Political Quotes

“we have been hearing a lot about the information superhighway which will ease our lives in the future. But any such superhighway will need road signs, so that we can find our way, and my review of an existing part of that system--the local phone service here in Washington--suggests that low-tech ignorance and insensitivity can exist in even the most state-of-the-art electronic network. More specifically, if you use the local phone book, you will have a very hard time reaching most of the islands in the South Pacific. This is the case because the local phone company has not chosen to list the country codes of all the nations of the world. A friend tried to make some calls to the Pacific. First, he found that the Marshall Islands, formerly a U.S. trust territory, and now as associated state to the United States, with an Embassy in this city, did not have either a country or an area code listed in the phone book. The Federated States of Micronesia, also an associated state to the United States, is in the same situation. So in Western Samoa. Worse is the treatment of the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, a U.S. territory. It is not mentioned in the phone book, but Saipan is. It would be like listing Georgetown but not the District of Columbia. Saipan is the largest of the Marianas Islands, but is not a separate entity.…”