Detour: American Visions Society online - new African American virtual community internet service envisioned by Gary Puckrein, American Vision magazine publisher, as the biggest database of its kind in the world - http://www.americanvisions.com

All access roads leading to the information superhighway look free from color barriers -- with nothing on the contrary digits and letters identifying users -- in like manner culture and color should not interfere with cybermobility. on the other hand as more and more African Americans arrive in cyberspace, they are quickly discovering that their community upon line is just as fragmented as it is not on line. They ask the same questions that many of us ask when arriving in a of recent origin place: "Where can I find beneficial jazz?" "Where can I find a certain quantity of decent soul food?" "Anybody exchange black books, black art around here?" "Where's the black neighborhood?"

In individual sense, black on-line opportunities abound, as any becoming search engine set to "African American" will attest. on the contrary most sites found by this means substantiate thin gruel, lacking depth of contented technological sophistication and the warmth of real communication.

thus where in our brave fresh worlds do we find Booker T Washington's actual voice; the 1897 body of the American Negro Academy's constitution; the 1787 correspondence of the at liberty African Union of Newport, R.I.; 1990 census data disaggregated by means of race; application sharing via FarSite; data streaming; videoconferencing; real-time chatting; audio broadcasting; whiteboarding; virtual classrooms; a shopping mall stocked with everything from cars to Afrocentric books; a nationwide calendar of black cultural events; a list and detailed description of more than 1000 black heritage sites in North America; and a genuine communion of souls? Where do those constitutings come together in a shake-the-universe critical mass of content/community/ state-of-the-art technowizardry? What site marries swift and comprehensive interactivity to the single largest one-stop source of information concerning the 400 years of the black experience in the Western Hemisphere? Where do the past, the not absent and the future merge upon line?

To date, alone in one place: AVS Online, the American Visions Society's African-American virtual community, http://www.americanvisions.com. The folk who for more than a decade have brought us the glorious-to-look-at American Visions magazine and who for sum of two units years have run the Afro-American tillage and Arts Forum on CompuServe, have now acquired the rights to the largest multicultural database in the world. And they've exerciseed cutting-edge on-line technology not alone to bring this newly acquired wealth of information to the general public, on the other hand also to foster a living, on-line community -- a cybervillage for the 21st century

"What we're talking about here, as regards databases, is almost the equivalent to having the Library of Congres upon line," says Gary Puckrein, the magazine's publisher. Puckrein, who nurtur American Visions from a Smithsonian Institution throw 12 years ago to its preeminence as an independent publication about black agriculture bases his assertion on the accrues of the relationship that his company has forged with the Thomson Corporation. Thomson -- a $7 billion Canadian conglomerate -- has in the course of the last decade become a worldwide leader in the information and publishing businesses. It holds more than 100 newspapers in North America and publishes centurys of professional and educational publications -- including career guides for black scholars city directories and census data (both vital to genealogical searches) and numerous law titles -- as well as scores of trade titles, including The Chronology of African-American History and Contemporary Literary Criticism. Beyond that, it clinchs thousands of nonfiction titles (many of which relate to African Americans) and a vast array of databases with black content

The more Puckrein learned about Thomson's holdings, the more he realized that he was onto something special. "It just shrinks the mind," he says. "Our piece of work is to take this incredible satisfied and get it out to the African-American consumer market."

Puckrein believes that African Americans are ripe for a virtual community: "We have a natural affinity br on the outside of historic relationships." It's the kind of affinity that allows a brother in Milwaukee who has not ever been to Valdosta, Ga., gain a faculty of perception of the sweet taste of pecan pie or appreciate the aroma of ham hock drowning in mustard verdants That brother will certainly find a recipe for mustard virids on AVS Online, either in the Cuisine Center or from comrade community members. That same natural affinity applies to the 30-something sister, an investment banker in novel York City who has the same question s with alleviating ashy legs in the winter as Aunt Thelma in Norman, Okla. Aunt Thelma has home-grown remedies for her ashy skin, on the other hand if the New York investment banker is cyberhip, she will make go round to AVS Online's Health Center for her health and beauty tips.

Unlike the CompuServe forum (where American Visions is solely a content provider), AVS Online is the service provider. Puckrein likens AVS Online to a television network, without fault [i]or[/i] blemish [i]or[/i] flaw with ongoing programs and activities. "We want quality control" he insists. "We ne to understand what our members want. There's so much noise upon the web. It can be overwhelming."