The Unpredictable Certainty Information Infrastructure Through 2000 (1996) / Chapter Skim
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2 MAKING TECHNOLOGY WORK: INDIVIDUAL AND ORGANIZED END USERS
2 MAKING TECHNOLOGY WORK: INDIVIDUAL AND ORGANIZED END USERS
Pages 27-62
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From page 27... ...
Additionally, it describes how the absence of definitive information regarding end-user preferences is a major source of uncertainty that infrastructure providers must factor into their deployment decisions. As a starting point for analysis, it addresses these questions: How is demand for access evolving?
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From page 29... ...
This distinction seems to have polarized the planning of many business sectors, including that of some of the facilities providers. In the near term, there will continue to be differences in the equipment and support available to different broad sets of users: large and small business users in the office or home will use computers and telephones, not television sets; they may use laptops or other computer equipment purchased by their employer, as well as business software or specialized systems to support remote work.)
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From page 30... ...
But the problem with the "killer app" metaphor is the expectation that one activity will saturate the market.3 Communications and content providers contributing to the NII 2000 project did not quantify the analysis, but their comments suggested that an application need only capture a significant percentage (even 10 percent) of the national market for telecommunications to justify the necessary facilities investments.4 Entertainment has appeal as a "killer app" for residential use for several reasons, including the obvious one that broadcast and cable are in the entertainment business already and understand it.5 As a result of their efforts, the principal application of communications technology for the nonworking home consumer has been television entertainment.
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SOURCE: "The NII in the Home: A Consumer Service,'' a white paper contributed to We NII 2000 project by Vito Brugliera, lames A Chiddix, D
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EVOLVING DEMAND FOR NII CAPABILITIES User familiarity with information technology and user demand for NII capabilities will co-evolve, a process that will take time and that may also yield unanticipated results.9 The beginning of such a co-evolution is evident in people's increasing willingness and ability to talk about th Internet, as well as in other indicators that user involvement is greater today than a year ago and still growing:~° more people using information technology at work, school, and at home; more advertisements, articles, and business cards including links to a network or World Wide Web (Web) address; and more movies, popular books, and other mainstream media with computer and networking themes.
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From page 33... ...
White papers by Thomas Rochow et al. and by Robert Mason et al., for example, commented on difficulties with introducing use of information technology in manufacturing that are also applicable across the board to the several user domains examined during the course of the NII 2000 project (see Box 2.3~.
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From page 34... ...
Difficulties have surfaced in the context of EDI, collaborative databases, and other applications that involve document handling and exchange, and the white paper by Stephen Zilles and Richard Cohn speaks, for example, of the need for standards to support all steps of document use production, viewing, reading, reusing, annotating and links standards to architectures. Another cross-cutting concern is labeling and identifying people, places, and organizations, as Ed Hammond points out in a white paper.
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MAKING TECHNOLOGY WORK: INDIVIDUAL AND ORGANIZED END USERS not a system. It is a cottage industry, with each cottage having a different approach to the Netware." In addition, the cultural metamorphosis required in the transition to use of information technology within each of the several user domains is a reality that telecommunications providers must factor into their deployment decisions, according to project participants.
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From page 36... ...
Whether or how well assimilation proceeds, it may also pace the rate of market growth, inasmuch as it speaks to the problem of market penetration in a given domain. In their white paper, Mason et al.
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note in their white paper that basic cable service averages about $300 per year and premium channels an additional $100 per year each, levels that consumers are aware of and can factor into their expectations. Average monthly rates for basic telephone service, according to Federal Communications Commission (FCC ~ statistics, are about $11 for residential customers and about $43 for single-line business customers (FCC, 1994, pp.
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The white paper by Oscar Garcia discusses the issue. The user interface is clearly a crucial component in information technology use and one for which research could bring needed improvements (see Chapter 6 for a discussion of research needs)
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Elaborating on Paul Green's characterization of the popular desire for ease of use as a point-click-results capability, Irene Greif of the Lotus Development Corporation suggested the need to prepare for a greater level of sophistication by building systems that accommodate the sophisticated as well as the limited: We do not want to build user interfaces so simple Hat the user who needs to undertake a more complex task, for example to issue a se quence of requests some of which depend on the outcome of previous requests-cannot do so at all. A simple point-and-click interface cannot easily express these more complex objectives.
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From page 40... ...
. Given the enormous installed base and the substantial volumes of existing devices that will be delivered in the next several years, it is likely that televisions, PCs, and also telephones will remain the only access devices deployed in enough quantity to qualify as consumer items.
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From page 41... ...
and in delivering multimedia capabilities. Although the PC thus provides the greatest and most general capability among the common access devices, as an access device it is relatively expensive.
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42 THE UNPREDICTABLE CERTAINTY able increasingly in libraries, schools, business establishments, and other public centers where PCs can be utilized by many. Kiosks provide a means for access in public places, although usually for a specified set of services accessed through specialized interfaces (and with less privacy than is possible in the home or individual office)
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From page 43... ...
In a white paper, Allen Ecker and Graham Mobley voice the expectation that digital set-top boxes will "also have analog tuning capability because you do not want to do away with the analog services that are currently providing most of the revenues that cable systems enjoy, and most of the consumer demand at the current time." Advanced analog set-top boxes have the capability of sending digital applications such as on-screen displays of program guides, virtual channel information, and other digital
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From page 44... ...
In summary, an upgrade of the cable plants to HFC, coupled with the development of advanced consumer systems, should allow for advanced television services and an expanded use of broadband networks reaching the home. While this will provide added business opportunities for the service providers, it is highly likely that the role of the television will continue to be what it is today: an entertainment device (CSTB, 1995c)
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The Telephone and Other Access Devices With about 94 percent of all U.S. households having telephone service, telephones rival televisions as the most widely used device for gaining access to the NII and will continue in that capacity for the foreseeable future.
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that could be rented and one general part that could be purchased with features to meet the needs of the consumer (see Figure 2.2~.30 In the forum, Mobley explained that a network interface module would be necessary "in order to come up with a box that a consumer can buy and know would be compatible in the future." The final phase of integration would be a fully integrated home unit or home set of equipment that would connect broadband PC modems to the cable system, provide for power consumption monitoring, support telephony, and provide access to digital interactive entertainment. According to Ecker and Mobley, the rate at which full integration occurs will be governed by a number of factors, including migration to digital transmission, development of multimedia operating systems and user interfaces to support multiple applications, design for "full interoperability at critical interfaces and ito]
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Currently such units do exist but Hey are quite expensive, in part because of the high-denshy integrated circuits needed to handle He Complex digital and analog signal processing inherent ~ any Interactive term~at'~1 WHAT INCREASING OSE OF GENERAL-ACCESS DEVICES I~PL~S FOR NETWORKING TECHNOLOGY DEPLOYMENT The increasing use of general-access devices such as PCs has implicahons for architecture, facilities, and service offerings (see Box 2 9~. Also important are basic expect~hons Gout how access devices Dig be used and by whom, including the degree of end-user control over bandwidth and content selection.
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49 1 > cn o ~ - o .c E I E o C: .
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so THE UNPREDICTABLE CERTAINTY
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For example, inherent extra capacity in the television vertical blanking interval is now being used by service providers to carry content other than conventional broadcasting, from program-guide information to Web pages linked to broadcasts through the Intercast technology. Yet even with Intercast, a telephone return path is needed for interactive applications.32 Many contributors identified ISDN, which offers a data rate of 128 kbps, as the next obvious step in upgrading link speed to the home.
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to have network access simultaneously without having to sign up for multiple service connections. Increasingly, ISDN and conventional telephony modems are being used from the home to carry data packets exactly for this purpose.
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It bears on lower physical and services levels of the architecture as well as middleware and application levels. The challenges of providing for nomadicity were outlined in forum comments and in a white paper by Leonard Kleinrock; see Box 2.10.
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CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS As outlined above and based on many inputs, the steering committee concluded that the following capabilities are essential service features of an information infrastructure evolving to meet end users' varied and in
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Comments by representatives of various user domains suggested concern about two alternative and undesirable prospects. On the one hand, decisions regarding financing, timing, bandwidth, symmetry, standards, services, and virtually every other aspect of residential and small-business access appear to many to be driven today by the presumption that home entertainment is the residential "killer app." Industry and government service representatives, concerned about their business or functional needs, are unsure what will result under this scenario.
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From page 56... ...
A number of developments point to progress in the area: the Advanced Television Systems proceeding at the FCC is likely to settle on a wide range of characteristics of digital systems for broadcast television,37 the preponderance of which will apply to all methods of network distribution; MPEG-2, while not a complete system, has standardized a wide range of digital video characteristics, and the Advanced Television standard is expected to be consistent with MPEG-2; telephone companies have begun the process of procuring video equipment, several settling on an architectural structure consistent with that described in the white paper by Ecker and Mobley and based on a separation of security and network functionality into two parts-network equipment (a network interface module) and other features in consumer equipment (a digital entertainment terminal)
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From page 57... ...
Wendell Bailey and lames Chiddix observe in a white paper that the networks being deployed are sufficiently general-purpose that they could support other applications besides video entertainment if the market demands them. For example, Time Warner is now providing wireline telephone service to customers in Rochester, New York, in competition with the incumbent telephone carrier.
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11. According to Irene Greif, Lotus Development Corp.
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As noted in the project white paper by Randy Katz et al., those applications involve small numbers of dedicated (and motivated) users, but they help to validate the promise of information technology and illuminate domain-specific challenges.
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26. The white papers by Robert Roche and Mary Madigan give details.
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Since 93 percent of homes are passed by cable service, further deployment of coax access, as for HFC, is relatively easy in these neighborhoods. The evolution of traditional cable systems to hybrid fiber coaxial cable increases the potential for provision of advanced network services with higher bandwidths.
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From page 62... ...
62 THE UNPREDICTABLE CERTAINTY sion of only changed portions rather than the entirety of files) as well as remote control of network nodes (e.g., printers)
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