CNN, Colorado (AP)-- Dave Hughes certainly doesn't look the part of a technology trailblazer. The burly, 74-year-old retired Army colonel could stuff a scrawny computer geek in his Stetson.

But Hughes has made a second career out of extending Internet-era benefits to overlooked people and places. And the man known as "The Cursor Cowboy" isn't about to ride off into the sunset just yet.

After a decorated military career that included combat in Korea and Vietnam, Hughes began exploring the Internet in the 1970s, when it was known to little more than a gaggle of scientists. Logging in from a neighborhood bar, Hughes spun countless tales about the Old West, becoming one of the first online celebrities.

In the 1980s, when many were using personal computers for such basics as word processing, Hughes showed neighbors in Colorado Springs and teachers in one-room Western schoolhouses the power of electronic bulletin boards.

A decade later, he was merrily ignoring the conventional wisdom that high-speed Internet access for out-of-the-way places was cost-prohibitive and technologically arduous.
Armed largely with grants from the National Science Foundation, Hughes set up wireless connections in small towns, an Indian reservation; the Wisconsin woods, the Mongolian steppes and Puerto Rican jungles. His pioneering in "packet radio" put Hughes far ahead of the current explosion in the wireless Internet.  more...

31 January 2003  |   permalink