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EXERCISE SCIENCE AND THE INFORMATION, SUPERHIGHWAY: IT'S TIME TO START RUNNING IN THE FAST LANE Dear Editor-in-Chief: The hallmark of the informational revolution has been the use of computers to gather, assimilate, and communicate information, as opposed to being used solely as tools to perform computations and data analysis. This began in the 1980s with electronic mail (e-mail) on mainframe computing systems. With e-mail, individuals and independent institutions can communicate around the world and share large amounts of information, such as manuscripts or datasets in a matter of seconds or minutes at negligible cost. Considering the savings in phone calls, postage, and time, e-mail has become an tremendous asset to research and commercial organizations alike. The Internet was born when the linking of governmental and academic institutions spread to the commercial market, thus enveloping the globe like a continuous net. The expansion of the Internet has been impressive, with a 12% monthly growth rate and an estimated 40 million people in 91 countries having access (1,4). With the exception of Haiti, every country in the Americas is currently connected by the Internet. The projection for the year 2000 is that the Internet will reach 200 million people. Practical application of the Internet is evidenced by its use in research and education by health professionals, librarians, historians, lawyers, and many other professionals. Even in grade schools, computer facilities are becoming available with Internet access. Recently, commercial computer systems such as Compuserve, Prodigy, and America On Line have entered the Internet and fueled its growth and versatility by catering to the general population and business-oriented groups. A recent enhancement to information exchange on the Internet are list servers, which are on-line discussion groups involving individuals with a common interest, such as exercise science or sports medicine. E-mail messages are sent from one individual to everyone signed onto the list automatically via a host or moderator. In this fashion, topics of general interest can be discussed by interested parties around the world. Medical professionals are taking advantage of list servers for telemedicine applications, as in consulting with other doctors around the world for assistance with diagnoses or treatments (2,5,6). For novices on the Internet, list servers are available to provide answers to frequently asked questions and to guide members in a tutorial or workshop manner. In addition to using e-mail and list servers to communicate and exchange information, data can be retrieved from, or sent to, stored archives (computer servers) on the Internet, such as Medline or library catalogs. This allows large sets of information to be transferred worldwide in a matter of seconds or minutes. Systems such as Gopher or File Transfer Protocol (FTP) enable one to access and transfer data and text files across networks. For example, a scientist in Kuopio, Finland, has the ability to use FTP to transfer bibliographical data bases from the computer network at the National Library of Medicine in Bethesda, MD, back to his/her own personal computer in a matter of seconds. Currently, the most rapidly growing and user-friendly part of the Internet is The World Wide Web (WWW). The WWW is a multimedia subset of the Internet allowing one to rapidly navigate the Internet using a computer mouse to click on highlighted text fields or icons which link to other WWW sites. A novice can find information on any topic using the widely available searching programs at very little cost. “Homepages” are hypertext documents located on the WWW by specific addresses called “unique resource locators” (URL). Homepages can be developed by individuals or institutions to display descriptive information, advertisements, job listings, or any other pertinent information depending on the purpose of the home page. The Global Health Network (GHNet: URL =http://www.pitt.edu/HOME/GHNet/GHNet.html) is an example of a health-related homepage established at the University of Pittsburgh in collaboration with individuals and institutions around the world. The goal of the GHNet is to improve the area of global health through telemedicine and telepreventive medicine, as recently been discussed by LaPorte et al.(3). As such, the GHNet has become a “one stop shopping mall” for health and has received several awards.PC Magazine has recently rated the GHNet homepage as one of the top 100 WWW sites out of the approximately 100,000 homepages included in their review. One of the specialty homepages within the GHNet is The Physical Activity and Health Network (PAHNet; URL =http://www.pitt.edu/≈pahnet). The mission of PAHNet is to consolidate information on the health implications of physical activity and exercise by connecting individuals that work in this discipline and facilitating communication among them. PAHNet is a repository for research communication, on-line journals, interaction on cutting edge research topics, and theadvancement of professional training in physical activity, exercise science, and exercise epidemiology. The subpages of PAHNet fulfill its mission statement by providing links to other homepages on the Web, such as on-line journals, bibliographies, reference material, and research in the area of physical activity and health and the exercise sciences. To promote collaboration and communication within the field, PAHNet also contains a directory of addresses and e-mail links to individuals, institutions, and scientific organizations. For example, PAHNet provides a link to the homepage for ACSM (URL = http://www.acsm.org/sportsmed), which contains on-line information about the College and related activities and meetings. The information superhighway is currently in its infancy and has greater potential for the advancement of society than any other discovery or invention since the beginning of the technological revolution. As with any technological advancement, society is initially hesitant to accept the transition into the informational age. However, since the introduction of the microcomputer in the early 1980s, the growth of microprocessors has mirrored that of the telephone and television. By the year 2020 it is expected that most adults will have been raised on computer technology, and 100% of society will have adopted microprocessors into their daily lives(4). By joining the exercise science community, led by ACSM, MSSE, and its readership, with all disciplines in the health sciences as part of a contiguous Global Health Network on the information superhighway, we will be paving new roads for our successors in generations to come.
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