Amsterdam's Digital City success wins reprieve By Bruce MacDonald Realtime Online OTTAWA (1411 hr., Aug. 15/94) - The huge popularity of Amsterdam's freenet Digital City has won the 10-week experiment an extension to the end of 1994 and possibly beyond, delegates to the Canadian Community Networks Conference learned. In its first 10 weeks 13,000 Netherlands residents registered with Digital City and logged on some 150,000 times on only 20 phone/modem lines creating a massive traffic jam, explained Kees Schalken, of Tilburg University. Schalken said the logon bottleneck was so bad at first it took him 320 tries one time to gain access. Part of Digital City's 10-week experiment was to survey its registered users for their feelings about the freenet. Researchers received 1,200 replies to the survey. One of the main findings indicated that a typical user was a well-educated young male experienced in network technology and interested in information communication technology. Other findings showed that Internet access and e-mail usage were the most popular freenet features while local government information was the least popular. Another feature of Digital City is a user survey concerning thoughts on the relationship between information communication technology and democracy. Two scenarios for the future are being considered: George Orwell's 1984 world of Big Brother and ancient Athens' version of direct democracy. Results of the Digital City experiment are being posted on the Net for world reaction. ___________________________________________________________________________ -- Realtime Online - Professional Conference Reporting Team Rosaleen Dickson, Ottawa ac174@freenet.carleton.ca. Pierre Bourque, Michel Careau, Shady Kanfi, Charles King, Andrea Kujala, Jules Lafrance, Bruce MacDonald, Robert Rattey, Natalie Roth, and Michael Silvestrini, Stephen Toy