On November 12, 1995, an extraordinary interview appeared in the newspaper L’Unione Sarda. Nicola Grauso, who less than a year earlier had launched one of the very first Internet access services in the world (Video On Line) from Cagliari, quickly reaching almost one million users and launching a series of initiatives that made it seem like a bizarre cross between a visionary and possessed; in short, Nicola Grauso had given an interview to say that he intended to give free Internet to all schools. In 1995. Think how far it was ahead.
The text of the interview was recovered thanks to the work of Alice Strano for a thesis published in 2009 which traces, documents in hand, the incredible rise and substantial failure of the global Video On Line project. We’ll talk again. Here we want to recover the things that Grauso said at the time about the need to bring the Internet to schools when the network was not yet in homes and offices.
VOL’s service (a software to access the network, a password, an email and telephone assistance eighteen hours a day) cost half a million lire (about 250 euros today). But Grauso was ready to give it to schools: «We prefer to give up some income in the short term and instead contribute to reducing the gap that has been created in the IT sector between the Italian school and that of other countries. I am worried, as a citizen and entrepreneur, by the delay with which the Italian school system approaches information technology. The scarce use of media such as the Internet in schools is a real time bomb for the country and for the new generations ».
It seems to read the words of our ministers today. Incredible how far he was, Grauso. Too bad I didn’t understand it then.
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