More Than Screen Deep Toward Every-Citizen Interfaces to the Nation's Information Infrastructure (1997) / Chapter Skim
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1 Introduction
1 Introduction
Pages 9-20
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From page 9... ...
Obvious trends are illustrated by activities on the World Wide Web and innovations in telephony and cable television networks, with improvements in network and device support for finding, viewing, or exchanging text and growth in audio and video exchange over alternative media. Although the most common examples relate to white-collar activities, the same technologies are beginning to reshape service and goods production jobs as well.
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From page 10... ...
One need only look at the roots of current graphical interfaces, notably the Apple Computer Macintosh operating system, which built on the earlier Xerox PARC SmallTalk and Alto systems and yet earlier work at SRI and RAND.4 Another example is the Internet, which can be traced to
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From page 11... ...
) is presented by the need to narrow the gap between the capabilities provided in today's interface products and the capabilities that computer science and interface design researchers believe are possible.5 Research that can contribute to advancing innovative concepts and that can promote better understanding of what technology works well to make interfaces more usable, useful, and accessible is the focus of this report.
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From page 12... ...
It overcomes the homogenization suggested by a term used early in the project, "ordinary citizen," but also includes people who are ordinary in the sense that they are not distinguished by special needs, such as accommodation of disabilities. The term opens up consideration not only of conventional office and household equipment and services but also of systems in production manufacturing and service environments, systems embedded in equipment designed for purposes other than computing and communications, and public access systems such as public kiosks.
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From page 13... ...
The Internet is a significant part of the NII, but it is important not to equate it with the much richer and more complex NII as a whole. The NII concept implies that the paradigm for the coming century is one of networked machines, collaborative computing, ubiquitous and possibly continuous access, and group interactions over networks of all kinds.8 Of course, interface improvement is not sufficient for maximizing the utility of the information infrastructure.
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From page 14... ...
In this context, the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Telecommunications Reform Act are recent examples of public policy interventions to promote more and easier use of the information infrastructure (and other facilities) by every citizen; the Telecommunications Reform Act, for example, contains language requiring that product design incorporate features enabling access by people with disabilities.9 ADDITIONAL COMMENTS There is a vital interaction between the shape of the technology and the public and private objectives for its use, drawing implicitly on ideas associated with universal service in telecommunications or equitable access more broadly viewed.
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From page 15... ...
A large variety of new technologies are being pioneered that could potentially address people's needs. They include speech recognition and generation, virtual reality and advanced graphics systems, haptic devices, advanced database query mechanisms, and intelligent agents, all aided by much faster processing and greater memory than were available before.
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From page 16... ...
Those differences reflect the inherent biases of personal concentration and investment in a given subdiscipline, as well as differential understanding and evaluation of what has and has not worked in the past, varying orientations to medium- and long-term time horizons, relative openness to new or synthetic ideas/approaches, diverging values and frameworks, and myriad other factors. The increasing scale and diversity of the research effort make it harder for people to know about and understand progress outside their own niche; uneven understanding can be constraining in an inherently multifaceted arena.
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From page 17... ...
The diversity in research outlooks evidenced in this project underscores both the value of fostering interdisciplinary research and the challenge of undertaking such collaborations. Progress toward achieving ECIs will involve basic research in theory, modeling, and conceptualization; experimental research involving evaluating, testing, and implementing artifacts; and empirical social science research assessing segments of the population and how people actually work with different systems.
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From page 18... ...
Broader deployment, if not ubiquity, and broader use allow for the economic and social benefits of what economists call network externalitiesindividuals gain value and appreciate networked systems more as more people become connected users. Even if advocacy based on the social or societal value of enhanced information infrastructures is premature, as some skeptics argue, the evidence for the promise of the technologies is great enough to make continued efforts to improve interfaces a wise national investment.
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From page 19... ...
the accessibility of computer-based products to meet varying needs. Hardware improvements have enabled faster computing speed, one of the key sources of advances found in commercial graphical and, to a lesser degree, speech recognition and synthesis user interfaces.
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From page 20... ...
11. This is central to the linkage with universal telecommunications service, a concept many seek to expand from telephony, and to the discussion of public access points, from network access computers in libraries to kiosks in shopping malls.
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