In late July and early August, Russia’s ITA Ostankino news and television organization, together with Seattle’s Art Pattison Communications Exchange Program, held a conference in Moscow on the theme of "New Media for a New World." Somewhere between 50 and 100 Americans and Russians attended. Key organizers from Seattle were Alan Boyle of the "Seattle Post-Intelligencer," David Endicott of Communications Northwest, and Marina Orlova-Endicott, formerly an anchor for ITA Ostankino’s morning program, "Utro." (As of September 1994, Marina resumes her relationship with ITA Ostankino, becoming their Pacific Northwest correspondent.)

The dominant themes of the conference were technology and democracy. The bullet-chipped walls of Ostankino’s head-quarters, where we met - next to the tall broadcasting tower that is visible from any point in Moscow - were a vivid reminder of last October’s "Gotterdammerung," when parliamentary leaders sent followers to capture the tower by force.

However, the mood in Moscow this August seemed far removed from those turbulent days. The collapse of a fraudulent investment company, not civil order, was on the minds of Muscovites now. MMM, a pyramid scheme started by a financier named Mavrodi, had come to the point that it could no longer redeem shares it was selling to the public with "guaranteed" monthly appreciation rates as high as 50% . Overnight, shares lost 99% of their value, leaving thousands of investors holding worthless paper.

"New Media for a New World" assembled an interesting group of people and also demonstrated vividly how far connectivity has come in Moscow. In a corner of the conference room representatives of Relcom and Sovam Teleport had set up a small network of personal computers running a version of Mosaic that displayed text, sound and brilliant graphics, from around the world. It was as if it were Silicon Valley itself

The Costs of Connectivity, Then and Now

Presentations by speakers and panelists stressed a number of important points. A short selection follows:

Alexei Soldatov, President of Relcom:

During the "putsch" attempt of August 1991, Relcom transmitted 46,000 "news units" throughout Russia and around the world -- when all other media channels were closed. Networks today cover 200,000 users in Russia, in 300 cities. (Of course, the great majority of personal computers in Russia are not networked. But a base for expansion is there if, as Soldatov claimed, 4% -- or six million -- of Russia’s population now has personal computers.)

Alexander Voronov, head of Glasnet:

Our network now has 2,500 users, and a lot of U.S.-Russian traffic. It has been created entirely by the private sector. Our first plea to the Russian government is: Don’t hurt us--either with heavy taxes, regulations, huge import duties or other actions that harm service providers. Our second plea is: Help us if you can. Stop your interminable debates. If you won’t build roads or improve mail delivery for Russians, help us to build the information superhighway. It would be much cheaper!

John Dancy, NBC:

Our organization has 1,500 people in the news division. All of us are linked 24 hours a day around the world by our corporate computer network. A correspondent in New Delhi can send e-mail to New York, L.A. and Tokyo, go to sleep, and have a response to all the messages when he or she logs on in the morning. (Note: ITA Ostankino representatives found Dancy’s presentation very interesting. Like NBC, they are an international news agency, but their correspondents aren’t networked at all.)

David Carlson, director of Electronic Newspaper/Communications Research Laboratory, University of Florida, College of Journalism and Communications:

In the late eighties, we started an electronic version of the "Albuquerque Tribune" (where Carlson worked previously) with a 286 computer and software that together cost $5,000. Our "electronic Trib" grew in a couple of years to be self-sustaining financially. Readers liked it because it was so much more interactive. Newspapers have been losing readers because reporters feel they are too good to talk to readers.

Chris Kedzie, RAND Corporation:

Interconnectivivity, the prevalence of electronic communications networks in a society, correlates more strongly with democracy than other variables such as GDP per capita, literacy levels, or life expectancy. Since the U.S. can do more to influence connectivity in foreign countries than change their socio-economic characteristics, we should make greater use of this as a policy instrument. E. g., the U.S. should turn its diplomacy to promoting the growth of interconnectivity in China (where there is almost none today), in order to foster democracy there.

Bill Fick, IREX:

Connectivity is no longer the central problem in Russia, certainly not for the 20 million residents of Moscow and St. Petersburg. In fact, there are huge volumes of unused bandwidth in Russia now. The price of access is the problem. Since the collapse of RELARN (a government program to subsidize connectivity for non-profit and charitable organizations), there is no low-cost access anymore. However, Ukraine may soon be providing IP (Internet) access at very low cost to non-commercial organizations.

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