2001: A MEDIA ODYSSEY

By JEFFERY C. RUBIN/DURHAM

Duke University senior Parker Hobson knew ``painfully little'' about computers and modems, let alone the Internet, when he decided last September to take a course called 2001: A Media Odyssey. Like several of his classmates, he had never even used E-mail before. After 14 weeks of training under the direction of new-media journalist Katherine Fulton, however, Hobson and his 15 classmates were changed forever. From skeptical techno- Philistines, they had been transformed into fully rated Internauts, ready and eager to navigate the digital future. As he finished creating a home page on the World Wide Web, Hobson admitted, ``I'm amazed that I knew so little when I started this course.'' Duke's introduction to cyberspace is carefully tailored for the current generation of college students, who can find themselves caught between middle- aged computer whizzes and elementary school kids who seem to have been wired since birth. During the first month of her course, teacher Fulton, who designed the class two years ago, exhorts her students to conquer the Net before they do anything else. They become comfortable using BBSs (bulletin-board systems), IRC (Internet Relay Chat), MUDs (multiple-user dungeons), Usenet newsgroups and such World Wide Web browsers as Mosaic and Gopher. But Fulton also engages them in discussions of related social and political issues such as privacy, universal access and the role of governmental regulation.

2001 is on-the-job training: Fulton requires her charges to E-mail their questions and comments to a list of their classmates, a task that stimulates student participation. Classroom discussions thus quickly spread outside -- in fact, right into cyberspace. Says senior Cara Chotiner: ``I learned so much by reading what people wrote -- things that they didn't have time to say in class.'' As so often happens on electronic message boards, tongue-tied wallflowers blossomed into confident -- and prolific -- E-mail correspondents.

Their final projects reflect just how far Fulton's students have traveled from their first days as computer innocents. Sophomore Rebecca Jones analyzed teleshopping with an eye toward the future of cashless transactions, while Nikolai Mamyrin explored the cyberfrontier of his native Russia. Each of the projects can be accessed on the class's World Wide Web home page http://www.duke.edu/ peh), co-designed by Hobson, Seth Squadron and Brian Thompson as their own final project.

Though the quick pace of change ensures that Duke's 2001 is little more than a stopgap remedial course for the time being, Fulton's students will nonetheless graduate with valuable basic knowledge of the modern tools of communication. Soon after the new millennium rolls around, however, such a catch-up Odyssey will probably be unnecessary -- at Duke or anywhere else. By that time it will have become the 21st century equivalent of that 1950s relic, Typing 101.

--By Jeffery C. Rubin/Durham