Realizing the Information Future The Internet and Beyond (1994) / Chapter Skim
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1 U.S. Networking: The Past Is Prologue
1 U.S. Networking: The Past Is Prologue
Pages 17-42
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These are all manifestations of a major transition taking place in our society's communications infrastructure. A national information infrastructure (NII)
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A truly national information infrastructure will be much harder to shape than was the Internet. The Internet arose in a vacuum with little awareness outside the research community, the National Science Foundation (NSF)
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. A digital communications network communicates information between users in fractions of a second using digital transmission technology.
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The providers of both the telephone network and the cable TV networks (in various partnerships with the entertainment industry) have substantial plans to evolve both the technology of the infrastructure and the range of services provided over those networks.
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The purpose of the Internet, the largest packet switching network in the world, is to provide a very general communication infrastructure targeted not to one application, such as telephony or delivery of TV, but rather to a wide range of computer-based services, such as electronic mail (e-mail) , information retrieval, and teleconferencing.
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Innovation and leadership are needed in both. How We Got Here The history of the Internet illuminates many issues important to the development of a national information infrastructure.
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It has demonstrated the power of networking to transform a community, to change its operating paradigms, and to build a base of enthusiastic and committed users. Over this same period individuals and groups within the education and library communities began to participate in and benefit from access to the Internet.
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Several of the issues surrounding the future of the Internet and the NREN program were anticipated in the Computer Science and Technology Board's 1988 report Toward a National Research Network,2 which addressed continuing technology needs, the importance of closer interaction with commercial providers of underlying and related services, and the implications of broadening and enlarging the user community. Key changes since the 1988 report include the broadening of attention to education issues and institutions, the growing commercialization of the Internet, the planned withdrawal of NSF from direct provision of Internet backbone service, and the introduction of a more explicit focus on architecture, information resources, and mid- and high-level services.
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initiative, the Information Infrastructure Technology and Applications program, and the entire HPCC initiative has been made a component of the larger National Information Infrastructure initiative.4 In view of the shift to a larger, more truly national NII context, it is :`
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At the same time, both the recent NREN program experience and its broadening clientele show that achieving widespread and economical access to information infrastructure is difficult. Moreover, the problem of access is much larger, in terms of the number of needed access points and participants, for the educational community than for the research community.
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The success of the Internet is such that commercial carriers and other private investors are not only offering but also demanding to be allowed to develop and manage the infrastructure and to provide information services to be delivered over that infrastructure.6 The Entertainment-based Vision Another vision of the information future derives from the commercial opportunities that have been identified for new services in the entertainment sector. It grows out of the video delivery services provided by the cable TV industry and is receiving great attention.
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household discretionary outlays.~° Differences in corporate culture, outlook, and experience further cloud the nature and timing of ETC interactions, raising questions about how much and what kind of private investment in information infrastructure will be made and when. The Clinton-Gore Administration's Vision One barometer of the political forces that will help to shape a national information infrastructure is the set of efforts by the Clinton-Gore administration to frame the discussion by offering its own NII vision (Box 1.4~.~2 The administration envisions an encompassing information infrastructure that integrates and rationalizes various ongoing network developments.
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A Hard alternative entails a Suer integration, with the interests of We ETC industries, me commer~al communities, Me education and research communes, and me general p-Uc aU berg served by a common Megastructure (Figure 1.7~.
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. A national information infrastructure should be capable of carrying information services of all kinds, from suppliers of all kinds, to customers of all kinds, across network service providers of all kinds, in a seamless accessible fashion.
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-based visions have not yet been harmonized, the committee believes it is in the national interest to integrate these visions into a more comprehensive model one that will support diverse objectives and help ensure national well-being on many fronts. The Internet, the commercial networks, the drive by the ETC complex, the consumer marketplace, and the needs of the research, education and library communities are all interrelated; the infrastructure, deployment, and services of the NII can and should all be highly synergistic.
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In some cases, the cable service providers are planning to carry digital signals, a circumstance that raises the question of interoperability among the various networks that transport electronically encoded information. The distinction among the infrastructure needs of these various services is rapidly disappearing; thus it is natural to consider an architecture that can, indeed, support interoperability among these networks.
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Unless the price for access is reduced so that it is much more in line with the price of telephone service, NII services to the home will not be widespread. Cost reduction requires investment in new equipment for the access network (such as a multiplexer on the street corner and a shared fiber connection to the central office, as required to support the subscriber loop carrier systems being installed in local exchange carrier access networks)
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How can the various distinctive visions of a national information infrastructure be integrated to support interoperability and a common NII objective? All have a large constituency and significant fixed investments in their installed technology base.
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Chapters 3 through 5, the second component, address the planning needed to provide connectivity both within and between the research, education, and library communities in the larger national context and within the evolving framework of the NII. In Chapter 3 the committee examines the history of the research, education, and library communities' use of information infrastructure, assessing difficulties, benefits, and prospects in order to provide insights into the larger challenge of deploying a true NII and to express the continuing needs of communities that have so much to contribute to and gain from an NII.
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1994. High Performance Computing and Communications: Toward a National Information Infrastructure.
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8. For reference, basic cable subscription revenues in 1993 were on the order of $13 billion; motion picture box office receipts, by comparison, were somewhat over $5 billion, and videocassette sales and rentals totaled between $13 billion and $18 billion.
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On the other hand, HDTV screens have an aspect ratio of 16 units wide by 9 units high, and the viewer is typically only 2 to 3 picture heights from the screen; this permits considerable viewer participation with the activity on the screen. This is consistent with the likely NII applications requiring much closer interactions with the screen.
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