Technology is good. It can make our work (and play) faster and more efficient, sometimes adding safety features and reducing costs.

For the most part, I've been a proponent of technological advances. I must admit, however, it took a lot of hand-holding to retrieve articles and graphics from the Internet for this issue of Illinois Parks & Recreation.

I'm no techno wiz.

I'm a printed page kind of person. I prefer well-worn hardcover books to books on cassette and thick, unwieldy dictionaries to reference materials found on CD-Rom. I'm used to receiving articles on paper and—if blessed with authors who work on word-processors- articles on disk sent to me via the U.S. Postal Service.

Thanks to much "hand-holding" and coaching on the telephone from Mike Smith, computer whiz for the Wheaton Park District, I learned how easy and instantaneous it is to find an article sent to me via the Internet and download it for use on the printed pages of this magazine.

"Up until a year and a half ago the Internet was the realm of cyber geeks," says Smith, a self-taught cyberspace explorer. "It was incredibly thorny and now, all of a sudden, it's a staple for business and people at home."

Smith wrote the software for Elmhurst's Web site, which includes a "virtual reality" golf game modeled after the district's golf course (see page 32). He's also put the agency's brochures online among other innovations that help run the business of the district.

The Internet is just one of the technological advances you'll read about in this special focus issue on trends in technology.

As Edward Szillat of A.E. Klawitter and Associates reveals on pages 34-37, the possible uses for technology in parks and recreation are limitless and available now, not in the year 2000.

Many agencies are already embracing the latest technologies for virtual reality exercise equipment, pool water quality monitors, automated registration systems and agency-wide voice mail systems.

Is your agency making the most of today's techno-wizardry?