Once again, utopia is just around the corner, beckoning as a vaguely
futuristic end-stage scenario where work, play, learning and commerce have
been transformed through a network-centered society. The perceived
inevitability and desirability of the superhighway vision creates an odd
consensus among otherwise politically opposite groups, and the grand view of
a network promising social panaceas provides a unifying vision that belies
the groups' broadly divergent philosophical goals.
The same groups that see this future as preordained, however, remain unsure
as to how we will actually get there. Policymakers and company executives
wrestle with a conundrum„while there is not yet an obvious "killer
application" to justify a residential broadband network, is this due to the
lack of a network through which to launch services? Field trials and
co-marketing agreements aimed at uncovering these applications seem also to
be driven by a curious combination of testing the certainty of future
demand, and of fear of being left behind.
Back to the Future
But to the communications historian, it's deja vu all over again. The image
of an "information superhighway" is soberingly similar to the vision of a
"wired nation" that cable television was to create 25 years ago. There are
important differences„cable visionaries saw regulated networks as a means of
social and political reform; entertainment was seen as a feature but not the
cornerstone. Modern prognosticators typically espouse deregulated networks
to enhance our position in a global economy, but it is expected that
entertainment likely will be the revenue centerpiece. Today's talk also
features much more skepticism and concern about market hype than was true 25
years ago. Yet these contrasts make the similarities between the two periods
even more remarkable.
In both eras, the enabling technology (coaxial cable, fiber optic cable) has
been imbued with the intrinsic capability, even destiny, of transforming
social structures by its mere existence. In talk of the "wired nation,"
cable's revolutionary potential was inherent in its copious bandwidth„a
multiplicity of channels would mean less economic pressure to produce only
mass-styled programming, enabling specialized offerings to proliferate.
Before urban franchises were actually built, interactivity was assumed;
local and national telecommunications grids were expected to link citizens
with social services, political leaders, and each other. As a result, cable
television was touted as a means to restructure conventional society,
bringing work, education, shopping, voting and even the doctor's office into
the home. It's important to note that these predictions, emanating in the
1960s and 1970s from "think tanks," the popular press and other sources,
were considered no less contextually plausible than the predictions of
today.
If one reads these past predictions and then looks at today's public
discourse„carried on in books and articles in the trade, business and
popular presses, in modern "think tank" reports, in Congressional hearings,
etc.„the terms "cable television" and "information superhighway" are almost
interchangeable. Unduly optimistic predictions have again become the
conventional wisdom, drawing on familiar themes of a communications
technology as autonomous, revolutionary and utopian. A specific taxonomy
suggests a "boilerplate" recitation of nine basic services essentially
unchanged from the predictions of the cable era: civic participation,
education, entertainment, home management, information services,
telecommuting, telemedicine, teleshopping and video telephony.
So the futuristic world portrayed in today's video and print advertisements
is, in fact, old news. In the last quarter-century, the grand societal
vision of what we would do with residential high-capacity interactive
communications has apparently not changed much beyond the notion of
reconfiguring our major social activities and institutions onto an
electronic network. But if the sincere hopes for cable now appear to have
been hopelessly wishful thinking, to doubt the modern visions of
technological transformation is often to be criticized as shortsighted or,
worse, as Luddite. This "predictive paradox" implies that modern times stand
separate from any continuum of progress and change„and certainly this is a
dazzling technological interval, one that makes it difficult not to believe
that this time we really are at the threshold of a new society.
Nonetheless, though the technical demonstrations may be flashier today,
these nine proposed ways to use the network are still not new services but
old services hoping to be delivered over a new distribution channel. And
most of the electronic versions of these services are rather general
concepts. To talk of delivering educational services to the home may go a
long way toward building good public relations, but it is something quite
different to create an education "deliverable" that enough consumers are
willing to pay for. In fact, these proposed services (for residential users,
at least) are largely driven from the supply side„proposed not so much
because there is pent-up demand for these particular services, but because
the providers with the bandwidth are looking for ways to use it profitably.
The fait accompli version of a future network also belies the historical
tendency of technologies to both change and be changed by societies as they
diffuse. Indeed, one major problem with focusing on an end-stage vision of a
future network is that these services are often talked about as if they are
some inevitable, intertwined package„but each has quite different
characteristics and each will succeed or fail based on its own ability to
develop a viable market.
Some will be interactive, others "reactive." Some will offer ways to spend
time (i.e. video-on-demand); others will be marketed as ways to save time
(i.e. home shopping). Some will be subsidized; some we will be expected to
pay for. A matrix developed by Australian researcher Jen St. Clair also
suggests the potential social contrasts between "time rich, cash poor" and
"cash rich, time poor" consumers„and, the "cash poor, time poor" who will
have neither the discretionary income nor the hours to use or profit from
the proposed new services.
Forward to the Future
In sum, these nine services may not be the most imaginative or useful way of
thinking about an "information superhighway." Many of the services doubtless
will gain a foothold, but it is unlikely that they will completely replace
existing methods. Those who believe that shopping malls will close because
consumers will all shop online, for example, should consider the 1950s
prediction that televised football games would result in the contests being
played in empty stadiums. Coexistence, not displacement, should be assumed.
Ironically, this seemingly recalcitrant refusal to buy into the standard
package of broadband services may be the most likely avenue for discovering
the "killer application" that will truly define the future network. Simply
put, a killer application will provide an innately better way, intrinsic to
the particular technology, of doing something whose value is implicitly
understood.
Predictors generally miss the killer application the first time around,
perhaps because the technology needs to be in use for awhile before it
reveals its unique properties. When personal computers were introduced, for
example, it was thought that we would all learn to program in BASIC (to make
our computers do„uh„"things"). Instead, the spreadsheet emerged as the
killer app, because accountants have been creating spreadsheets for
generations; the advantage of using computing power not only to perform
calculations but to compute changes across rows and columns was
instinctively obvious. Word processing followed closely behind. Consumer
videocassette recorders were expected primarily to time-shift network
television viewing, but the killer app (in a story rich with bits of
historical irony) proved to be the desirability of accessing a storehouse of
motion pictures, uninterrupted by commercials and available for viewing on
demand.
What is the inherent advantage of an "information superhighway?" The network
of the future is assumed to combine high-bandwidth capacity with two-way
communications capability. But while massive fiber optic capacity is often
the focus, the intrinsic enhancement will be its combination with
ever-increasing computing power. Computers will add at least three principal
elements not available to the coaxial networks of the 1970s: they will
dramatically enhance the intelligence of the home devices that are linked to
such a network; they will improve the efficiency of network
interconnections; and they will continue to proliferate as informational
nodes on the network, providing indexed warehouses of digital images,
sounds, text and other data.
But if the "killer app" is developed within those parameters, it will
probably not truly reveal itself until we have made substantial progress in
improving our interface to, and navigation within, what will clearly be a
vastly distributed network. Perhaps the simplest evidence of this is that we
still boot up our computers, load programs and passwords, and otherwise work
or wait a bit to access something as rudimentary as electronic mail. (If
these processes don't seem cumbersome, remember that before automatic
switching, few people imagined one would not need an operator to complete a
telephone call.)
Focus on the Network
At that point, the intrinsic property may be the architecture of the
network, not a specific service„just as the telephone network, in its
original use, offered the inherent and understandable advantage of being
able to communicate by voice and not Morse code. A future network that
combines bandwidth, intelligence and storage nodes will likely succeed by
offering uncomplicated access on demand to a range of information and
materials that we generally become aware of through traditional forms. For
example, to understand the value of hearing National Public Radio broadcasts
on demand, one must first come to know and appreciate the existence of NPR
at all. (It is unwise to assume that the majority of consumers will come up
with enough discretionary time to simply "browse around the network" to find
all these new things.)
Seen this way, the future network coexists with present forms of
entertainment, information, and commerce. It takes advantage of current
methods of promotion and distribution but offers the new and recognizable
benefit of offering, when necessary, electronic access on demand to such
materials. And it may eventually subsume or replace a few of these current
ways of doing things.
When one lets go of the hackneyed vision of a technocentric society and
instead thinks about the incremental possibilities, the future can be a
quite satisfying place. Plenty of social changes could result simply through
enhancing our control and use of a proven communications keystone: the
telephone. Again assuming a dramatically improved interface, computing power
in the network and in the telephone can be used to give us true proactive
control over the when, where and who of incoming calls„far beyond simple
call screening. Intelligent devices can accept, dispose of, or forward
incoming calls based on who is calling, what time of day it is, and whether
anyone is home; the notion that anonymous (and sometimes unwelcome)
telephone rings interrupt our activities may someday seem as unusual as the
nineteenth-century artifact of persons dropping by unannounced.
And, if as some economists claim, networked transmission costs fall
precipitously„and if regulators respond in kind„imagine the profound social
impact of being able to telephone across the state, the country, or the
world for literally pennies per minute over high-fidelity voice channels. We
casually recognize that families and friends are increasingly dispersed due
to a number of social shifts; it's inspiring to think that we could use a
future communications network to sustain and improve real, interpersonal
relationships regardless of geographic location. Indeed, it may turn out
that the killer app isn't an "app" at all„it's the network itself.
© 1995 Educom.