The future is already present, and it's called "On Line". With the same facilities used for television, fax or CD player, it's now possible to communicate with the rest of the world seated comfortably in front of a computer. The revolution under way uses simply a telephone connected to a modem, an affordable little box allowing you to travel at will in cyberspace. In this way we arrive in real time to every part of the world. Newspapers, books, cinema, television programs, services, music, pictures and a lot more besides. An amazing reality which, like all novelties, must however be transmitted in a simple way to people. Video On Line, the most important Italian gateway to the great telematic highway of the future is the new medium. The present and the future presented itself to Italian families and businesses only three months ago. From that day, over 40 thousand people have called the "green number" to find out more. There are still many questions but one thing is certain: On Line will overcome many of the cultural and commercial barirers existing at present, changing the rules of life. To take part you only need, as said before, a simple personal computer, a modem and a telephone line. To connect yourself with Video On Line you need nothing more. You don't even need to be a great computer expert: the services offered have been designed to be used by anyone. The monitor provides text and pictures for easy comprehension. It takes a simple click of the mouse to be able to choose or swerve past one of the options and navigate beyond, at will. Video On Line is, what's more, the only on line in the world to offer translation of the services in (at the moment) 12 languages. It only takes a click of the mouse to decide which language to use and be able in this way to see on the video the products and services. The services offered are varied. Video On Line is a genuine "interactive newsagent's" with a long list of Italian and foreign daily papers and periodicals. Your preferred paper will appear at your choice on the screen. Page by page, just as printed on paper but with more possibilities to integrate the texts, photographic images and three-dimensional video and graphics.

Franco Nonnis (Responsible for Marketing in Sardinia)

Video On Line is a business which aims to operate without confines on the world market. How come it originated in Cagliari?
It started in Cagliari because technology made it possible for even business logistically situated in isolated places such as Sardinia to address themselves to the world. These new fibre optic cables and connection via satellite allowed them to be visible in the world in quickly and at low costs. It also started in Cagliari because finally a service like this is is accessible to everyone. Fundamentally the world on line has always been a system directed at computing professionals. This new system, thought up by Nicola Grauso, is in fact directed at a varied target: from families to companies to professionals and this is thanks to the fact that this system is based on low cost of communication.

There has been mention of an investment of the sum of 30 million dollars. You are responsible for the commercial development of the company. How and when will it come to fruition?
This is a question I am often asked. The answer I give is that we would never have projected short-term returns without believing that this system is to be exploited by a large number of users. Thus, providing we make it easy enough for everyone to use, we will achieve our objectives. If on the other hand we continued to target only professional and commercial users, we would have fewer subscribers, making it more difficult to recuperate the investment.

What are you doing to help the average familiy, a little apprehensive and lacking technical know-how, to make a start?
Firstly that they simply need to have a modem and connect it to a telephone line in order to become connected. The other fundamental aspect which makes Video On Line and, as a consequence, Internet, easily accessible to families is its enormously superior speed in comparison to other Italian service providers.

From an economic point of view, there's a fear that traditional publishing, by which I mean that which is printed on paper, will collapse. The availability of information on computer will make publishing redundant...
I would disregard this fear because we believe that traditional publishing can only benefit from this system. Publishers will be able to transmit material, and advertising, to a far wider readership. What's more, traditional publishers will never put the full body of information on line. The publisher of a book will never put the whole book on line, but will transmit information about it, so that he can enlarge the market without devaluing the product.

At what point is the commercial development of Video On Line? Have you started getting contracts and an economic response from the Sardinian, European and World markets?
Yes, the response has been vigorous. The expression we use internally is that we have to keep clients at bay with a pitchfork, as if we were in one of Dante's games. We had 1,200 requests for subscription in Video On Line's first 4 days.

The telematic market already offers various service providers which supply services as well as connection to Internet. What differences and advantages can the user find with Video On Line?
The answer is simple. Without wishing to detract from the competition, which has so far provided a service of the highest quality, we can add to what has thus far been available by putting users in contact with more Italian cities. This means a dialling code is not necessary, and as the national-call tariff is very high in Italy, it will put us ahead of the competition in this respect. Another advantage is the high speed with which Video On Line allows access to information.

As has already been mentioned, Video On Line was created in Sardinia. Aside from the tens of jobs already provided, what can it offer Sardinia in the future?
It certainly is an unprecedented chance for Sardinia: just imagine that some American maps do not even show our island. It will provide a good opportunity to draw world attention to Sardinia.

Elena Schiaffino (Head of press office, Video On Line)

How was Video On Line born?
It began in the summer of 1994 thanks to a group of researchers at CRS4, co-ordinated by the Dutch engineer Reinier Van Kleij. He managed to put a hypertextual version of Nicola Grauso's newspaper, L'Unione Sarda, on Internet. This was one of the first fully-functioning examples of electronic publishing. When Nicola Grauso realised it was possible to put his paper on line he immediately grasped the importance of the revolution caused by Internet. With no more than a click of the mouse, Internet puts you in contact with millions of computers spread all over the world, thus allowing communication between places which have never before been able to do so. The Video On Line experiment was set up on the island of Sardinia in order to demonstrate that in the world of Internet, physical position is not important.

What rapport have you established with other media, particularly with newspapers and magazines?
L'Unione Sarda is actually the best-produced hypertextual newspaper in Italy because it is available on Internet as soon as it is finished on paper. Key words in the text are connected to a vast databank permitting infinite research of information, rather like a huge encyclopaedia. L'Unione Sarda is already on line, and other daily newspapers are following its lead. The editor Nicola Grauso is already using the term "contemporary" rather than "daily" because as each news item occurs it will be put on line. Thus everyone will be able to create their own contemporary and personal newspaper.

Many people, journalists included, are somewhat perplexed about this new global medium. How would you account for this diffidence?
Internet's only obstacle is the need to educate people to use the computer in a new way. While Internet always requires a computer for access, it can nevertheless provide all the pictures, sounds and colours which make reading a newspaper easier. A newspaper which is transferred to the new medium is a different newspaper, and so will present the news in a different way, but it is only a question of becoming used to it. When you talk about Internet you must remember that the pictures on the screen grab your attention more if they are quick and colourful, with graphics to catch the readers' attention. With a hyperlink system - the system of connecting key words to other words, you will no longer read a paper page-by-page, so there will be a different method of scanning. This is the future, and on this subject, Nicholas Negroponte, director of the famous Media Lab in Boston said recently that Internet will be the future not only for newspapers, but also for shopping, buying, selling, speaking and making friends. This is definitely the future.

You speak of the future as if it were already here. At what point is the execution of the Video On Line project?
The Video On Line project is very advanced, so all the services we've mentioned: publishing, weather, stock exchange, shopping, chat line and electronic mail, are already available for use. I would like to make it clear that we are not the only access provider in the world, there are many others in existence. We are an open system, so people who use a different line can enter and visit us. Of course, we would make them pay for other services such as E-mail, but we permit free and easy navigation. We try above all to teach people that it is a new method of communication and so it needs the help of a friendly interface.

How is your company structured?
Video On Line was set up in Cagliari in the summer of 1994 and is about to reach its first anniversary. So after a year, the experimental phase is more or less finished. This laboratory in Cagliari has the participation of young people from all over the world - from China, Africa, England, France and America. This laboratory is going to be duplicated in Milan and certainly in other cities scattered across the four continents where we have put our server. I must point out that the connections we have today from Cagliari to Washington and Cagliari to New York are equivalent to almost triple the actual connectivity between Europe and the US. This means speed of connection, and this concept of rapidity is really very important because people get tired of waiting in front of the screen. So the services have to be fast, and we guarantee this speed.

Is any work underway in the third world?
In the third world we have set up bases in Tunisia and Johannesburg, and in other African countries. More importantly, we have developed the software for a browser "Video On Line 1.0" which allows translation of Arabic and English texts, so the perfect amalgamation of the 2 languages enables all the Arab-speaking countries to use Internet, which uses essentially English. We wanted to promote Internet in all the non-English-speaking countries.

What benefits will Video On Line bring, particularly, to Sardinia?
It's certainly brought new jobs, and given Sardinia undreamt-of world attention as the 40 million people connected to Internet over the world have been able to see Sardinian products and the beauty of the island. There is already talk of Sardinia being a hypermedial island: I believe it's a good example for everyone.

Reinier Van Kleij (Dutch engineer. Computer consultant for Grauso group)

What is Video On Line from a technical point of view?
Technically, Video On Line is a piece of the great global network called Internet. We provide access to Internet by means of a modem and a personal computer. We are constructing a national network to enable all Italians to reach our services through a local call. As we have become an autonomous system on Internet, we can take traffic from the big providers such as AT&T, Unisource and Sprint.

There are other Access Providers in the world and in Sardinia. Why choose Video On Line?
Because it is definitely the most technically advanced, and because Video On Line provides a complete service; it gives you the browser, the modem connection to your nearest city, it gives you electronic mail and the fastest Internet connection. While there are other Internet providers, none give such a complete package.

How are you going to make the huge amount of information travelling the net easily manageable?
At a technical level the term "concept aggregation" consists of seeking and structuring the resources found on Internet. We are trying to aggregate this resource automatically; we are writing a program which is going to find all the resources on the net with which to construct a contents file. In two or three months' time users will be able to use this program to obtain all the pages on Web containing one or more specified words.

Human Resources are very important. How are you organised here in Cagliari and in the rest of the world?
In Cagliari we have a development department which works with software, research and projects, then we have a networking section which deals with Internet, from the Dialog network, TeleCom and Video On Line, then there is a system management department which runs the machines on the network and finally we have a big HTML development department, the computer language of Internet documents.

Are you seeking to make a better rapport for families and businesses?
This is really Video On Line's starting point: to make Internet and its services accessible to all, including families, children and housewives.

What server do you use?
For now we're using a T500HP. These machines allow more than 5,000 simultaneous accesses per second, a parameter which allows from 200,000 to 1 million subscribers. On Internet we have 2 megabits with Internet Europe and 4 megabits with American Internet. Since the Internet traffic is greater in America, you need more connectivity with America than with Europe. All the servers interfaced with the national network are connected by fibre optics, and Video On Line has become a T500 client, which means one of the top 500 Telecom clients.

What do you need to be connected to Video On Line?
Just a telephone line, a personal computer, a modem (which acts as the interface between PC and telephone line), and then the Video On Line program.

From an International point of view such as yours, how does the telematic situation in Sardinia look?
When I came to Sardinia 2 years ago, I spoke to Pietro Zanarin of CRS4 and we saw that telecommunications is a product made for Sardinia because bits, not atoms, are produced. If you produce aluminium or coal, you have to use boats for transport and incur great costs. With telecommunications you only need a line to Rome, and you can do what you want. This is what we did.

If we relate the technology of this project and that of the rest of the world, where does Video On Line stand?
At the level of server, we are already amongst the biggest in the world, I can say with confidence. Maybe Video On Line is one of the 10 biggest servers on the network.

Any advice to newcomers approaching the magical world of Internet for the first time?
Advice? Go for it!