Chapter 15: THE END?

 
 
The revolution is just beginning.  New communications systems and digital 
technologies have already meant dramatic changes in the way we live.  
Think of what is already routine that would have been considered 
impossible just ten years ago.  You can browse through the holdings of 
your local library -- or of libraries halfway around the world -- do your 
banking and see if your neighbor has gone bankrupt, all through a 
computer and modem.  

Imploding costs coupled with exploding power are bringing ever more 
powerful computer and digital systems to ever growing numbers of people.  
The Net, with its rapidly expanding collection of databases and other 
information sources, is no longer limited to the industrialized nations 
of the West; today it extends from Siberia to Zimbabwe.  The cost 
of computers and modems used to plug into the Net, meanwhile, continue 
to plummet, making them ever more affordable, even as the Internet 
becomes easier to use. 

Cyberspace has become a vital part of millions of people's daily 
lives. People form relationships online, they fall in love, they get 
married, all because of initial contacts in cyberspace, that ephemeral 
``place'' that transcends national and state boundaries. Business 
deals are transacted entirely in ASCII.  Political and social 
movements begin online, coordinated by people who could be thousands 
of miles apart. 

Yet this is only the beginning.  

We live in an age of communication, yet the various media we use to talk 
to one another remain largely separate systems. One day, however, your 
telephone, TV, fax machine and personal computer will be replaced by a 
single ``information processor'' linked to the worldwide Net by strands 
of optical fiber.  

Beyond databases and file libraries, power will be at your fingertips. 
Linked to thousands, even millions of like-minded people, you'll be able 
to participate in social and political movements across the country and 
around the world.   

How does this happen? In part, it will come about through new 
technologies. High-definition television will require the development of 
inexpensive computers that can process as much information as today's 
workstations.  Telephone and cable companies will cooperate, or in some 
cases compete, to bring those fiber-optic cables into your home. 

The Clinton administration, arguably the first led by people who know how 
to use not only computer networks but computers, is pushing for creation 
of a series of "information superhighways" comparable in scope to the 
Interstate highway system of the 1950s (one of whose champions in the 
Senate has a son elected vice president in 1992).    

Right now, we are in the network equivalent of the early 1950s, just 
before the creation of that massive highway network. Sure, there are 
plenty of interesting things out there, but you have to meander along 
two-lane roads, and have a good map, to get to them. 

Creation of this new Net will require more than just high-speed channels 
and routing equipment; it will require a new communications paradigm: the 
Net as information utility.  The Net remains a somewhat complicated and 
mysterious place.  To get something out of the Net today, you have to 
spend a fair amount of time with a Net veteran or a manual like this.  
You have to learn such arcana as the vagaries of the Unix cd command.  

Contrast this with the telephone, which now also provides access to large 
amounts of information through push buttons, or a computer network such 
as Prodigy, which one navigates through simple commands and mouse clicks. 

Internet system administrators have begun to realize that not all people 
want to learn the intricacies of Unix, and that that fact does not make 
them bad people.  We are already seeing the development of simple 
interfaces that will put the Net's power to use by millions of people.  
You can already see their influence in the menus of gophers and the 
World-Wide Web, which require no complex computing skills but which open 
the gates to thousands of information resources.  Mail programs and text 
editors such as pico and pine promise much of the power of older programs 
such as emacs at a fraction of the complexity. 

Some software engineers are taking this even further, by creating 
graphical interfaces that will let somebody navigate the Internet just by 
clicking on the screen with a mouse or by calling up an easy text editor, 
sort of the way one can now navigate a Macintosh computer -- or a 
commercial online service such as Prodigy. 

Then there are the Internet services themselves.  

For every database now available through the Internet, there are probably 
three or four that are not.  Government agencies are only now beginning 
to connect their storehouses of information to the Net. Several 
commercial vendors, from database services to booksellers, have made 
their services available through the Net. 

Few people now use one of the Net's more interesting applications.  A 
standard known as MIME lets one send audio and graphics files along with 
an E-mail message. Imagine opening your e-mail one day to hear your 
granddaughter's first words, or a "photo" of your friend's new house.  
Eventually, this standard could allow for distribution of even small 
video displays over the Net. 

All of this will require vast new amounts of Net power, to handle both 
the millions of new people who will jump onto the Net and the new 
applications they want.  Replicating a moving image on a computer screen 
alone takes a phenomenal amount of computer bits, and computing power to 
arrange them. 

All of this combines into a National Information Infrastructure able to 
move billions of bits of information in one second -- the kind of power 
needed to hook information "hoses" into every business and house. 

As these "superhighways" grow, so will the "on ramps," for a high-speed 
road does you little good if you can't get to it.   The costs of modems 
seem to fall as fast as those of computers.  High-speed modems (9600 baud 
and up) are becoming increasingly affordable.  At 9600 baud, you can 
download a satellite weather image of North America in less than two 
minutes, a file that, with a slower modem could take up to 20 minutes to 
download.  Eventually, homes could be connected directly to a national 
digital network.  Most long-distance phone traffic is already carried in 
digital form, through high-volume optical fibers.  Phone companies are 
ever so slowly working to extend these fibers the "final mile" to the 
home.  The Electronic Frontier Foundation is working to ensure these 
links are affordable. 

Beyond the technical questions are increasingly thorny social, political 
and economic issues. Who is to have access to these services, and at what 
cost?  If we live in an information age, are we laying the seeds for a 
new information under class, unable to compete with those fortunate 
enough to have the money and skills needed to manipulate new 
communications channels? Who, in fact, decides who has access to what?  
As more companies realize the potential profits to be made in the new 
information infrastructure, what happens to such systems as Usenet, 
possibly the world's first successful anarchistic system, where everybody 
can say whatever they want? 

What are the laws of the electronic frontier?  When national and state 
boundaries lose their meaning in cyberspace,  the question might even be: 
WHO is the law?  What if a practice that is legal in one country is 
"committed" in another country where it is illegal, over a computer 
network that crosses through a third country? Who goes after computer 
crackers? 

What role will you play in the revolution?