June 7th and 8th the Small Computers in the Church met face-to-face for the first time.

 Of the B. C. people, only Jean Strangway had to fly in (from Terrace). Jean was new to our committee but not new to computers, having been the first in her town to purchase an Apple 2e. Jean's membership on our committee helped to strike a better balance in the female and lay categories, as well as to bring her extensive experience as a lay person active in her congregation and Prince Rupert Presbytery. Barbara Anderson (B. C. Conference Communications), David Lochhead and I were close at hand to our meeting place, the Level III Common Room of the Vancouver School of Theology.

 We hoped for four people to join us from other conferences, two of which were unable to: Randy Naylor (Secretary of Division of Communications, Toronto) and Murray Bentham (Computer professional, Saskatoon). We welcomed the other two, Bill Dearborn and Paul Mullen the afternoon of June 6th. I had volunteered to pick up Bill Dearborn from the airport but had to be reminded that I had no idea what he looked like. A strange-sounding but common phenomena in telecommunicating - to know a person so well from his electronic messages that you assume you also know what he looks like!

 What is special about the Annual meeting of a Computer Committee? (besides a group gathered around the computer screen playing "Flight Simulator" until all hours of the night?) As you might expect there were computers everywhere.

 David Lochhead had brought his Tandy 1000 and attached his modem to a telephone extension. David had also brought his Radio Shack Portable 100 as had Bill Dearborn and I. Four computers for six people!

 Bill Dearborn and I made notes on the Portable computers as the meeting progressed which allowed us to share the meeting with a number of others electronically who were in their studies in Ontario, California, and New Brunswick. And the minutes of the two day meeting were posted the morning after the meeting ended. The first evening we had a "Live" SPEAKEASY conference which involved all of us in the room with Bob Cramer in Windsor, California, Doug Tindal, in Hamilton, Ontario and Peter McKellar in Kingston, Ontario.

 As the meeting began we confirmed our membership for recommendation to the Annual Meeting of the Division of Communications:

 SCC Members: David Lochhead (Chair), Barbara Anderson, Paul Mullen, Bill Dearborn, Jean Strangway and Gordon Laird. National Staff Liaison: Randy Naylor. Murray Bentham's membership was to be clarified by our Chair.

 SCC Corresponding: Richard Fairchild (New Brunswick), Paul Stott (Toronto), Doug Tindal (Hamilton) and John Easton (Toronto).

 It was reported that we were succeeding in attracting onto the network a number of the Conference Offices, with the encouragement of David Lochhead and the direct help of Bill Dearborn. This needs some explaining.

 Right from the beginning of UCHUG we had members from some of the twelve conference offices across the Church: Barbara Anderson from B. C. Conference, Doug Tindal from Hamilton Conference, and Bill Dearborn from Saskatchewan Conference. Bill Lord from the Toronto Conference joined UCHUG in December. But they were accessing UCHUG primarily through their own computers. Yet each Conference office had recently purchased a AES Wordprocessor which also had the capability electronic communicating. Bill Dearborn was helping these conference offices attach their modems and learn the communicating software.

 By the time of the Annual meeting three Conference offices had registered with UCHUG on the basis of a four-month free experimental period: Bay of Quinte Conference, Saskatchewan Conference and Hamilton Conference. They have since been joined by Toronto Conference and the Newfoundland and Labrador Conference.

 The problem of the financial disparity between people in different locations continued to plague us. We could see the potential of this medium for overcoming the isolation which many of our ministers and congregations feel in outlying and northern areas. What a wonderful thing it would be if they could be joined in significant sharing of current information and be allowed to make a more significant contribution to the Church at large.

 What we were finding was that we in the large urban areas, who already had numerous advantages in being close to places of culture and education, including libraries and institutions of religious education, had a further advantage in telecommunicating.

 The key ingredient was access to DATAPAC. DATAPAC can be reached in any Canadian urban setting and in some of the smaller towns of our country by simply dialing a local phone number. Immediately you are in a position to connect with Envoy100, UNISON, the SOURCE, COMPUSERVE, and any of the thousands of other specialized networks in North America, without suffering a long distance charge.

 But if you cannot access DATAPAC in your town the problem becomes infinitely more complicated and expensive.

 We saw among our UCHUG members where hundreds of dollars of long-distance charges were incurred only because DATAPAC was not available in their towns (even though it might be available in a town less than 100 miles away). The situation varied across the country, from province to province.

 As of this date the situation has been eased by the institution of a special 800 telephone number which will reach Envoy100 anywhere in Canada free of long-distance charges. We have recently added iNet access, also available by 800 numbers, so that anyone anywhere in Canada is now able to be included in all our discussions.

 The minutes of the Small Computers in the Church meeting read:

 ...We raised the possibility of a monthly cost of UCHUG (on UNISON) for everyone who joins UCHUG. Part of the funds raised this way would be used for subsidizing others who are paying extra for Unison based on geographical location. This would apply to those who access UNISON through INET.

 The justice issues in communications were a concern of the Committee and a suggestion was made to ask the Division of Communications how they see their role in these issues:

 i.e., Rural access to Datapac, deregulation of telephone rates (metered charges for local costs) and its effects upon the small communities, CNCP application to be involved in telecommunications, with the probable resulting increased rates in small communities, Effects on minority groups in our society: the handicapped and elderly.

We felt we were facing issues here which were for the most part beyond the capacity of our committee to solve. They were Canadian issues - the fact that increasingly the accessibility and cost of communications were favouring the large urban centres at the expense of the rural and isolated areas. And they were United Church of Canada issues: would the Church be moved to make representations to Government on these issues?

 Within our limited financial scope we made some decisions to help redress the balance. We agreed that all of those who had previously had no costs to pay would pay a minimum of $20 per month and a first charge on this money would be to help defray the costs of those who were attempting expensive access from remote areas.

 As finances would now be getting increasingly complicated and as we were getting increasingly nervous about the costs to the Church of our teleconferencing (we had not been informed of the Envoy costs later than January and this was now June) we asked the Division of Communications for the responsibility of our own financial control. After they agreed we set up a bank account in Vancouver and I, functioning as treasurer, set up a set of books using the LOTUS 1-2-3 computer program.

 Donel McClellan from Bellingham, Washington joined our meeting to present information about computer software for Church use. Recognizing that we had a role in keeping informed in this area we asked Paul Mullen to begin discussions on UNISON in the area of computer hardware and software.

 In October, 1984 David Lochhead had presented a paper at the Vancouver School of Theology entitled "Theology in a Digital World". Most of us had read this paper and were struck with its farsightedness, especially in light of all we had subsequently learned on UCHUG.

 When David quoted a dedication from a recent book on telecommunicating:

 "to my wife, Irene, who sees me bent over the computer for hours ever day - and never knows for sure if I'm working or playing."

most of us in UCHUG would sigh in recognition for we often felt we had stretched the patience of our families beyond all acceptable boundaries.

 The issues of eradication of geography, the lack of need to synchronize our schedules, the absence of physical contact and the questioning of the kind of community which results, the need to rethink what is a person and what is a community, some hierarchical aspects of telecommunicating and possible effects upon the hierarchies of institutions and many other issues are dealt with in David's paper which we came to nickname, "Digital Theology".

 We were convinced that this paper, which had already got into the hands of many people through electronic and other means, should be properly printed and available to the many who were beginning to wrestle with the same issues. (The paper is included in Lochhead's book Theology in a Digital World.)

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FINANCIAL CRUNCH

The state of our finances were revealed to us in two increasingly alarming stages.

 Mid-June we received the results of our Envoy usage for the months of February through May. It appeared we had spent almost our entire budget for the year ($10,000) by the end of May.

 July 10th we received our first billing from UNISON covering the months of May and June. May was the month of the move to UNISON and as some of our initial enrolling and registering time was not charged for the costs were not too upsetting. But the hours used in June were monumental. This was the time of the setting up of dozens of discussion groups and involved a lot of access, particularly by David and me (we were serving as System Operators), including an embarrassing amount of Prime Time access.

 We now had actual rates to compare with those charged by Envoy100.

 Envoy100 charged on a per character rate of 30 cents per 1000 characters, with no rate differential for any particular time of day. But as Envoy100 does provide the number of hours we have accessed I was able to find that in the month of January my cost was $23.38 per hour.

 We had been told that our cost in "Non-Prime" time on UNISON would be $6.00 per hour. But a surcharge for DATAPAC of $3.00 was added and that $9.00 total then had to be converted by the very unfavourable exchange rate (between 35 and 40 cents on the dollar). Consequently, "Non-prime time totalled $12.31 per hour Canadian dollars. "Prime Time", which were the hours between 7am and 6pm on weekdays, totalled $20.50 per hour in American dollars or $28.03 Canadian. Later an "Offpeak" rate was introduced, immediately dubbed, "Redeye", which allowed us to access between 2am and 6am for $7.50 U. S. or $10.25 Canadian. Surprisingly, all of these times were based upon our local times, not Mountain time as in Denver, Colorado.

 So if I could abandon my bed at 5:30am I could enjoy the "Redeye" rate.

 Faced with an overspent budget and knowing that some steps needed to be taken immediately to alert the SCC and SCC-Corresponding members to the problem, we decided that the only possible approach was to cut back severely on our hours, to eliminate all Prime-time access and to create a budget cost for all those who were having their usage paid for by the Church.

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Autumn 1985 - Early Days on UNISON

UNISON opened up tremendous opportunities for our fledgling network. Not only were we able to create a number of new discussion groups using the flexibility of the Participate software but we were now open to invite other Churches into some ecumenical collaboration.

 REFUGEES FROM PRESBYNET

 The Presbyterian Church (USA) was just finishing the first stage of a two-month experiment on Compuserve which they called Presbynet. Some of them were seeking a place to carry on their experiment and found our discussions on UNISON. We were soon joined by a flood of "refugees" from Presbynet, which was very welcome and a little overwhelming. Included were some of the most congenial and welcome colleagues anyone could ask for:

 Houston Hodges - who had once worked for our Winnipeg Presbytery, was the greeting committee and tail-twister for this group

 Jim Collie - who had long experience in using Participate on the Source

Jack Sharp, with his "Sermonshop"

Lew Wilkins with his multiple talents including consulting with Church administrative boards and congregations.

 Our joy at being joined by this energetic and congenial group was accompanied by some concern that our smaller group would be swamped. We had to do some distinguishing of discussions, making sure there was a place for UCHUG-only discussions and administrative discussions of the Small Computers in the Church.

 LECTIONARY AND SERMONSHOP

 The Lectionary discussions which we had originated on Envoy were now continued on UNISON under the leadership of David Martyn and, later, Jim Uhrich. Jack Sharp of the Presbyterian Church (USA) brought his "Sermonshop" to UNISON. Soon the preacher was provided a rich weekly offering for worship preparation. Sermonshop continued with longer, more exegetical materials, worked through quite extensively in advance and posted. Lectionary continued in its free-wheeling, brash, intimate style.

 Many of us tuned in weekly to both Sermonshop and Lectionary, and the membership mixed and blended so that it was possible to read comments from anywhere in North America in our lectionary discussions.

 OUR HOST AND HOSTESS

 Fred Dudden and Diana Campbell were our connection with UNISON. Fred was a major shareholder in Milehigh Media who lived in Denver, Colorado. Diana Campbell was one of the major online workers for UNISON, also a shareholder, who had done much of her work on this system from her home in Texas.

 This was the first instance, but by no means the last, where we heard about a person controlling a large computer in another city far away, from a small computer in their home. When futurists prophesy that there will be many people doing significant work from their homes in the future - that future has arrived in computer networking. The Computer - a VAX computer nicknamed Valerie - was housed in the basement of a house which Fred and his wife Roz owned in Denver. Diana could do her elaborate work as a Sysop [systems operator] just as well over modem from her home in Lubbock, Texas as she could in Denver, Colorado.

 Fred and Diana provided a personal contact with the Host System which we had never experienced before. Some of us had worked on the SOURCE and COMPUSERVE, both owned by giant U. S. conglomerates. We were used to being very distant from the management. It was possible on most systems to address technical questions to a "Helper" and receive an answer but we were never invited to offer suggestions as to how the basic system might be changed or improved. We were small frogs in a very large pond - a few accounts among thousands.

 UNISON had only 600 accounts so the addition of our Church members - we were the first Church group to join UNISON - was quite significant to UNISON, and heralded the addition of more membership from larger Churches.

 Fred and Diana were not merely passive observers of our first attempts to set up our new network. Notes from either Fred or Diana would turn up in almost any public discussion, and while neither professed to be regular Church participants they were both able to hold their own very well indeed with any of us ordained people on theology, ethics and lifestyle.

 UNISON was, for Fred, part of a life-dream for helping to improve the world we live in. From his early days on THE SOURCE and elsewhere Fred could see the communicating and networking potential of this medium and now having found the resources to acquire the necessary large computer and become fully accredited with the packet-switching networks, Fred was seeing his dream realized.

 To have the humane and ethical considerations of Churches shared on UNISON was just one more step in the realization of Fred's dream.

 Diana showed her love of people from our first contacts with her. She would be up at all hours having "live" discussions in the "live" part of the UNISON system called "Speakeasy". Diana also had various personal discussion areas. In a conference called "Something Else" we were all being introduced to her and to each other by sharing aspects of our lives and thoughts. Diana would be the person at a party who was constantly saying, "Have you met Bill over there, he comes from Wisconsin, and is interested in wine-making". We were involved in a party - Parti in fact [which is the short name for Participate] and were enjoying meeting and sharing with many new people.

 Fred and Diana provided the graceful introductions which hosts and hostesses provide for a good party. They were available and helpful but not intrusive.

 Presbynet brought with it some representatives of other Churches who had been invited into the earlier experiment. This way we met Curt Ackley of the United Church of Christ.

 INTERFAITH CENTRE

 We discussed the formation of a new "trunk" within UNISON for our Church and Church-related discussions. Fred had a concept for the visual representation of all the discussions on UNISON as a small village, and suggested "Church Green" as the name of our section.

 We objected because we had already been in extensive dialogue with Buddhists on Envoy and wanted to bring that discussion to UNISON. The word "church", we felt, would not encourage interfaith participation.

 Together with representatives from other Churches who had made their way to UNISON we came up with the title: "Interfaith Centre". Spelling "Centre" in the Canadian way was deliberate and was at the suggestion of some of our American colleagues who wanted to acknowledge the Canadian contribution to the establishment of the network.

 At each of the many times when we needed to think through, and design a new electronic approach we had learned to rely on the special talents of David Lochhead. This was true not only of UCHUG matters, but became increasingly true when working ecumenically. Interfaith Centre was very much a child of David's imagination in consultation with the rest of us.

 Continue reading:  Chapters 8 and 9
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