Contact: Tina Angelone
212-626-0532
angelone@acm.org

Chris Morgan
617-262-2044
morgan@shore.net

IMMEDIATE

Washington DC, May 15, 1998...President Clinton this week congratulated Sun Microsystem's John Gage for winning the Association for Computing Machinery's (ACM) Special Presidential Award for his role in organizing "Netday," which provides Internet access to students and teachers across the United States. Gage is chief scientist and director of the science office at Sun Microsystems.
The letter from the President was presented at this week's ACM Policy 98 conference in Washington, DC. The president said, "NetDay has been a huge success. All over the country, volunteers have wired classrooms in tens of thousands of schools - connecting millions of children to the Information Superhighway and putting the future at their fingertips. NetDay has also strengthened the human connections between communities and schools. Some parents and volunteers came to wire schools and stayed to paint classrooms and repair lights and windows.

"NetDay also shows the potential of the Internet to make community information more widely available and to empower people to act on this information. If the first heroes of the Internet were the engineers who built it, the next generation of Internet heroes will be the people who use it as a tool to address our most pressing economic and social challenges.

"This award is a fitting recognition of your creativity and vision, and I commend you - and the thousands of volunteers who have joined you - for helping to give America's children this unprecedented opportunity to learn and grow. I look forward to working with you to meet our goals to give teachers the training they need to use technology effectively, expand the supply of high-quality educational software, and increase the number of modern multimedia computers in the classroom. Congratulations, and best wishes for continued success."

ACM President Chuck House added, "This award honors John for his outstanding contributions to Information Technology throughout the United States. Without him, 'Net Day' would not have been the great success it is."

During the process of making "Net Day" a reality, Gage energized thousands of individuals from thousands of companies and hundreds of communities, in the US and around the world. He drew the plans, shaped a workable process, and by his personal experience made it a success. To date, over 250,000 volunteers have wired over 30,000 elementary and secondary schools and libraries in the US.

As Sun's chief science officer, Gage is responsible for Sun's relationships with world scientific and technical organizations and for international public policy issues. He attended the University of California, Berkeley, the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, and the Harvard Graduate School of Business. In 1982, he left the doctoral program in mathematics and economics at Berkeley to co-found Sun Microsystems with Bill Joy. Gage is a member of the American Mathematical Association, the ACM, the IEEE and the Society for Motion Picture and Television Engineering. He also hosts a world wide satellite television program, Sunergy, which explores the frontiers of computing, networking, science and technical enterprise.

About the ACM
ACM is a major force in advancing the skills of information technology (IT) professionals and students. ACM serves its global membership by delivering cutting-edge technical information and by transferring ideas from theory to practice. ACM, with its world-class journals, magazines and books, dynamic special interest groups, numerous conferences, workshops, and electronic forums, is a primary resource to the IT field. For additional information about ACM, visit our web site at http://www.acm.org

About Policy 98 and the USACM
The ACM Policy 98 conference was held in Washington, D.C., May 10-12, 1998. Concerned with shaping the future applications of computing, the conference aimed to increase the influence of computing professionals in policy decisions-by establishing an intellectual foundation for discussion and by reaching out to policy makers. The conference was sponsored by the USACM, the Association for Computing Machinery's Public Policy Committee, which serves as the focal point for ACM's interaction with U.S. government organizations, the computing community and the U.S. public in all matters of U.S. public policy related to information technology. USACM responds to requests for information and technical expertise from U.S. government agencies and departments, seeks to influence relevant U.S. government policies on behalf of the computing community and the public, and provides information to ACM on relevant U.S. government activities. USACM also identifies potentially significant technical and public policy issues and brings them to the attention of ACM and the community. USACM publishes a biweekly newsletter, the ACM Washington Update, which reports on activities in Washington that may be of interest to those in the computing and information policy communities, and highlights USACM's involvement in many of these issues. For more information on the USACM, visit the web site at http://www.acm.org/policy98.