Early each morning, immediately after Mass, a young American Jesuit rushes from the chapel to the computer room at the offices of the Specola Vaticana in Castel Gandolfo. Quickly he types in a string of obscure commands, and waits while packets of information travel from computer to computer, through Rome, across the Atlantic, across North America, and finally to Arizona. A few keystrokes later, he is logged in to his home computer and able to transmit a day's worth of electronic mail from Arizona back to his machine in Italy. Urgent mail is answered immediately; other notes require more thought, and so later that day he will prepare longer messages, which he will download into the e-mail system early the next morning after Mass.

The morning rush to the computer room is important to him for several reasons. For one, it is the only way he can keep in daily touch with his colleagues and friends around the world. Surface mail is too slow; fax and telephones too expensive. And for this Jesuit, who travels to dozens of locations during the course of a year, his e-mail address in Arizona is often the only reliable way that his colleagues -- and his religious superiors -- can be sure of reaching him. (His Provincial's Office is on the Net, too.)

But it is more than just eagerness to speak with the world that brings him to the computer room so early in the morning. Another reason is far less glamorous. It is unfortunate, but true, that if he tries to log into his Arizona computer at any time past 7:30 am, the network is so busy with other users that each keystroke can take a minute or more to travel from Rome to Arizona. You have to get up early to beat the rush hour on the information highway.

This phrase, the "information highway," referring to the Internet that links computers around the world, has become a cliche of journalists and politicians. To them, this network promises instant access to unlimited information for anyone with a personal computer and a modem. But while it is loudly praised from the pages of popular magazines, the Internet often is quietly cursed in the dim rooms, lit only by computer screens, where frustrated scientists try to download files from distant machines.

In truth, like computers themselves, the Internet is neither the salvation of all the world's problems, nor the cause of them. And, like real highways, its usefulness can be limited by its very popularity. Furthermore, also like our experience with highways and the automobile, an over-commitment to networks and computers may create unforeseen social and economic problems. Used intelligently, the computer network provides a useful service to people of all walks of life; used without common sense, it leads to enormous frustration, and a waste of money and time.

We are two Jesuit astronomers who live and work on several continents, with colleagues spread all around the world, and we have been using the Internet -- and its predecessors -- for more than twenty years. We have found it rewarding, at times necessary, at times frustrating. As Jesuit institutions around the world become connected, and the Vatican itself becomes a popular Internet node, we would like to share some of our stories about life in the Net. We hope that others may draw some lessons from our experiences, especially those who are just now thinking of venturing into the world of electronic connectibility.

The Net As It Was Designed: Digital Communication

[Chris Corbally:] Classification is a basic method in any science, whether it be botany or astronomy. I classify stars through their spectra, or rainbows; I enjoy finding the personality, so to speak, that a star reveals through its particular spectrum.

Astronomers who classify the spectra of stars with great precision are a somewhat rare and geographically scattered commodity, however. Last summer, when I needed a second opinion on a particular spectrum, I contacted another one of these rare experts, my friend Richard, who had been a fellow graduate student with me in Toronto and who now works in North Carolina.

"I'll put the spectrum on my ftp site," I typed in my e-mail to Richard. "See whether you find any indication that it is slightly peculiar." An "ftp site" is a location in the file-space on my computer which can be accessed by anyone else, using an Internet connection from their own computer.

Richard duly retrieved the spectrum in digital form back to his computer. There he could display it and compare it to various standard star spectra. We both have identical sets of these standards at our computers.

Later that day Richard e-mailed back to me, "I see what was bothering you. The spectrum has similarities to a lambda Bootis star. But it doesn't have all the characteristics needed for it to be called that."

My own opinion was confirmed; I could continue with the analysis of the rest of the stars in the set I was working on, and not worry about finding a theory for why a lambda Bootis star -- a rather subtle kind of peculiar star -- might appear among that particular group.

This way of interacting via the Internet we call "e-mail classification." It is sociable; and it is effective, because we iterate quickly between each other to solve a classification problem while the spectrum's characteristics are current in both our minds.

Certainly the ability to pass and to retrieve data quickly and in its digital form has changed the way I do science since coming to Tucson. The community of colleagues is a daily reality for me. This was the reason why the computer networks were originally set up. And this example shows them at their best.

Yet, if the only people using the Internet were astronomers classifying stars, it would be a very small community.

Straining the Net to Its Limits: A Growing Community

[Guy Consolmagno:] In the summer of 1994, we eagerly awaited two visitors to Castel Gandolfo's telescopes.

The first was my friend, Cliff Stoll. He is an astronomer and computer expert from Berkeley, California, whose story of catching Soviet spies in the Internet became a best-selling book, The Cuckoo's Egg (in Italy, -- -). In catching these "hackers" stealing sensitive information from computers around the world, Cliff had discovered that The Net is more than a collection of computers; it is a collection of people. It is a community, built on trust, with all the joys, problems, and responsibilities of any human community.

The second visitor, due to arrive three weeks after Cliff, was a comet: Shoemaker-Levy 9. This comet had been broken into two dozen pieces that would fall into Jupiter over the course of a week. Because of our location, at Castel Gandolfo we would have the privilege of seeing the impact of the very first piece.

Both visits were uncertain. Dr. Stoll was intensely working on his second book; and his wife was expecting their first child. Facing two such deadlines, he was not sure he would have the time free to travel. The comet's course was uncertain, too. The exact time of the impacts could not be predicted precisely, and because it was going to hit on the far side of Jupiter, just beyond the line of sight from Earth, no one knew just what the impacts might look like.

In both cases, we would depend on the Internet to keep us informed. In anticipation of a world-wide campaign to observe the comet impact, the University of Maryland arranged for a computer "exploder" -- nearly a hundred observatories subscribed to a listing on the Maryland computers, and agreed that any message sent to Maryland would automatically be forwarded to all the other computers on the list.

Three days before Cliff's arrival date, he sent an e-mail message to give us his flight information; but he also warned us that his visit might have to be cancelled at the last minute. And then communication stopped. For two days, our frantic messages to his home in California went unanswered. On the day of his flight, with still no word from Cliff, we resorted to an old-fashioned telephone call. Cliff, still in California, apologized; his trip was cancelled. In fact, he said, he had sent several e-mail messages to us, but apparently none of them had arrived at our computer in Rome.

However, the comet arrived right on schedule. At Castel Gandolfo, we observed with two telescopes. One was aimed at the moons near Jupiter, hoping to see a momentary increase in brightness as they reflected the impact flash, which otherwise would be hidden behind Jupiter's limb. The second telescope was trained on Jupiter itself, just on the off chance that the planet's clouds might show some visible sign of the impact.

At the first telescope, we observed well past the time when the impact was expected, yet no flash could be seen in our raw data. We could not be certain that the impact had even occurred. But ten minutes later, the first messages came over the network from a telescope in Spain. Observing in infrared light, they confirmed that the impact was right on time -- and, in their wavelengths, spectacular.

We rushed to retrieve our data from the storage disk, hoping to find some faint indication of a reflected flash. Only then did we discover that the computer program needed to read back our data had been left in Arizona! Even worse, the one person who had the program we needed, Bob Marcialis, had gone to some remote site to observe the impact; we did not know where he was.

In a panic, we wrote a note to the University of Maryland computer, to be sent around the world to all the other observatories: if anyone could get in touch with Bob Marcialis, wherever in the world he was, please have him send us the software we needed.

Soon after sending this message, we heard a shout from the other telescope dome. Just rotating into view on the limb of Jupiter, the observers there were seeing an enormous black spot bigger than planet Earth. It marked the spot where the comet had hit.

The image from their telescope was stunning, dramatic, and completely unexpected. The rest of the world, waiting for the next fragment to hit Jupiter, had to be told what to expect.

But when we returned to our computer, the line had been disconnected. We tried dialing up another computer at the University of Rome, but it refused to answer. Our computer screens had turned dark. The most spectacular event in years was occurring on Jupiter, but we could not tell the world what we had seen. Nor could we learn what anyone else was seeing, either.

For nearly two days we were out of touch with the computer world. The sense of isolation was maddening. The inherent unreliability of computer networks had made itself known at the worst possible time.

Then, suddenly, Sunday afternoon, the computer responded: "80 messages waiting to be read." In fact, computer networks around the world had been overwhelmed by the number of messages being posted, and the millions of people -- not just scientists -- eager to read the latest news about the comet. Two day's flood of excited reports, from Spain, from Sicily, from South America, and Arizona and Hawaii, and even the South Pole, brought us news and pictures of a puzzling but fascinating series of impacts. Two days late, we were able to catch up to the world.

Buried among these 80 messages was a note from New Zealand, where Bob Marcialis had gone. He included the complete code of the program we needed to read out our data.

And also among those comet messages was a letter from Cliff Stoll. Three weeks late, it finally arrived to tell us that his trip to Rome had been cancelled.

The Net Finds A New Use: Building a Home Page

[Chris:] It has been part of my job as telescope scientist for the Vatican Observatory's new telescope in Arizona to pick up a ringing phone and talk to a reporter or free-lance writer at the other end. Most often, they start the conversation by saying, "I didn't realize the Vatican had an observatory until I got this assignment. Tell me about it." On many such occasions I have had to to fill in background, and patiently explain the observatory to media people. All of this is good in itself, but does take time out of one's busy day.

That was part of the reason why I set to build the World Wide Web (WWW) pages for the Vatican Observatory last January. Now, when I get that same phone call, after a little conversation I can say, "Browse our Home Page. When you have formulated some specific questions for the article (or the TV documentary) you are preparing, we can talk some more."

If you have the proper software (one popular program is called "NetScape") you can travel through the Internet with your computer and read Home Pages from sites around the world. Companies use them to advertise products. Universities can post information for prospective students. Scientific organizations use them to distribute the programs, and registration forms, for upcoming meetings. There are Home Pages describing new movies, the latest computer games (with hints on how to win), activities of clubs, the positions of political parties. Even individuals have set up their own Home Page, including snapshots of the new baby or last summer's family reunion. A typical Home Page will be a computer screen describing the site, along with appropriate pictures and diagrams. Certain words may be typed in a different color; if you move your mouse to those words, and click, you will get a new screen with further information about that topic. You may even find yourself transported to another Home Page, at a different computer in a different part of the world.

Our Home Page (found at http://clavius.as.arizona.edu/vo/) and its linked pages have many uses, beyond helping out ill-prepared journalists. One is to give our fellow astronomers technical details about our new telescope; this is the kind of information that will help them to prepare for observing at it. These details change as new instrumentation comes on line, and so the WWW pages are a great way to keep information current, as well as readily accessible. It also provides an opportunity for the casual WWW "surfer" -- someone who searches the Net for fun, looking for interesting pages -- who may happen upon the Vatican Observatory; in this way they can learn about a work of the Catholic Church they might never have expected.

It is also an easy way for someone who does know about us to get in touch with us. All that person has to do is to use the keywords "Vatican Observatory" to locate our Home Page via one of the many indexes, called "search engines," available on the Internet. Our pages then contain "links" by which to send an e-mail message to any of our staff. There is, of course, a danger that we can get inundated by such messages, but I do not see any sign of that yet. Our WWW pages seem to be saving rather than making work, while they get the message about the Vatican and its Observatory out.

And, yes, we do have a link to the Vatican's own Home Page. Those who find us can find the Vatican pages as well.

The Net As Entertainment: The Future?

[Guy:] During the summer of 1973, I was a young student at MIT learning basic astronomy. My good friend, Paul, was studying mathematics and beginning to do research in the field of artificial intelligence. One evening, trying to escape my own research for a few hours, I went to visit him at his laboratory near Kendall Square, Cambridge. Across the street was the world headquarters of Polaroid; next door were the Draper Labs, where the guidance computers for the Apollo spacecraft were built. Just walking into his building felt like walking into the future. It was an exciting place for a 20-year-old undergraduate to work.

Paul showed me an odd-looking computer terminal off in a corner of his lab. It glowed with a strange orange light. (It was an experimental design, called a "plasma terminal," that never really caught on.) Connected to that box was a network of terminals all across the United States, centered on a computer at the University of Illinois. The name of the system was "Plato" -- obviously an acronym for something, although no one could remember what.

Though crude by modern standards, the activities on the Plato Network anticipated just about everything available today on the Internet. It was designed for information and education; but it was used mostly for other purposes. Indeed, once you logged into this terminal, you could play all sorts of games, interactively, with other people across the country. It was an astonishing idea; remember, video games had not yet been invented in 1973.

Some were simple action games. In "Dogfight," two players tried to shoot down each other's "airplane" -- a tiny spot on the screen -- and avoid being shot down. You could control the position of your own airplane using the various keys on the keyboard. (This, of course, was ten years before joysticks and computer mice became common.) Unfortunately, the person with the fastest connection to the main computer in Illinois usually won that game.

Other games were more complex. A game called "Empire" allowed you to play over weeks at a time, making moves every time you logged in, building up your resources in an interstellar empire that eventually would interact with other players' empires. But somehow it took so long to set up your own empire that most players lost interest before they ever encountered any other empire.

One of the more popular activities was "Talk-O-Matic". Five people at a time could write messages, and read each other's messages, on the same screen. Today, Internet chat rooms work on the same principle. One of the remarkable new features of this page was that you could log in with an invented name, and pretend you were anyone you wanted -- any name, any age, any gender. One favorite trick was to log in using the name of someone else already logged into the page, simply to confuse everyone else.

Over that summer, I spent dozens of evenings playing with Plato. I recall feeling amazed at how much fun it seemed, and wondering if somehow -- it seem impossible -- someday, anyone could have a Plato terminal in his own home to play with. (The idea of individual home computers would have seemed ridiculously impossible.)

I also recall being puzzled by the economics of this program. Clearly, someone was paying for the terminals, and all that long- distance telephone time; but it certainly wasn't me. That problem persists to this day. Most University users of the Internet have no concept of who's paying for their system, or how much their web-page crawling costs.

But mostly, I recall feeling exhilarated at the thought of interacting, actually conversing and playing games, with people all across the continent. As I recall, most of us were technical students like me, or people on military bases. I had found a new community of like-minded friends, and we seemed to have lots of things in common to talk about.

Strangely enough, I don't remember any details from those conversations today. I don't even remember any of their names. Indeed, about the only benefit I can draw today from the hours I spent on Plato in 1973 is that I can say I experienced "Virtual Reality" years before it even had that name; and ultimately, it had no lasting effect on me.

I had seen the future. Frankly, it didn't really work very well.

Conclusion

Our friend Cliff Stoll never made it to Rome; but the book he was writing has become a success. (And he and Patricia now have two children!) In fact, his book, "Silicon Snake Oil", is about the topic of this article: the use, and abuse, of computer networks. Cliff loves computers. But he is worried that they are being publicized, and oversold, in a way that avoids some hard truths. "Snake Oil" is an American phrase for a quack nostrum, a medicine that promises to cure everything but does nothing.

Cliff notes that the computer network remains a cheap, if not always reliable, way to communicate from friend to friend. But it has become much more. Today, with "Home Pages" on the World-Wide- Web, strangers can access computers without personally knowing anyone at that site, and retrieve information and graphics about any topic under the sun.

There is a lot of data available on the pages of the WWW. For us as astronomers, retrieving data such as pictures from Hubble Space Telescope has been a great help to staying current with what is going on, and to bringing such astronomical news into talks to the public. And yet, as Cliff points out, data by itself is useless. Only if you know its reliability, its context, its pedigree, can it become useful information. Furthermore, you must apply your own understanding to turn raw information into knowledge. And even then, it is a long distance from knowledge to wisdom. Data is not information; information is not knowledge; and knowledge is not wisdom.

Indeed, the WWW is largely unedited. The surfer himself has to keep a critical assessment of what he finds. Just look up your favorite controversial topic and you will find vicious arguments, personal attacks, and blatant misinformation. Institutional home pages (even our own) only give one side of any story; and there is no guarantee that any of the information on any page is current, or complete, or even true. The lures of advertising, and the worst in propaganda, are widespread on the Internet. Let the surfer beware!

Another trap for the unwary, besides being plain mislead, is to get addicted to surfing the WWW. A letter to a newspaper advice column recently described how the writer's mother would put in anywhere from 10 to 13 hours a day on the Internet. It started as a hobby, but ended as an addiction, as destructive as drugs or alcoholism. I should hope that the WWW pages of the Vatican and its Observatory encourage no one's addiction, but the possibility does give one pause before making a Home Page.

Not everything is rosy about passing data through the Internet, either. Sensitive information can fall into unscrupulous hands. While one usually thinks of "sensitive data" in terms of military or industrial secrets (and it would be silly to put these on a public site), sometimes scientists have data and its analysis that are too premature for release, or which they would prefer to keep away from another group that is going after the same grant source for a project. Other information, like health or financial records, are very personal and private. Software, books, and other copyrighted materials located on a computer disk -- even unfinished works -- can be copied and stolen from their creators. Yet if anything resides on a computer connected to the Net, an unscrupulous hacker somewhere will be able to find a way to steal that information. The Internet is very public. This is both its strength and its great danger.

Finally, to wire an office, a school, or a library with computers connected to the Internet can be a very expensive proposition. Maintaining such a system after it is installed is a further drain on resources that is often neglected in planning for this new technology. In many cases, the money spent on computers would be more wisely put to more traditional uses.

The Internet is a tool, not a life. The network can be a wonderful way of doing research, communicating with friends, informing (and being informed by) new people whom you can meet out there on the information highway. But anyone using the network should do so with a sense of balance and perspective. And they should keep their postage stamps handy, just in case...