ONE NATION UNDER THE WEB (2024)

And then suddenly it appeared, right in front of my eyes. In the midst of a seemingly endless list of things available on the House of Representatives home page, there it was, written in bright blue letters: "Empower the Citizen."

It couldn't have been clearer. Empowering the citizen is what this new virtual federal government is all about. And all I had to do to empower myself was point my mouse and click.

I pointed. I clicked.

BUT I'M GETTING AHEAD of the story. What's required here is a little context, a bit of historical background.

There was a revolution going on. It was, like so many revolutions these days, an "information revolution," a "communications revolution" -- in other words, the kind of revolution that requires the purchase of expensive computer equipment.

This revolution involved the radical redistribution not of wealth, but of information. It worked like this: The federal government was opening up "home pages" on the World Wide Web, which is the part of the Internet where you can find not just words, but pictures and sounds, and even moving pictures with sounds. By going on-line like this, the government was providing tons of information to anyone who wanted to access it -- in effect opening vast storehouses of data and inviting the people to come on in and take all they wanted, free of charge. Information is power, the revolutionary theory went, and this revolution was giving power to the people. The effort was touted as a method of illuminating the mysterious workings of government, a way of giving Mr. and Mrs. John Q. Public the information necessary to take an active role in the exciting process of running the country. The word "empowerment" was used a lot, often in conjunction with the words "grass roots" and the word "citizen." It was, in short, a revolution of grass-roots citizen empowerment.

Among those touting the loudest were Newt Gingrich and Bill Clinton. Early this year, Speaker Gingrich launched a home page -- named "Thomas," after Thomas Jefferson -- that dumped tens of thousands of the words generated by the House of Representatives into cyberspace. Meanwhile, the president encouraged his executive-branch agencies to do the same, hailing these efforts with some full-blown, no-holds-barred, pull-out-all-the-stops Utopian rhetoric:

"These networks of distributed intelligence will allow us to share information, to connect and to communicate as a global community," he said. "From these connections we will derive robust and sustainable economic progress, strong democracies, better solutions to global and local environmental challenges, improved health care, and -- ultimately -- a greater sense of shared stewardship of our small planet."

Well, I figured, if it's that important, I'd better get in on it.

I was, I admit, a tad skeptical. The problem was: I had read government information. As part of my job -- the worst part of my job -- I'd plodded through countless Congressional Records and task-force reports and committee communiques and subcommittee hearing transcripts, and they had never made me feel empowered. Sleepy, yes. Empowered, no. But I was willing to set aside my prejudices and give this revolution a try. So, after a brief lesson from The Washington Post's resident computer wizards, I set off to explore the many wonders of the federal government's World Wide Web sites, searching for empowerment and, ultimately, a greater sense of shared stewardship of our small planet.

In other words: I pointed, I clicked.

THE FIRST THING I POINTED and clicked at was the Yahoo index of Web sites. It offered me a menu of choices, and, being as gullible as the next guy, I clicked on "What's Cool." That got me another menu, and, being an old Efrem Zimbalist Jr. fan, I clicked on "FBI's Ten Most Wanted Fugitives."

That brought up a list of mean, evil, nasty, rotten people, and I clicked on the top guy, Arthur Lee Washington. Slowly, his picture appeared on my screen, starting with his hair and working down to his chin. He's wanted for interstate flight and attempted murder. He's considered armed and dangerous. I hope I never meet him in a dark alley. The last miscreant on the list, O'Neil Vassell, had a little red logo next to his name: "New." It looked like something you'd see on a cereal box.

There were, I noticed, only nine fugitives on the Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list. That confused me until I read this sentence: "There is currently one vacancy on the Ten Most Wanted Fugitives' list."

That was reassuring. I feel more secure knowing that I live in a country that doesn't have enough bad guys to fill a Top 10 list.

I clicked back to "What's Cool" and chose NASA 's site. "Welcome from the Mission Operations Laboratory!" it read. It had a logo that depicted some unidentified space thing. It was probably a galaxy or something equally cosmic, but it looked like a Ritz cracker that had been left out in the rain. I clicked on "Helper Applications" and got a full page of helpful tips like the following: "VRML 3-D models can be viewed by VRML browsers, like WebSpace (SGI, Sun(ZX/TZX), IBM AIX and Windows NT Systems), Worldview (Windows 3.1)."

I had no idea what that meant so I just kept pointing at stuff and clicking, and pretty soon I was getting aerial photographs of the Galapagos Islands and Pasadena, as well as solar images that looked like burning basketballs in the act of exploding.

A few more clicks led to the AIRSAR home page. I didn't know what AIRSAR was, but the home page provided a definition: "The NASA/JPL AIRSAR is a side-looking imaging radar system which utilizes the synthetic aperture principle to obtain high-resolution images which represent the radar backscatter of the image surface at different frequencies and polarizations."

That cleared it right up.

The page offered me an opportunity to see the " NASA DC-8 aircraft that AIRSAR flies on," and I signaled my eagerness by pointing and clicking. That was at 5:02. At 5:07, the picture was a field of horizontal lines of blue and pinkish gray. It looked like one of those abstract paintings that hang on the walls of hotel rooms. If there was a plane in there, I couldn't see it. The caption said that the picture was 24 percent complete.

At 5:11, it was still 24 percent complete and I still couldn't find the plane. Maybe it's lost in an endless galaxy of blue and grayish pink.

Houston, we have a problem.

I POINTED. I CLICKED. I WAITED.

It was a rather long wait, and then a strange robotic, electronic voice said, "Welcome to the United States House of Representatives gopher service."

The House of Representatives gopher service ? I'd heard of many interesting services provided at the House of Representatives -- the House Bank and the House Post Office, to name two that made headlines -- but I'd never heard of the House gopher service. Did it provide gophers to the representatives, or remove their unwanted gophers?

I was signed on to the House's "Thomas" home page, and I was staring at a menu that included an option for "House of Representatives gopher." I pointed to it. I clicked.

"The United States House of Representatives gopher service," it read, "provides public access to legislative information as well as information about members, committees and organizations of the House . . ."

That's nice, I thought, but what about the gophers? How did these rodents get in here? Or was this a service named in honor of former House member Fred Grandy (R-Iowa), who played Gopher on the TV show "The Love Boat"?

Later, by accessing an ancient, now-archaic form of information retrieval (i.e., asking somebody), I learned that a "gopher" is a computer system named after the Golden Gophers of the University of Minnesota, where the system was developed. That gave me the smug superiority of the insider, but I still felt bad for those hapless citizens who sign on to Thomas seeking empowerment only to encounter a gopher who talks like a robot. Before they start conjuring up conspiracy theories -- Robot Rodents Burrowing Into Congress! -- shouldn't somebody explain this to them?

I burrowed deeper into the House gopher service. It's got plenty of information -- lists of representatives by state, lists of representatives by committee, lists of "hot bills." Naturally, I clicked on hot bills. Up popped a list of bills identified by topic -- "Solid Waste," "Sports," "Water Pollution." I clicked on Sports, which turned out to be a bill to strip major league baseball of its antitrust exemption, and then Water Pollution, which offered me a menu of the full texts of various versions of the Clean Water Amendments of 1995. I clicked on one and got another menu listing different parts of the bill. I chose Section 203, "Sewage Collection Systems," and learned that it would amend Sec 211(a) 33 USC 1291(a) to strike the phrase "an existing collection system" and insert "a collection system existing on the date of the enactment of the Clean Water Amendments of 1995."

I'm sure there are people out there who are looking for exactly that information, but I wasn't one of them. I was searching for something more exciting, so I clicked into the House Republican leadership pages, where I found a document titled "The Top Ten Real Contract With America Winners and Losers." It was set up like David Letterman's Top 10 lists, starting with 10 and working up to 1. The No. 10 winners were "Working Families." The No. 10 losers were "Billionaires and superwealthy Democrats like Senators Jay Rockefeller and Teddy Kennedy." The No. 8 winners were "Our children and the next generation," while the equivalent losers were "The party-on Clinton Democrats who think because there are checks in the checkbook, there's still money to burn." And so on.

Seeking balance, I clicked into the Democratic leadership page, and found that the Democrats, too, had gone on-line with their version of Contract winners and losers. The winners there were "The rich who have enjoyed a return to trickle-down economics" and "Billionaires who renounce their citizenship to avoid paying taxes," while the losers included "Children who come to school expecting a good lunch." And so on.

It certainly captured the kind of intellectual rigor we've come to expect from the House of Representatives.

AT THE WHITE HOUSE home page, I heard a speech by Socks, the first cat.

And then, with just the click of a mouse, I got the full text version of the speech: "Meow, meow."

Of course, the White House page also offered plenty of serious information, including full text versions of the 1994 and 1995 State of the Union addresses, "as written" and "as delivered." I clicked on "What's New" and was offered, among other goodies, "Statement of Administration Policy: HR 2076 Commerce, Justice, and State, the Judiciary and Related Agencies Appropriations Bill FY 96."

I did not point. I did not click.

I moved on. Somewhere on a White House menu, I was offered something called "Global Microbial Threats in the '90s." Who could resist? I pointed and clicked and got a map of the world showing the locations of outbreaks of anthrax and dengue and Bolivian hemorrhagic fever. I clicked on Bolivian hemorrhagic fever and there was a pause and then a message: "The server may not be accepting connections or may be busy . . . Try connecting again later."

It was a cyber busy signal. Bolivian hemorrhagic fever was all tied up.

I returned to the White House's main menu and clicked on "Executive Branch." That took me into the very bowels of the bureaucracy, that dark netherworld where HUD is housed, where Commerce deals, where Labor works. I clicked on "Department of Labor's New WWW Service" and found a plethora of choices -- "Department Agencies . . . Information About the Department of Labor . . . Media Releases . . . Statutory and Regulatory Information . . . Labor Related Data . . ." I chose "Labor Related Data" and immediately got another menu of choices -- " BOL Stats . . . MSHA Data . . . OSHA Data . . ." I clicked on " OSHA Data" got another menu. I clicked on "Occupational Injury and Illness Incidence Rates, 1973-93."

I was a long way from home, and I wondered if I'd ever find my way back. But I bravely kept pointing and clicking. I chose "Most Frequently Violated Standards" and got another massive menu. I clicked on "Group 58: Eating and Drinking Places." There, I learned that the most frequently violated Occupational Safety and Health Administration standards in bars, taverns, saloons, nightclubs and cabarets involve faulty wiring.

It wasn't information I desperately needed, but it's nice to know it's out there. And I'll never look at the light fixtures in Stoney's in quite the same way.

"THE DIRECTOR OF central intelligence would like to welcome you to the CIA Home Page."

It was such a cheery greeting that I felt I had to click on the director's name, which is John Deutch. His picture appeared. He's a pudgy guy with glasses. He looks like your cousin Bernie the tax accountant, except that Bernie doesn't usually pose in front of two American flags. He offered to share all kinds of CIA information with me, including "All You Ever Wanted to Know About the CIA."

Really? All of it? Needless to say, I pointed and clicked.

I was offered a slew of interesting things, including a video clip of President Truman signing the bill that created the CIA in 1947. I couldn't resist. I clicked on "Short Video."

That was a mistake. I waited. And waited. And waited.

While waiting, I flipped open another window so that the Truman video could appear on one while I perused the CIA's documents on another. I called up "Frequently Asked Questions About the CIA." There were some good questions, such as, "How many people work for the Central Intelligence Agency and what is its budget?" And some evasive answers, such as, "Neither the number of employees nor the size of the agency's budget can at present be publicly disclosed." Unfortunately, they didn't have the question I wanted to ask, which was, "How come you guys didn't begin to wonder about Aldrich Ames, particularly after he started driving a Jaguar to work and wearing the Lenin Medal for Distinguished Service to the Soviet Union on his sports jacket?"

Ten minutes had gone by and the Truman video had still not appeared, so I clicked on "Key Events in CIA's History." A time line appeared that included August 1955, when President Eisenhower signed a bill authorizing construction of the CIA headquarters, and November 1959, when Ike laid the cornerstone of the building. It did not, however, include August 1953, when the agency helped to overthrow Iranian Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh, or June 1954, when it helped to overthrow Guatemalan President Jacobo Arbenz Guzman. It also failed to include any event occurring between October 1962 and January 1975, a period that included the Vietnam War, among other unpleasantries.

I was beginning to get the idea that the CIA was not going to be sharing all its secrets on its home page.

Twenty minutes had gone by and the Truman video had still not appeared. Instead, there was a message: "Couldn't open the movie file Truman.mov' because there was no movie in the file's data fork."

Oh, no. Did Aldrich Ames sell that to the Russians, too?

ON THE WEB, your home page logo shows the world how you want to be seen, and the United States military has some of the best logos in cyberspace. The Army's home page showed a soldier in camouflage fatigues standing at parade rest next to a wall of 3-D letters that read, "AMERICA'S ARMY: The World's Best Army -- Trained and Ready for Victory."

Beneath that was an impressive bit of information: "The Army home page has been accessed 1,387,496 times since February 1995, and 1,214 times today."

Those 1.3 million virtual visitors were given a huge array of options, everything from recruiting material to retiree information. Beneath that mighty menu was this impressive sentence:

"There are currently 177 Army organization or Army-related home pages."

There's probably not an army on earth that can match that. And if there is, I'm sure our generals will add more home pages, no matter what the cost. Because America will never permit the creation of a home page gap. And we will never again allow our fighting men and women to face combat without a full arsenal of state-of-the-art home pages.

The Army offered a menu of "Other Military Home Pages," and I clicked on the Air Force, which revealed a logo even better than the Army's. It shows an American eagle being chased by various aircraft, including a B-2 stealth bomber, while the great seal of the Department of the Air Force falls over on its face.

I don't know what it means but it looks pretty cool.

The Air Force home page offers all kinds of information, including "Biographies of Air Force Leaders" and "Photos of Air Force People" and fact sheets on major weapons systems. "As you browse these pages," it suggested, "let the Air Force Song (245K) play in the background. It is performed by the Air Command Heritage of America Band."

I pointed. I clicked. The music swelled: "Off we go, into the wild blue yonder!" I let it wash over me as I read the fact sheet on the Harpoon missile: "The AGM-84D Harpoon is an all-weather, over-the-horizon, anti-ship missile system produced by McDonnell Douglas . . ."

My heart swelled with patriotic pride.

ANTS CRAWLED ACROSS the face of a clock. Another clock melted and dripped down the side of a table. On a leafless tree, a third clock, as soft as a dishrag, dangled from a barren branch.

It was a Salvador Dali painting, now serving as a graphic on the home page of the Directorate of Time, the federal government's officially designated clock watcher.

"The Directorate of Time is located at the U.S. Naval Observatory," the home page explained. ". . . The U.S. Naval Observatory (USNO) is charged with the responsibility for precise time determination and management of time dissemination."

I had no idea that there was a federal bureaucracy in charge of time. I'd always assumed that time was eternal, that it had always just sort of been there, ticking away, and that it would go on ticking forever, even without the aid of federal officials. I was wrong.

"Modern electronic systems, such as electronic navigation or communications systems, depend increasingly on precise time," the home page explained.

And how do they determine that precise time? I pictured a meeting room, a conference table, half a dozen bureaucrats in dark suits, all of them looking at their watches.

"I've got 10:22."

"No, I think it's closer to 10:24."

Then the meeting facilitator speaks: "Let's not fight about this. Can we all live with 10:23?"

Wrong again. The reality is much more complicated.

"The present USNO master clock is based on a system of some 60 independently operating cesium atomic clocks and 7 to 10 hydrogen maser clocks," the home page explained. "These clocks are distributed over 20 environmentally controlled clock vaults, to ensure their stability. By automatic intercomparison of all clocks every 100 seconds, the USNO time scale can be computed . . . Its rate does not change by more than 100 picoseconds (0.000 000 000 1 seconds) per day."

Sixty atomic clocks? Backed up by seven hydrogen clocks? Wait till the Republicans hear about this. They'll cut this bloated bureaucracy down to two Timexes and a sundial. Or they'll zero it out altogether. Privatize it. Subcontract it out to a gung-ho entrepreneur who determines the time by dialing 844-1212.

I clicked on "What time is it?" There was a pause, and then a message appeared on my screen, illustrated by an exclamation point inside a yellow triangle: "Any information you submit is insecure and could be observed by a third party while in transit." I decided to go for it anyway. What the hell, you only live once. I clicked again.

It was 14:27:06.

THEN IT WAS 14:27:07. Then 14:27:08. Time flies when you're having fun. But it moves very slowly when you're surfing the federal Web.

I'd been pointing and clicking for three days. My head felt as if it had been hollowed out and stuffed with pages torn from a 1973 edition of the Federal Register.

I was wandering around FedWorld, which is an on-line index to government Web sites. It had led me through the maze of the federal bureaucracy. I'd been to the Justice Department. I'd seen Janet Reno's picture and read Janet Reno's biography and dropped in on the Justice Management Division, which "develops and promulgates departmentwide policies, standards and procedures for the management of automated information processing resources." I had visited the Federal Judicial Center and admired its logo, which showed an android holding a piece of paper that read "Guideline Sentencing." I had clicked into the Federal Rules of Evidence and the Census of Population and History and the National Technical Information Service. I'd dropped in on the Code of Federal Regulations and been received with a cheery greeting: "Welcome to the Code of Federal Regulations!"

Somewhere in these travels, I stumbled across a menu that contained a choice called "Jughead." I perked up. I pointed. I clicked.

"Jughead is an acronym for: Jonzy's Universal Gopher Hierarchy Excavation and Display," I read. "Jughead can act as a search engine on a prebuilt table that allows searching through menus, or can create a linear view of menu space . . ."

I sighed. I had thought maybe I'd find Jughead, the guy from the Archie comics. Remember him? He wore a funny hat, hung around the malt shop, ate a lot of burgers, grinned moronically. Jughead never went on-line, I thought. He never surfed the Web, never studied the Code of Federal Regulations. And yet he seemed perfectly happy. I missed him.

Obviously, I was losing it. My brain was turning to mush. After three days of trolling through the virtual government, I didn't feel empowered, I felt overwhelmed.

But I kept pointing. I kept clicking. I clicked on the Library of Congress MARVEL (Machine-Assisted Realization of the Virtual Electronic Library). I clicked on "Let's Go Gopherin'." I clicked a few more times and ended up back at the House of Representatives home page, where I found myself staring at a menu with a choice that read "Empowering the Citizen." It was just what I'd been looking for. It was the Holy Grail.

I pointed. I clicked.

Up popped a graphic. In the middle was a cloud labeled NetResults. Around it hung 18 little ovals, each with a label -- IGNet, TravelNet, BudgetNet, PeopleNet, REGNet . . .

"NetResults: A Laboratory for Governing in the Information Age," it read. "A fusion of human networks and the National Information Superhighway to reinvent government."

I pointed and clicked and learned that NetResults was a series of "people networks using technology to create a government that Works Better and Costs Less.' " They were doing this by sharing information electronically. The logo showed a computer with an American flag on its screen. Obviously, this was the very heart of the revolution that Gingrich and Clinton were touting. Here, I might find what the president had promised -- "sustainable economic progress, strong democracies . . . a greater sense of shared stewardship of our small planet."

I clicked on the first network, FEBNet.

"FEBNet is a network designed to support and integrate the 28 Federal Executive Boards (FEBs) throughout the United States," it read. "An advanced Internet-accessible, software-friendly platform is being developed to support inter-connectivity among the FEBs."

Immediately, I recognized a revolutionary slogan that would go down in history:

The French have Liberte! Egalite! Fraternite!

The Russians have Peace! Land! Bread!

And now we have Inter-connectivity among the FEBs!

There were lots more networks, too, some "active" and some "developing," all of them fiercely dedicated to reinventing government by sharing information. And there was plenty of information to share, too. I clicked into something called "Toolkit Highlights." It offered access to still more networks and agencies and departments, as well as a whole slew of publications and reports and a video, a CD-ROM and an "800-document library."

Wait a minute. Can you really reinvent government and shrink its swollen, committee-choked bureaucracy by forming a bunch of new networks and circulating 800 more government documents? Somehow it didn't sound plausible.

It wasn't a lack of government documents that got us into our national predicament, I thought, and electronic access to government documents probably won't get us out of it. I don't want to malign anybody engaged in the noble work of reinventing government, but I don't think computers are going to work any wonders. That myth is just the latest manifestation of the old American belief that technology will save us from our sins: Patent medicines would save us from sickness, the automobile would save us from the evil city, electric cars would save us from the evil automobile, nuclear power would save us from pollution, solar power would save us from nuclear radiation, high-tech surgical bombing would save us from the horrors of combat. And now electronic access to information will save us from paralyzed government. I hope it's true, but after three days of accessing tons of information, I'm still skeptical.

"Interested in Forming Other Networks?" NetResults asked.

No, I answered. I reached for my mouse. I pointed to "Shut Down." I clicked.

The computer shuddered slightly, went dark, stopped humming.

I felt empowered.