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Iowa City Press-Citizen: Opinion

Saturday, October 26, 1996, p. 11A

Why Aren't More Tech Jobs in Iowa City?

Editor's note: The following is the second in a two-part series on Iowa City's role in the Information Age.

Guest Opinion

Nicholas Johnson

Digital. Cyberspace. Multimedia. The Internet. We need the new vocabulary of the Information Age to describe every aspect of our lives. How we spend our work and leisure time, our money. How we relate to our closest, and most distant, family members and friends. The images in our children's minds. The roles of our City government and schools. Health care.

The City's "Beyond 2000" pamphlet doesn't mention Information Age issues, and yet nothing offers more opportunity, and threat, to Iowa City's economic future.

Iowa City's Information Age economy is not lagging behind. Far from it. We have the human resources. Some of the nation's brightest, best informed, and most creative professionals live here. We are blessed with progressive libraries. Weeg. Local citizens have started Internet access companies. We have satellite uplink capacity. Access to super computers. Community channels on cable. An alternative local phone company.

Many of the pieces are in place.

What we don't have is what "Beyond 2000" could have, but failed to, provide us.

We don't have a plan for Iowa City's Information Age future. We don't even have an inventory of present resources.

If more than half our nation's gross domestic product comes from the information economy, it stands to reason we better get a plan, and quick.

Geography is no longer relevant. Global business can be done from Iowa City as well as anywhere.

Universities around the world earn a share of the multi-billion-dollar revenue from "distant learners." How much of that money whether from Saudi Arabia, South Korea or Switzerland is coming to Iowa City?

Telemedicine offers income possibilities for our hospitals.

CompuServe is in Columbus, Ohio. Why isn't it in Coralville?

Microsoft has created hundreds of millionaires in Washington state. They could have been Iowans.

Not all information workers are millionaires. There are low-end jobs, too. The 800 number operators are in Omaha. They could have been in Oskaloosa. Visa card entry is done in South Dakota. It could have been in South Amana. New York law firms use typists in Korea. They could have been in Keokuk.

Each of my Law of Electronic Media students must invent a "billion-dollar bonanza." I contend there's a suggestion of at least one a week in the newspaper.

We don't need to "attract business to Iowa City." We need to invent it here.

A junior high school teacher in Cedar Rapids started America's fourth-largest long distance company. He sold it. Now he runs Iowa City's alternative local phone company. (The package includes long distance, paging, voice mail, Internet access, a personal 800 number and other features.)

There are local computer software firms.

Tens of millions of dollars, formerly spent with Iowa City merchants, are going out of town thanks to the computers that manage 800 numbers, Visa cards, and UPS. How about somebody starting businesses that attract those millions into, instead of out of, town? With adequate telecommunications they can be run from home without ever touching the merchandise.

Someone will soon offer a profitable, global "reference desk" service. And more online magazines. Why not from Iowa City?

What do we need?

1. Inventory. What are Iowa City's current Information Age assets? Let's find out. Who? What equipment or data bases? Where is it? Who can use it? How is it (or might it be) networked?

2. Infrastructure. Washington consultants tell me the City government could save millions by putting in its own telephone system. The same system could serve the rest of us as well. Not only voice, but high speed data (perhaps ISDN). Even cable TV. It could, incidentally, provide the meter reading and fire detection systems to cut our insurance premiums in half. Of course, the city and university first have to talk to each other.

3. Imagination. That's key.

I explained all of this to the folks from the city's Planning Department who organized "Beyond 2000." Then the phone went dead. Did they hang up on me, or was it just a defect in their phone system (as they later insisted)?

It doesn't really matter. In either case, it's clear Iowa City needs to rethink "Beyond 2000."

_________

Nicholas Johnson, an Iowa City native and former FCC Commissioner, teaches Law of Electronic Media at the University of Iowa College of Law.

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