The National Information Infrastructure: How Will We Manage?


Copyright 1993 CAUSE From _CAUSE/EFFECT_ Volume 16, Number 1, Spring 
1993. Permission to copy or disseminate all or part of this material is 
granted provided that the copies are not made or distributed for 
commercial advantage, the CAUSE copyright and its date appear,and notice 
is given that copying is by permission of CAUSE, the association for 
managing and using information resources in higher education. To 
disseminate otherwise, or to republish, requires written permission.For 
further information, contact CAUSE, 4840 Pearl East Circle, Suite 302E, 
Boulder, CO 80301, 303-449-4430, e-mail info@CAUSE.colorado.edu


             THE NATIONAL INFRASTRUCTURE: HOW WILL WE MANAGE?

                            by Bruce Heterick


Communication and connectivity have long been integral parts of everyday 
society. We communicate daily via speech, written word, telephone, and 
mail. We have a sociological need to be connected to those around us. 
Our need for connectivity is clearly demonstrated in the fact that there 
are over 5 billion telephones in the United States for only 280 million 
people--that is nearly 20 telephones for every individual. In business 
today, we demand virtually instantaneous communication and connectivity, 
and accessibility from anywhere at anytime. This phenomenon has made the 
delivery of information services one of the fastest growing industries 
in the world.

Leaders in government, higher education, and the private sector are 
coming to realize (although sometimes not so quickly) that the best way 
to deliver and support this industry is via a national information 
infrastructure (NII). This infrastructure would connect information 
appliances within the U.S., and eventually around the world, in a 
telecommunications network comparable to the national highway system. 
Many researchers and educators have seen the portent of the NII in the 
National Research and Education Network (NREN). Even today, some 
interesting precursors to the NII have taken shape in Telluride, 
Colorado (Skyfield) and Blacksburg, Virginia (Blacksburg Electronic 
Village).

While it is clear that this NII will have tremendous benefits, there is 
a great deal of concern surrounding the social, legal, and ethical 
issues involved with such an undertaking. Already we have seen some of 
our most established information industries have their very foundations 
unsettled by the concept. The publishing community now has to consider 
the electronic medium as readily as the print medium. The telephone 
companies must now consider the impact of delivering voice, data, and 
entertainment video. Even the federal government has scrambled somewhat 
to determine its proper role in this evolving resource.

The projected impact of electronically delivered information via the NII 
is difficult to discern. There have been many inventions that have 
spawned other "revolutions" in past history, and it is thought that the 
NII could be the catalyst to manifest the Information Revolution. What 
effect will the NII have on the human capability to connect to 
information and be exposed to knowledge? Consider that the invention of 
the plow, coupled with the invention of chemical fertilizers, created a 
100-fold multiplier over previously known methods and led to the 
Agricultural Revolution. The invention of the steam engine provided a 
1000-fold multiplier and led to the Industrial Revolution. The NII will 
bring two separate million multipliers together in computers and 
communications.[1] The invention of the personal computer, less than two 
decades ago, began what is now known as the Information Revolution. With 
the availability of the NII to connect the millions of computers in 
existence today and the hundreds of millions of information appliances 
of tomorrow, the Information Revolution could quickly be galvanized.

Information: an elusive resource

It has been said that change does not necessarily solve problems, it 
simply replaces the old set with a new set. This axiom is particularly 
poignant in the change that is, and will be, brought by the NII. The 
social, legal, and ethical issues involved in the electronic delivery of 
information are diverse and complicated. One fundamental issue that all 
stakeholders seem to be struggling with is: _What exactly is 
information?_ There is no arguing that information has become the key 
resource in business today. However, humankind has traditionally 
conceived resources as things that could be owned, traded, bought, and 
sold. Harland Cleveland argues that in the emerging post-industrial 
society, there is little understanding of the characteristics of 
information. In point of fact, information does not have the _tangible_ 
characteristics that we associate with most resources. Information is 
expandable, compressible, substitutable, transportable, diffusive, and 
shareable.[2] Whereas we have traditionally traded information in a 
printed form, where it could be considered property, the electronic 
exchange of information via the NII calls into question the very nature 
of that resource.

Colin Cherry wrote that information by nature cannot give rise to 
exchange transactions, only to sharing transactions. _Things_ are 
exchanged: If I give you a flower or sell you my automobile, you have it 
and I don't. But if I sell you an idea, we both have it.[3]

Information can no longer be considered a commodity or property, but 
must be viewed as an event. In fact, George Gilder in Microcosm argues 
that knowledge grows as it spreads, unlike material products that are 
depleted as they are used.[4] Whereas most material commodities, like 
automobiles, depreciate with use, information has the ability to 
appreciate with use. The capability that the NII offers for people to 
exchange information in as timely a manner as speech itself will even 
more clearly differentiate it from traditional resources. Information is 
no longer a tangible commodity, no longer has a clear owner, and no 
longer has a static definition.

A major ethical dilemma, closely linked to the changing perception of 
information, is the concept of ownership in an electronic environment. 
Simply put, "Who owns what, and when do they own it?" While we have 
traditionally equated ownership with physical property, this equation 
must change with the proliferation of electronic information. Unlike 
printed books or journals, electronic information is not a physical 
entity.

"A significant characteristic of print documents is tangibility. Because 
they may be seen at a fixed point in space, it is possible to assign 
ownership and to regulate use by charging for tangible copies. Digital 
products, by contrast, are ephemeral. Although they may be seen or used 
at a fixed point in time, they can also be copied, changed, or moved, 
easily and rapidly, from place to place, thus making regulation 
difficult."[5]

Because the print medium is so vastly different from the electronic 
medium, it is difficult to argue that digital products are property. 
Electronic information is fixed only in time and is therefore difficult 
to consider tangible, much less property. The concept of property may 
have to be expanded to include intellectual ideas in a much broader 
sense.

The social imperative


As technology changes and improves, and the American economy becomes 
more global in nature, the need for timely information will increase in 
importance. The NII has the potential to create a division in the social 
structure of the world defined by those who are "information rich" and 
those who are "information poor." While the NII will provide electronic 
access to information in a timely fashion, the problem lies in just who 
will have this access.

The NII will take time to fully develop and its diffusion will be 
uneven. This means that it could be years, or even decades, before equal 
access is provided across the nation and the world. This time lag in 
providing access will allow some individuals/corporations to gain a 
substantial advantage in strategic planning. This could potentially mean 
the difference between thriving and surviving in the world economy. And 
while this might be seen as a simple extension of Social Darwinism in 
classical economic theory, the question exists as to whether the ability 
to adapt, in this context, is controlled by some force other than the 
individual/corporation itself. Will the NII help create the large 
aggregates of economic and political power that eliminate the classical 
economic assumption of perfect competition?

Access to the NII will be critical, yet as the world becomes 
increasingly more proficient at communicating, the prima facie right of 
privacy will conflict more often with the utilitarian need for 
information. With the increasing abundance of personal, business, and 
social information available via the NII, defining what is "public" and 
what is "private" becomes more difficult. What information the public 
should have access to, and under what constraints that information might 
be used, are common questions being asked by legislators, corporations, 
and individuals. Should a person's credit history be accessible, online, 
for any merchant or bank? Should a corporation's financial documents and 
electronic mail transactions be considered a matter of public record 
simply because they are available to a select number of people on a 
nationwide network?

Coupled with the availability of electronic information is the debate 
surrounding legal liability. Is an institution responsible for publicly 
available information placed on its computer systems?[6] Already, the 
information systems industry has seen examples of pirated software, 
credit-card fraud, distribution of pornographic materials, and stolen 
trade secrets, by individuals who have access to the distributed 
networks around the world. If companies and other agencies on the 
national network must protect themselves from liability, then 
institutions walk a fine line between protecting themselves and 
infringing on first amendment rights.

Managing this resource

Only time will tell how the public will manage with (or without) the 
NII. More important, however, is the question of how this budding 
resource itself will be managed. The rate of change in the computer and 
communications industry suggests that traditional management models will 
not suffice. Man had half a millennium to adapt to the agricultural 
revolution, a century to adapt to the industrial revolution, but will 
likely have only a couple of decades to adapt to the Information 
Revolution.

One might naturally infer that the ubiquitous scope of the NII would 
demand a strong federal influence--either through legislation granting 
certain monopolistic rights to communications providers, as was done in 
the 1934 Communications Act, or through a significant infusion of 
federal matching funds, as was the policy in the development of the 
national highway infrastructure. However, the track record of the 
telephone companies for moving beyond simple telephony is not good. In 
fact, the telephone companies would argue that the federal regulations 
resulting from the 1934 Communications Act severely impeded their 
ability to move beyond simple telephony. As well, the funds provided to 
the states to develop the interstate highway system carried with them 
mandated standards that were developed and enforced by the federal 
government. Can the NII reach its potential with a similar model? Also, 
who will receive these funds? With the national highway system, there 
was a natural recipient for the federal funds (the states). That 
recipient is not clear in the national information infrastructure.

Even the existing management scheme for the NREN program is a 
questionable model. At the moment, the NREN is operating as a federal 
network rather than a national network. As a consequence, the NREN model 
may not scale forward. While there is no denying that federal agencies 
have a stake in the success of the NII, it is not clear that the 
management models that come with substantial federal control will 
suffice in a technology that is moving so quickly.

Another model that comes to mind is a true market-driven model that 
free-market economists might endorse. This model would open up the 
management of the local and regional networks to companies specifically 
suited for that purpose. While costs to the consumer could potentially 
decrease in a market-driven model, varied levels of service from these 
competing management companies could have far-reaching effects. With a 
technology that is changing so quickly, can the consumer afford to wait 
for the market to determine the survivors in this industry? What will be 
the impact to a particular region or locality if the level of service is 
poor and unpredictable? Will the businesses in that area be put at a 
competitive disadvantage?

Consensus must be reached on these issues in the short term. If we wait 
much longer, the Information Revolution will have come and gone. We can 
ill afford to create a bureaucratic management structure that stifles 
the innovations that have brought us to this critical juncture. We must 
follow, as Gilder writes, the laws of the microcosm. That is, the power 
must move down, rather than up. Simplicity and flexibility in management 
will be the only way that a key resource like the NII can be governed 
and controlled effectively. Perhaps we should follow, and even expand, 
the current governance structure of the Internet. This structure gives 
considerable power to the individual user to suggest and promote 
enhancements. There is debate as to whether the Internet management 
model is scaleable to the NII. Regardless, the Internet premise of 
putting control at the lowest level (the end user) will be a necessary 
consideration in determining the proper management model for the NII.

There is no doubt that federal monies will be needed in the development 
of the NII. However, these monies should have specific, substantive 
purposes rather than evanescent policy connotations. The bulk of federal 
investment must make its way to the intellects that are improving and 
expanding the NII by subsidizing new initiatives and projects. The 
management of this resource must not move up--it must stay at its most 
basic level. New and untested management strategies may evolve. However, 
it is clear that management of the NII must remain as simplistic as 
possible to remain as effective as possible.

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FOOTNOTES:

1 Vinod Chachra, "Multipurpose Workstations and Multifunction Networks," 
CAUSE/EFFECT, July 1982, p. 2.

2 Harland Cleveland, "Information as a Resource," The Futurist, December 
1982, pp. 36-37.

3 Ibid., p. 37.

4 George Gilder, Microcosm: The Quantum Revolution in Economics and 
Technology (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1989), p.127.

5 Frank W. Connelly, "A Bill of Rights for Electronic Citizens, Part 
One," EDUCOM Review, Summer 1991, p. 37.

6 Timothy J. Foley, "Developing a Campus Computing and Information 
Policy: Issues and Concerns," CAUSE/EFFECT, Winter 1991, p. 27.

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Bruce Heterick recently joined the Faxon Company as Regional Sales 
Manager for the mid-Atlantic region. Previously, he was Marketing 
Manager at VTLS Inc., a leading supplier of library automation software 
and information services, where he acted as corporate liaison to CAUSE, 
EDUCOM, and the Coalition for Networked Information. He holds a BS in 
management, and will receive his MBA in June from Virginia Tech.

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EDITOR'S NOTE: In January of 1993, the chief executives of thirteen 
leading American computer companies met with members of the Clinton-Gore 
Administration to discuss their vision and recommendations for a 
national information infrastructure. The recommendations are outlined in 
the Computer Systems Policy Project's (CSPP) new report, "Perspectives 
on the National Information Infrastructure: CSPP's Vision and 
Recommendations for Action." The content of the report reflects a 
general consensus between the computer industry and the higher education 
networking community. Copies of the report, as well as a 9-minute video, 
are available by calling Jenny Carter at 202-783-8627.

The CSPP was formed in 1989 to develop and advocate industry positions 
on trade and technology policy issues. CSPP's members include the CEOs 
of Apple, AT&T, Compaq, Control Data Systems, Cray Research, Data 
General, Digital Equipment, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Silicon Graphics, Sun 
Microsystems, Tandem, and Unisys.

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