01-27-1992 Council Packet - Laserfiche WebLink

Home Browse Search

msmm mm ultimately, as the computer network is made available at home, couch potatoes could become their own propr^immers. ordering up, say. ever>- love scene from every movie made in 1975, or the l^t five minutes of every Super Bowl since Ciame 1 This IS all expected to be good for busi ness, too. although the details are a bit sketchy. Companies like Corning Glass Works, a world leader m optical fiber, could certainly grow, as would some com puter and switch manufacturers. And there would be a bon{»n2ja for firms that could design '*knowbots ’*—software ro bots —that would search through massive homes to fiber optics through trunk lines that will bring some of the benefits but not all the power or speed; schools, hospitals and businesses would be more likely candi dates for direct fiber-optic feeds trx). would need to be upgraded: most home equipment is not geared to download the Libra r%'ofCongresscatalog; the average PC hard d :sk is better suited to L.L Bean Business, too. could find hazards in the networks The services could cutnew databanks for useful information The oth er opportunities simply can't be foreseen, but the proponents are wacerinc that if the world ’s (greatest research teams are put together they will find somethtnn worth developing. Mitchell Kapor. who founded LotusDevelopmentCorp, publishersofthe Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheet program, says the situation "is like the PC industry in about 1977, before the Apple II *' The PC: industry is now a $30 billion business Though the NREN has received broad support, it has some built-in problems JIDUMTOII . >cali^otecaaI mtaaivaisiti laga, phatow* hart-^llim attar af>aaein i® Without proper planning, net ^rk expan sion could widen the g^p between rich and poor The vast educational resources might only go to the data-haves —such as comput er owners—leaving the poor behind, bit by gigabit. To make it more than just a tool for scientists, NREN should aim at schools, hospitals and businesses from the start. Ken Kay of the Computer Systems Policy Project, an industr,* group made up of high-tech companies such as Apple and Cray. Drift cartfullr. Bringing the highway home won’t be easy either. While the Japanese hope to be fully fiber optic by 2015, few are proposing a glass line to every house in the United Slates—cost estimates start at S100 billion Instead, planners expec: to connect Ughting tht way: Fiber-optic strands TOM TRAC”Tf -.‘?TOCK SHOP across industries that have remaine-1 dis tinct so far—telephone companies, pub lishers. cable-television firms—and each industry is fighting to protect its turf. The companies already tiyfing to provide net work services to the business community are also quarreling In a case that presages some of the strife to come, a company sup ported by the International Business M ^ chines Corp. and MCI has lieen accused ‘ trying to hog commercial marketing of the Internet. Advanced Networks and Services • ANS) of Elmsford. N.Y., maintains a por tion of the Internet for the National Sci ence Foundation William Schrader of the competing Performance Sv^stems Interna tional m Reston, Va.. charges ANS with using its government connec- ... K tions and subsidy to cut rates and promote itself as the sole official provider. ANS presi dent Allan Weis calls the ac- RESEARCHl cusalions ’’vicious non- From their own labs, sense ’’Computerscientist scientists will be able 4^ David Farber of the Uni te make far-flung ?», versity of Pennsylvania supercomputers col- ^}i argues that with real competi- laborate on complei; -3 t'on things might turn out as they have in the personal- computer industry: ’’Because it was an open playing field, the small players could get in— and they ate IBM’s toes, trunk and several other things.” The data highway is essen tially an act of faith: if we build it, they wall come. Acceptance and use can take time, though; indeed, for many own ers. a PC remains little more than a very smooth typewriter. Such attitudes can be frustrating Doug Englebart, a pioneer in computer communications, was proposing many of the serN’ices promised for NREN back when he helped design the first net works in the late 1960s. The stuff we built and took into the world had a hard time flourishing," he says, "because nobody could describe it to anyone else." We’ve just about left that period now. moving irrevo cably into the Information Age where we’ll learn to negotiate the data highway or sit on the sidelines watching someone else fly by Besides, this is America and we love the open ro,sd So start your engines: we’re headed down the long glass highway, but where we're bound, no one knows. John Schwartz experiments. lu.l STRATION t H nil MF’- »' ^ - .•.kwswfkk jantahv n. I"*:' 57