only a small fraction of the large 17-inch monitors
that ZapMe! provides. Two out of three ads are public service
announcements, and the students are under no obligation to click
on the banners, says ZapMe! president Frank Vigil. The ads --
which are easily ignored -- seem a small price to pay for
the 15 Pentium II PCs, server, printer, and satellite dish with
Internet access.
The company's strange name is a reference to the satellite
connection, which "zaps" information down to a cache on the computer
lab's server. This allows instant access to full-motion video
and other content that has been downloaded automatically to the
server, opening up new possibilities for broadband educational
services. In the future, the company may also offer electronic
distribution of software this way. If ZapMe! is able to ramp up
fast enough to meet the high demand, chances are good the company
could become another Free Decade success story.
Here's another example of a windfall from the Free Decade: "open
source" software. In the 1990s, the Internet made it feasible
for altruistic programmers to give away the source code
to their software and encourage others to use and modify the code
to suit their needs. Over time, the improvements and bug fixes
got plowed back into the software, thus improving the breed. The
best-known beneficiary of the open-source movement is Linux,
a Unix-like operating system for PCs, Macs, and other platforms
that is being perfected by a team of volunteer programmers around
the world. Although it's hardly user-friendly, it's rock-stable
and costs nothing -- which is more than one can say for Windows
98 or the Mac OS. Recently, a number of established vendors --
including IBM, Dell, and Hewlett-Packard -- have given Linux a
stamp of approval by offering factory installation and technical
support.
Not surprisingly, this development has made Microsoft and Apple
sit up and take notice. Although Microsoft is still closely guarding
its Windows code, Apple is making moves to get in on the open-source
action. As a tentative first step, Apple recently released
the guts of its brand-new Mac
OS X Server operating system to the open-source community,
with the hope that programmers will enhance it by adding features
and fixing bugs. Apple is even encouraging students to contribute
to the effort.
There's a lot in Mac OS X Server to like, especially for schools
that are looking for an easier way to manage Macs on a network.
A new feature called NetBoot allows as many as 50 iMacs and new
Power Mac G3s to boot directly off the server, putting an end
to the nightmare of trashed system folders and missing applications
so often endemic to computer labs. Not only will technology coordinators
love the fact that applications, data, and crucial settings are
stored centrally on the server, students will enjoy being able
to access their documents and preferences from any Mac on the
network. Mac OS X Server is built on a robust Unix foundation,
so it is both fast and stable -- and it includes the powerful
Apache open-source web server as well as file, mail, and print
services. Next year's Mac OS X for client desktop computers will
be based on the same technology, and promises to offer the same
stability benefits.
Speaking of Apple, the long-awaited replacement for the
eMate should be just around the corner now. Mike Lorion, Apple's
VP of education sales, promises the subnotebook will be "very
affordable" and "targeted at students." Significantly, it will
offer many features the eMate did not have -- such as color, multimedia,
and the ability to run Mac applications. We can only hope
that Apple gives this machine the fighting chance it denied the
eMate.
Lars Kongshem is an associate editor and the webmaster of Electronic School and American School Board Journal.
Socket archive: February
1999, November 1998
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