ABSTRACT: A new means of communication, worked-out, written and realised for the trans-national and trans-party party and other supranational organisations. A telecom service that allows not only for the receiving of information but, above all, for exchanging it in five languages from all parts of the world. Agorà is an information centre where there are archives, conference halls and direct lines, rostrums for assemblies, a post office, a bulletin board, press agencies. From one's own home, direct access to Agorà by means of a computer with a telephone modem.

(Notizie Radicali no. 248 of November 14, 1989)

How can one communicate in the trans-national party? How overcome the barriers, physical, political and linguistic, that divide countries and continents, and thus Radicals of different nationalities?

This is a question that we have posed more than once in our congresses, meetings and daily activities. If we have never found a satisfactory solution, we are nevertheless aware that this is the bottleneck that will determine the success of failure of the Radical project.

If in Italy today,in fact, we have instruments, even minimal ones, for the exchange of information between party members and the party organs thanks mainly to Radical Radio, the Radical in Paris, Budapest or London has only one modest means of information and contact with the PR which is the bi-weekly Lettera Radicale and a few occasions for encounters in our meetings as well as the Congress little more than once a year.

The non-Italian Radical can only rarely get to read any Radical document, and apart from the Congress he has few chances for speaking in the debate, for participating in a real dialogue, and for following the decision-making process. Let us think, for example, of Radical Radio's direct lines which have been the means for the growing awareness and hence the strength of Radical militants in Italy, or think of the un-cut, live broadcasts of the Federal Council meetings, demonstrations or meetings.

What, then, is to be done?

Let us use a process of elimination: international radio broadcasting, or even limited to Europe alone, like Radio Free Europe, would mean costs that at least today we are in no position to face. There is no point in even beginning to speak of television and satellites.

What remains is the printed word.

Apart from the problems of distribution, translation and the printing of Radical newspapers or more modest bulletins, there is the limitation of which we spoke earlier: these tools are not interactive.

For the almost two years a small group of Radicals has busied itself by experimenting with another communication medium that flanks the written and spoken word and which allows for an exchange of information in real time among at least ten or twenty thousand Italian and non-Italian persons, among the Radicals and their associates, and which is evidently open to non-Radicals and other political organisations as well. This is the question we put to ourselves: how to combine written information efficiently with the one means of communication available to all - the telephone. The answer was unavoidable: telecoms, meaning communication among computers linked by telephone lines.

Thus was born the Agorà project that proposed the realisation of an interactive and multilingual telecom service. Today that project has become a reality: Agorà is finally in service and functioning.

It is a new tool (which, we repeat, does not intend to replace but only to flank the other available communication media, nor even less to compete with the mass media) which allows for an interchange of information among all parts of the world.

Almost two years of work to devise a system that "speaks" five languages (Italian, English, French, Spanish, and German) and which can be extended to eight. It is the only one in the world of telecommunications that can use the accented characters and other symbols of different languages and which, above all, was conceived to stimulate and facilitate an effective exchange of information. Therefore it does not only provide for consulting archives, bulletins or newspapers, but also the participation in conferences on different subjects on direct lines, the transmission of letters in real time and the exchange of documents.

Agorà is a medium which, already today, can allow at least 10,000 people to exchange information in real time. A very modest expenditure would make it possible to double or triple the access lines and thus the number of users.

If then we should decide to link up with the videotel or minitel networks [telecom services of the Italian State TV, ed.], the potential users would increase significantly.

Even today every Radical connected with Agorà can - for the first time for the PR - consult from his own home or office the party' most important documents, from the Congressional motions to the issues of the paper Notizie Radicali (since 1986), read the Notizie Radicali Agency daily or the back issues, or follow the inspecting activities of the Radicals elected to parliament.

With the first conferences and direct telecom lines it will be possible to try out these new forms of discussion and dialogue, overcoming - with success, we hope - linguistic barriers.

There is also the possibility of increasing personal discussions by the electronic postal service and to furnish rapid information on political initiatives by means of that kind of bulletin board which is the announcement service.

These are the positive aspects.

There are - as we are perfectly well aware - many other negative ones. First of all there is the necessity of having or using a computer with all the problems, more psychological than technical, that go with using a new tool.

Then there are the difficulties in the Eastern countries of using the telephone lines, especially the international telephone "packet-switching networks". So we are not deluding ourselves. We do not believe that Agorà can be the solution to all the Radical Party's communication problems. Especially in a party that always has entrusted the transmission of its goals to the word, the physicalness of gesture and action. All we know is that telecommunications has great prospects for development because it is the present communication medium of all the big supranational businesses. Domestic and international hook-ups will thus be getting always easier and cheaper. Computers will be more and more common and less expensive. More and more people will be familiar with this tool.

And none of this will take aeons, but will happen over a very few years. So it is up to us to decide whether to exploit this new opportunity or to give up as soon as we hit the first difficulties.

Agorà is today like an almost empty container with enormous unexploited possibilities.

It is up to us all to fill it with contents, to try out the best way of using it.

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What is Agorà Telecoms?

The Agorà Telecom Service is a written, multilingual communications medium. It is an interactive system. That is to say, it allows its subscribers all over the world not only to receive, but above all to exchange information in five languages (Italian, English, French, Spanish and German).

More simply, it is like a communications centre containing public services: an archive, a conference hall, a post office, a bulletin board, a news agency...

But unlike a communications centre, there is no need to move from office to office or to wait in line. The various services are used directly from home with one's computer connected to the telephone by a modem.

Agorà calls its various "offices" or "containers" Sectors, and each type of sector furnishes a different service.

MESSAGES: A kind of post office is at the disposition of the subscribers. They can receive messages in their own post boxes or send them to the post boxes of the other subscribers. The messages appear only on the screen of the addressee. Each subscriber, in fact, can read only the messages that have been sent to him or that he has sent. With this service one not only saves on postal charges and is certain of the delivery of one's message, but one can also be sure if the addressee has read it. Agorà actually signals which of the messages sent has in fact been read, and at the start of every link-up advises the subscriber of the new messages that have been sent to him.

CONFERENCES: This is the most important of the services. It allows for participating with one's own written material in conferences on various subjects co-ordinated by a moderator. The conferences can be open to all or only to those invited. As in oral conferences, there is a theme and the speakers participate in a general way in the discussion or reply to the contributions of others. Unlike oral conferences, the speeches are delivered over periods of days or months, thus allowing everyone to offer a more thought-out contribution. The moderator introduces the debate and replies to the speeches that he considers the most interesting.

DIRECT LINE: This is a dialogue among various participants by way of written questions and answers. It does not require much explanation because everyone knows how the direct line functions over the radio. In this case the questions and answers are written and not necessarily immediate. Anyone can read them. Of course, they are more demanding because they are filed away and can no longer be modified except by written rectifications, explanations, or candid declarations of having changed one's mind. As in the case of conferences, the direct line can go on

for days of months.

NEWS BULLETINS: This offers daily the news bulletins of the newspapers included and the agenda of coming events. Naturally it is possible to look up the items of past issues of the agencies by using key words (words indicating the subject treated in the text) and the date.

ARCHIVES: This allows for looking up texts in the various available archives, according to the date, the author, or the key words.

DICTIONARY: This furnishes the list of key words for the cataloguing of the texts and their translation into Agorà's five languages.

ANNOUNCEMENTS: Communications for all those using the service of subscribing organisations and the subscribers themselves. Not only the PR or other organisations, but each subscriber can inform all the others in a simple and immediate way about initiatives, demonstrations and other things.

SUBSCRIBERS: A list of subscribers with whom one can communicate by way of Agorà. In fact, anonymous persons are not allowed access to Agorà. Therefore everyone must assume the responsibility for the texts or messages he sends. The list of subscribers only indicates the first and last names, the city and country and the "signature" (consisting of the initials of the first and last names). Furthermore each subscriber has a personal access word that he can modify as he likes at any time. Agorà identifies the subscriber by means of the exact correspondence of the signature with the access word. In short, it is not possible to get access to Agorà by using the name of another subscriber and thus to "sign" texts or messages with a name other than one's own.

MANUAL: Instructions on how to use Agorà, the list of available sectors and the groups of users.

In the Archives, News Bulletins, Dictionary and Manual sectors one can read material; in the other sectors (Conferences, Direct Line, Messages, , Subscribers) one can read and write material.

There is one last sector called SERVICES which contains no texts but rather commands that make it possible to perform certain operations such as changing one's access word to Agorà or to see which subscribers are linked up to Agorà at that moment.

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Agorà is a service promoted and financed by the Radical Party that would like to become a tool of trans-national communication not only for the Radical Party but also for other political and cultural organisations that would be willing to share in the cost of running the system.

Anyone can become a subscriber. There is only one condition: access is not permitted to anonymous persons. That means that everyone must accept responsibility for what he writes.

To become a subscriber all one has to do is link up with Agorà and, after having chosen the language in which one wants to communicate, form a question mark (?).

At that point a subscription form appears which must be filled out with one's personal data (first and last names, address, telephone number, etc.).

After a few days Agorà will send the subscriber his "signature" (the initial of his first name followed by the last name without interruption in the case where it is made up of two words, and, in the case of a homonym, followed by a number) and his personal access word which he can change at any time. (Agorà obviously will check on the authenticity of the data and the request.) Agorà recognises the subscriber (and so authorises him to enter the programme) on the basis of the correspondence between his signature and access word.

For the time being subscriptions are gratis (contributions are of course welcome for the cost of posting the manual, telephone and running the programme).

Agorà's postal account number is 39975008 and contributions should be made out to Edizioni Radicali s.c.a.r.l. "Agorà telematics".

Anyone wanting further information can write to

Agorà

Via di Torre Argentina, 76

00186 Rome

Tel. 06/6864233 - 6896831 - 6548119

What Is There (For Now) In Agorà?

RADICAL PARTY ARCHIVE

This contains all the articles from the newspaper "Notizie Radicali" since 1986, all the congressional motions since 1967, a selection of "historical" documents, the reports of the Secretary and the Treasurer, the documents approved by the Federal Council since 1989, the acts of the conferences on drugs of Brussels (1988) and Rome (1989), the documents of the IRDISP [Institute for Research on Disarmament, Development and Peace, ed.] and Radical Party texts of general interest.

PR PARLIAMENTARY ARCHIVE

The PR Parliamentary Archive contains reference files - not texts - on all the motions, questions and interrogations presented by Radicals elected to Parliament since 1976.

NOTIZIE RADICALI

The party's press service (filed in Agorà since 1988). This is circulated daily by Agorà (except Sundays) at about 16 hours.

LETTERA RADICALE

This is the bi-weekly press service of the Radical Party sent exclusively to non-Italian members and supporters.

It is published in English, French, Polish, Spanish, Hungarian, Slovenian, Serbo Croatian, Portughese and Russian.

THE CONFERENCES

The conference already in progress or planned are:

- Radical Party Conference (moderated in turns by the members of the PR organs);

- The Drug Conference (moderated by Marco Taradash);

- The Eastern Conference;

- The Herald Today Conference (moderated by Marco De Andreis);

- The Fuori Conference (moderated by Angelo Pezzana);

- The Fact Of The Day Conference (moderated in turn by comrades from various countries);

- The Homeopathic Conference (moderated by Maria Luisa Ageni and Maria Teres Di Lascia).

The first DIRECT LINE is being planned with Marco Pannella.

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How To Link Up With Agorà

If you are already linked up with some other telecom service, here is the information you need:

With normal telephone lines you can use the number (06) 689.28.28 which has eight automatic lines (300, 1200, or 2400 baud; Data bits: 8; Parity: none; Stop bits: 1).

Anyone subscribing to a packet-switching network can link up with Agorà by means of ITAPAC (NUA no. 2650016 - eight 1200 baud lines). In this case you need to set the communication programme at S71 and, once having entered Agorà, restore the N81 parameters, otherwise you lose the accented letters.

If, on the other hand, you have never used a telecom service and own only a personal computer, you need some preliminary information on telecom link-ups. In order to link up with Agorà, you need five things:

COMPUTER: Any computer can link up to Agorà (home computer, personal computer, mini, mainframe), whatever the brand (IBM, IBM compatible, Apple, Sinclair, Commodore...).

COMMUNICATION PROGRAMME: For your computer to be able to communicate with the rest of the world, you need a communication programme (compatible with your computer). There are excellent programmes available on the market at accessible prices, such as Procomm, Crosstalk, Mirror, etc. If you like we can furnish you with a programme especially made for Agorà called MicroComm (only for IBM and IBM compatibles).

MODEM: A modem transforms the signals of your computer into a series of sounds that can be transmitted by telephone to a remote computer.

It also performs the inverse function of transforming the sounds received by telephone from a remote computer into signals that are understood by your home computer.

In the EEC countries and the USA you don't have to go to the telephone company to buy a modem. They are available on the open market and only need be regularly approved. It is best to buy a "Hayes compatible" at 300/1200 baud, "auto-dialing" (the automatic formation of telephone numbers) which in the West cost about $150.

RS-232 CABLE: If you do not have a built-in modem, you must use a special cable called RS-232 to connect your modem with the computer's serial socket. So remember when you buy a modem to have them give you this basic accessory.

TELEPHONE: It is not necessary to explain what a telephone is, but rather how to connect rapidly your modem to the telephone. Normally the modem is equipped with a cable that connects to the telephone socket with a double plug. You must remove the telephone plug and insert the double modem plug into the telephone socket. Into this you then insert your telephone plug again.

It's simple.

When you are not using link-ups the telephone functions normally.

One can use either normal telephone lines or the international packet-switching network.

The latter allows for "cleaner" and distinctly cheaper link-ups. It is a network inter-connected among the Western countries (the only exception in the East is Hungary) which makes the user pay for the volume of information effectively transmitted independently of the distance from the data base (in this case Agorà) to which one wants access. The link-up with Agorà, which is in Rome, costs more or less the same whether one is in Sidney, New York, or Frascati. Also one does not pay when one reads a text but only when one transmits a command or texts. The average cost is 13,000 lire an hour.

With the package network one does not dial Agorà's Rome telephone number directly, but the junction of one's own city (a telephone number) which then takes care of making the connection with Rome. The one limitation for some European countries: the need to subscribe to the packet-switching network. But the possibility - which already exists in the USA and Great Britain - of using the package network as one of the many telephone services will constantly be growing.