WiRED, an international organization dedicated to bringing the resources of the Internet to war-ravaged places like Kosovo, launched its innovative “Video Visit” program on Thursday, November 16. The project enables families of seriously ill children undergoing treatment in European hospitals to make “live” visits via Internet-linked video.

The system of computers linked to each other through the Internet provides a nearly unlimited free flow of information, but it also offers a “high-tech answer to basic human needs” like freedom and democracy, says media expert Gary Selnow

The U.S. Department of State has established free computer centers at seven locations in war-ravaged Kosovo as part of its Kosovo Internet Access Initiative (KIAI). These centers are managed by the International Organization on Migration and operated with the help of a nonprofit foundation called WiRED (World Internet Resources for Education and Development).

For thousands of people in remote, war-torn villages of the former Yugoslavia, Gary Selnow of Montara is the guru of the Internet. Selnow, a communications professor at San Francisco State University, runs a nonprofit organization out of his home on the San Mateo coast that provides computer links to doctors and other health care workers, journalists, students and other professionals in Croatia, Bosnia, Kosovo and Montenegro.

If all of NATO’s might can’t keep the peace in the Balkans, maybe the Internet can. That’s how one Bay Area professor is trying to bring peace to war-torn Croatia. Founded by San Francisco State professor Gary Selnow, the Global Learning Center is using computers to teach cultural tolerance to schoolchildren in Eastern Slovenia.