The Unpredictable Certainty: Information Infrastructure Through 2000

In October 1994, the Computer Science and Telecommunications Board convened, at the request of the Technology Policy Working Group (TPWG) of the Information Infrastructure Task Force, a steering commit tee to assess medium-term deployment of facilities and services to ad vance the nation's information infrastructure. The project was desig nated NII 2000 by the steering committee, and its tasks were the following:

• To reach out to a broad range of industries with a stake in the future of U.S. information infrastructurethose industries expected to be major market drivers as well as those expected to be major service provid ersto explore their expectations and motivations for technology de ployment in the next 5 to 7 years;
• To infer from this exploration the extent to which there is a shared vision of the importance of common features of system architecture, such as interoperability or open system interfaces, and the alternative likeli hood that major parts of the system will develop along proprietary, in compatible lines; and
• To conclude with suggestions to the U.S. government on public policy choices that might serve both the rapid, orderly, and successful development of information infrastructure and its satisfaction of impor tant public interests.

To achieve these goals, the steering committee was asked by the TPWG to undertake a specific series of activities: convene a workshop of professionals and scholars to discuss and identify key issues related to technology deployment, call for white papers to gain further information on these issues, organize a forum to discuss the white papers and other key ideas, and write a synthesis report of its findings. As a preliminary step, the steering committee solicited inputs and suggestions via liaisons (listed in Appendix E) from trade, professional, and advocacy organiza tions, as well as government agencies, beginning in late 1994.

The workshop, which was held in Washington, D.C., on January 17 -18, 1995, brought together invited members from business, industry, and interest groups as well as federal government representatives. Panels during the 2-day proceedings focused on technology deployment, end -user hardware and software issues, domain-specific applications, the Internet as a national information infrastructure (NII) model, and what different industries meant when they used certain terms and concepts. For example, "architecture," "programming," "service," and "network" are among the many fundamental terms (see Box 1.2 in Chapter 1 for a longer list) that are defined differently by different industries. See Ap pendix A for the workshop agenda and a list of participants.

Following the workshop, the steering committee released a call for white papers (Appendix C) on issues related to architecture and facilities, enabling technologies, recovery of costs, middleware technologies and capabilities, applications, equitable access and public service obligations, and research and development. The call was distributed through various media (the Internet, press advisories, direct mail, and so on) to producers of communications, computer, and software systems goods and services; Internet access and other network-based service providers; scholars spe cializing in relevant technical, economic, and public policy research and analysis; and project liaisons and other representatives of industries and sectors believed likely to become major users of advanced information infrastructure (such as the arts, banking and finance, education, health care, government agencies, libraries, manufacturing, and transportation). The white papers (see Appendix D for a list of papers received and their authors) were distributed to participants at the spring forum and to inter ested federal agencies. Their content, representing a broad spectrum of views from knowledgeable participants in the evolution of information infrastructure, was a major component in the development of the steering committee's report, which quotes from and refers specifically to several of them. The white papers will be made available in a forthcoming compan ion volume.

Shortly after the call for papers was issued, the steering committee received a letter (Appendix F) from Vice President Albert Gore under scoring the high-level interest in the project's potential to generate "an objective assessment of the capabilities of different residential broadband architectures (e.g., hybrid fiber coaxial cable, fiber to the curb, and wire less alternatives) being deployed by the private sector." Explained the Vice President, "We would like to see an NII that allows individuals to be producers as well as consumers of information, that enables 'many to many' communication, and that provides a 'general purpose' infrastruc ture capable of supporting a wide range of services."

The Vice President's letter contributed to the steering committee's preparations for the spring 1995 forum, which was structured to assess the difficulties inherent in developing a nationwide information infra structure built largely with private resources, but having the capacity to further social and economic goals as well. (See Appendix B for the forum agenda and a list of participants). Like the evolving NII itself, the forum embraced a range of models that provided different perspectives on the possible roles of infrastructure: one-to-many distribution of large quanti ties of preselected video, combinations of television and telephony to support interactive programming, one-to-one voice telephony augmented by a variety of conveniences, many-to-many explorations over computer networks, most notably the Internet, and many-to-one interactions be tween consumers and information sources over the World Wide Web, in particular.

This synthesis report represents the collective view of 12 experts who monitored and participated in a unique public policy undertaking. The NII 2000 project was an experiment of sorts, an attempt to hold other issues constant by focusing attention on technological and business mod els. Although each of the following elements is part of the overall NII "story," this report is not a description of an optimistic vision of future possibilities and benefits for various business and nonprofit entities, for the purpose of motivating interest in the NII; an analysis of legal and regulatory barriers to competition; or an attempt to resolve broad policy concerns such as universal access or the democratization of cyberspace. Nevertheless, comments from many contributors to the project convey the message that a complete assessment of NII deployment, and the role of government as well as industry in its evolution, must take these issues into consideration to at least some degree.

Finally, it is also important to state that the NII 2000 Steering Committee's synthesis report is a technology deployment "road map" only in the most metaphorical sense. Participants described many roads, or in some cases territory through which roads might be constructed, but most of these roads have unknown, indeed unknowable, destinations. As the TPWG's Howard Frank observed at the January 1995 workshop:

The government is not doing a road map that says how do we get from here to there. . . . If you look at the United States, and look at the interstate highway road map, or look at the road map of all of the roads in the United States, you can see that no path is dictated; there are a variety of ways of moving, as opposed to a specific formula. What we are trying to do is identify those capabilities and metrics of an NII, and the barriers associated with those various roads, [so that] we could speed the creation of the NII and eliminate some of the barriers.

The NII 2000 Steering Committee shares this view. Like Howard Frank, we do not know where "there" is, and we observe many forks in the roads we can see. We do believe, however, that the future offers many very attractive options for U.S. society and its many business communi ties, if government and private interests collaborate in understanding how to enable that future to emerge in a way that best satisfies each other's needs, concerns, and expectations.

This report is an effort to explore the limits of consensus on a broad array of fast-changing issues. As a result, it benefits from the work of many individuals, among them the participants in the January 1995 work shop and the May 1995 forum, and the authors of the white papers. We are grateful to them for the level and range of expertise they brought to the project. The steering committee gratefully acknowledges the assis tance of several individuals and organizations, including Rupert Stow, who provided numerous suggestions for enhancing the discussion of broadcasting; Stewart Personick, who provided insights into technical and business perspectives from telephony; Duane Adams and Howard Frank, whose vision motivated and guided the establishment of the project; Y.T. Chien, John Hestenes, and Michael Papillo, whose ongoing questioning and suggestions on behalf of the TPWG provided regular encouragement and feedback; the liaisons, particularly Michael Roberts of EDUCOM, Suzanne Tichenor of the Council on Competitiveness, and Charles Brownstein of the Corporation for National Research Initiatives' Cross-Industry Working Team; and of course the anonymous reviewers, whose criticisms, reflections, and suggestions were essential to the strengthening of this final report.

The members of the steering committee devoted much of their time for about a year to formulating the project and guiding its conduct. But more importantly, each member brought a level of professional knowl edge and competence from many areas of technology, allowing the project to be authoritative in its coverage. I am particularly grateful to one mem ber of the steering committee, David Clark of MIT, who gave much more than his share of devotion to this project, frequently filling in for the chairman. But the most especial thanks from all the steering committee members is due to Marjory Blumenthal, leader of a fine team from the CSTB and now a recognized authority on public policy issues related to information technology. Among all of us, she should be considered the principal author of this work. Other members of the CSTB team to whom our appreciation is owed are John Godfrey, who amassed and analyzed considerable amounts of technology and industry data; Gloria Bemah, who tracked the large number of participants and documents associated with the project; Pamela Rodgers, who orchestrated the logistics for the spring forum; Leslie Wade, who transformed the draft into a fully docu mented and appropriately formatted final report; and Susan Maurizi, whose editorial assistance helped make this report more readable.

Lewis Branscomb, Chair
NII 2000 Steering Committee