About 10 years ago I read an interview with Paul McCartney in which he described writing a song for his wife Linda in the early 1970s. Having written the song in the studio, he didn't want to wait to get home to play it, he wanted her to hear it straight away. So he phoned her, put the phone on a chair and played guitar and sang the song down the line to her.
She, reportedly, was very moved by the experience. I, however, just wondered how he could make what he was singing and playing remotely distinguishable amidall the interference, white noise, echo and the almost inevitable crossed lines that were a major feature of phone connections back then. It simply wasn't possible to send music down a phone line because of what is known as the "bandwidth" being very low.
Bandwidth is the amount of information that can pass through a communications channel such as a phone line.
Wind forward 25 years and phone services have changed beyond belief. ISDN (Integrated Services Digital Network) lines in particular have made connection so much easier, not to mention clearer, for so many people, activities, organisations and occupations.
So much have things changed that it is now possible to send the human voice down a phone line at a quality as if the person you were speaking to was standing beside you. For instance, Hank Azaria, the actor who voices such characters as Moe, Apu and Police Chief Wiggum (as well as many others) on The Simpsons, is able to work on a play in New York and still record his parts for the TV series, which is made 3,000 miles away in Los Angeles. The magic of an ISDN line is what allows him greater freedom of movement than actors have ever previously known. Never again will the phrase "he phoned his part in" be used as a cruel put-down.
It is just such use of technology, though not necessarily through ISDN, that will allow Irish students aged 12 to 19 to compete in Thinkquest (www.thinkquest.org), an international competition encouraging students to use the Internet to build international educational websites.
Thinkquest is four years old, but this year is the first time, thanks to Eircom sponsorship, that there will be Irish representation there. Students who reach the final stage will be given an all-expenses-paid trip to the final stage and the awards ceremony being held in Cairo, Egypt, on November 14th.
Tom Kendall, education liaison manager at Eircom, says:"We are delighted to have given Irish students a chance to compete in Thinkquest this year. As part of our commitment to advancing education through creative use of the Internet, Eircom provided 1,500 interested schools with information on Thinkquest, which also introduced students and teachers to the basics of building a website. Eircom wish all participants the very best of luck and congratulate them for representing Ireland in this prestigious competition," he says.
The Irish Thinkquest entrants this year include Robin Blandford, a student at Sutton Park School in Dublin, who teamed up with two high school students in America, one in Illinois and one in Washington, to create iFairground, a site that looks at the history, science and art of fairgrounds and amusement parks. Although the three students have never physically met, or even spoken on the phone, through e-mail they've put together this fine site. As a fan of roller coasters, I very much enjoyed it. You can visit iFairground at http:// library.thinkquest.org/C002926/
James Lawless, a student at Templeogue College, collaborated with an American student in building a site that compares their respective sporting loves - hurling and hockey. As with iFairground, James has never personally met or spoken with his American codeveloper. It contains such advice as cautioning young athletes that before a game they should not "consume fruits or vegetables. They are hard to digest and can give you gas." (One suspects the US student wrote that one!) Visit Hurling and Hockey - a comparison between two cultures at http://library.thinkquest.org/C007182/
