Host of Technology Radio Show Discusses Internet’s Popularity

Host of Technology Radio Show Discusses Internet’s Popularity

BY LIA UNRAU
Rice News Staff
December 2, 1999

If there’s one thing Moira Gunn has learned from the thousands of people she interviews, it is that creativity and innovation come from one’s own personal vision.

Gunn, producer and host of Tech Nation … Americans and Technology, a radio program syndicated on National Public Radio since 1993 and distributed twice weekly by Armed Forces Radio International, delivered a President’s Lecture titled “Technology 2000” Nov. 17.

For her radio show, Gunn, who reads an average of two books each week, interviews developers of technology as well as end-users and people affected by technology. Guests have included Tim Berners-Lee, the creator of the Internet, astronomer Carl Sagan, consumer advocate Ralph Nader, Nobel Prize winners, technology pioneers, educators, politicians, CEOs and others.

The now familiar “WWW” and “dot com” have made their way into television ads, billboards, movies and music. Gunn suggested that every profession is related to the World Wide Web in some way. Technology can’t be escaped, she said, and “every single person is a piece of the puzzle in technology.”

For those who suffer from fear at the thought of having to use a computer, Gunn cited research that, fortunately, indicates that computer anxiety is not a predictor of one’s ability to use a computer. In spite of the large numbers of technophobes in the United States–40 percent of people are intimated by technology–more people than ever are online.

As of November 1999, for the first time, Gunn said, more adult Americans use the Internet than do not. “The tide has turned,” she said, “it is no longer just for nerds.”

Gunn cited statistics that in Canada and the United States some 29 percent of the population–101 million people in the United States alone–are online. The next closest region, Europe, has 33 million online, or about 5 percent of the total population. The total worldwide is 153 million, less than 2 percent of the population.

“The world is changing and we are experiencing the big bang of the Internet,” Gunn said. And for everyone concerned that they didn’t buy stock in Yahoo and other Internet goldmines, she reassured them that the opportunities are not over. “We are only a couple of nanoseconds into this big bang.”

Gunn, speaking in terms of general trends, also suggested that the current greater numbers of men in technology fields may be due to physical differences in the brain, a preference for right brain versus left brain thinking and that math, science and computer courses are structured along male thinking patterns. To tap the talent of women, she suggested designing more programs around the female “readiness timeline,” when females are more receptive to math and science.

Lastly, Gunn offered a “few truths” she has uncovered through her interviews that she encourages everyone to shake off. One is that even when you have accomplished a great deal, you will get no respect, and the second is that even when you are successful, you will be told “you are not doing it right.”

When you hear the argument that “nobody has done it before,” which is heard a lot in engineering and technology, she said, “that’s the time to say, that’s why there is an opportunity here.

“When the going gets the toughest,” Gunn said, “that’s when you say, ‘I may be outnumbered, but that doesn’t mean I’m wrong.'”

Gunn’s speech can be heard on Real Audio at http://www.rice.edu/rtv/speeches/19991117gunn.html.