Chapter 17: Gazing into the future

================================== Thoughts about things to come. Newspaper of the future --------------------------- Some years ago, Nicholas Negroponte of Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said that today's newspapers are old-fashioned and soon to be replaced by electronic "ultra personal" newspapers. "If the purpose is to sell news," he said, then it must be completely wrong to sell newspapers. Personally, I think that it is a dreadful way of receiving the news." MIT's Media Laboratory had developed a new type of electronic newspaper. Daily, it delivered personalized news to each researcher. The newspaper was "written" by a computer that searched through the news services' cables and other news sources according to each person's interest profile. The system could present the stories on paper or on screen. It could convert them to speech, so that the "reader" could listen to the news in the car or the shower. In a tailor-made electronic newspaper, personal news makes big headlines. If you are off for San Francisco tomorrow, the weather forecasts for this city is front page news. Email from your son will also get a prominent place. "What counts in my newspaper is what I consider newsworthy," said Negroponte. He claimed that the personal newspaper is a way of getting a grip on the information explosion. "We cannot do it the old way anymore. We need other agents that can do prereading for us. In this case, the computer happens to be our agent." The technology is already here. Anyone can design similar papers using powerful communication programs with extensive script features. I have tried. My test edition of The Saltrod Daily News did not convert news to sound. It did not look like a newspaper page on my screen. Not because it was impossible. I simply did not feel these 'extras' worth the effort. My personal interest profile was taken care of by my scripts. If I wanted news, the "news processor" went to work and "printed" a new edition. On Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, I got an "extended edition." This is a section from my first edition: "Front page," Thursday, November 21. Under the headline News From Tokyo, the following items: TOSHIBA TO MARKET INEXPENSIVE PORTABLE WORD PROCESSOR TOHOKU UNIVERSITY CONSTRUCTING SEMICONDUCTOR RESEARCH LAB MEITEC, U.S. FIRM TO JOINTLY MARKET COMPUTER PRINTER INFO TOSHIBA TO SUPPLY OFFICE EQUIPMENT TO OLIVETTI NISSAN DEVELOPS PAINT INSPECTION ROBOT MADE-TO-ORDER POCKET COMPUTER FROM CASIO These articles were captured from Kyoto News Service through Down Jones/News Retrieval. The column with news from the United States had stories from NEWSBYTES newsletters: * DAY ONE COMDEX. * IBM'S PRE ANNOUNCEMENT OF "CLAMSHELL" * AT&T TO JUMP IN SOONER WITH LAPTOP COMPUTER * COMMODORE THIRD CONSECUTIVE QUARTERLY LOSS * 2 ZENITH UNVEILS TOUCH-SCREEN * HP's EARNINGS DROP Hot News From England came from several sources, including Financial Times, and Reuters (in CompuServe's UK News). Headlines read: * THE CHRISTMAS SELLING WAR * BIG MACS GOING CHEAP TO UNIVERSITY STUDENTS "Page 2" was dedicated to technology intelligence. "Page 3" had stories about telecommunications, mainly collected from NewsNet's newsletters. "Page 4" had stories about personal computer applications. As the cost of communicating and using online services continues to decrease, many people will be able to do the same. This is where we are heading. Some people say it is too difficult to read news on a computer screen. Maybe so, but pay attention to what is happening in notebook computers. This paragraph was written on a small PC by the fireplace in my living room. The computer is hardly any larger or heavier than a book. (Sources for monitoring notebook trends: NEWSBYTES' IBM and Apple reports, CompuServe's Online Today, and IBM Hardware Forum.) Electronic news by radio ------------------------ If costs were of no concern, then your applications of the online world would probably change considerably. Pay attention, as we are moving fast in that direction. Radio is one of the supporting technologies. It is used to deliver Usenet newsgroup to bulletin boards (example: PageSat Inc. of Palo Alto, U.S.A.) Also, consider this: Businesses need a constant flow of news to remain competitive. Desktop Data Inc. (tel. +1-617-890-0042) markets a real-time news service called NewsEDGE in the United States and Europe. They call it "live news processing." Annual subscriptions start at US$20,000 for ten users (1993). NewsEDGE continuously collects news from more than 100 news wires, including sources like PR Newswire, Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News, Dow Jones News Service, Dow Jones Professional Investor Report and Reuters Financial News. The stories are "packaged" and immediately feed to customers' personal computers and workstations by FM, satellite, or X.25 broadcast: * All news stories are integrated in a live news stream all day long, * The NewsEdge software manages the simultaneous receipt of news from multiple services, and alerts users to stories that match their individual interest profiles. It also maintains a full-text database of the most recent 250,000 stories on the user's server for quick searching. Packet radio ------------ A global amateur radio network allows users to modem around the world, and even in outer space. Its users never get a telephone bill. There are over 700 packet radio based bulletin boards (PBBS). They are interconnected by short wave radio, VHF, UHF, and satellite links. Technology aside, they look and feel just like standard bulletin boards. Once you have the equipment, can afford the electricity to power it up, and the time it takes to get a radio amateur license, communication itself is free. Packet radio equipment sells in the United States for less than US$ 750. This will give you a radio (VHR tranceiver), antenna, cable for connecting the antenna to the radio, and a controller (TNC - Terminal Node Controller). Most PBBS systems are connected to a network of packet radio based boards. Many amateurs use 1200 bps, but speeds of up to 56,000 bps are being used on higher frequencies (the 420-450 MHz band in the United States). Hams are working on real-time digitized voice communications, still-frame (and even moving) graphics, and live multiplayer games. In some countries, there are also gateways available to terrestrial public and commercial networks, such as CompuServe, and Usenet. Packet radio is demonstrated as a feasible technology for wireless extension of the Internet. Radio and satellites are being used to help countries in the Third World. Volunteers in Technical Assistance (VITA), a private, nonprofit organization, is one of those concerned with technology transfers in humanitarian assistance to these countries. VITA's portable packet radio system was used for global email after a volcanic eruption in the Philippines in 1991. Today, the emphasis is on Africa. VITA's "space mailbox" passes over each single point of the earth twice every 25 hours at an altitude of 800 kilometers. When the satellite is over a ground station, the station sends files and messages for storage in the satellite's computer memory and receives incoming mail. The cost of ground station operation is based on solar energy batteries, and therefore relatively cheap. To learn more about VITA's projects, subscribe to their mailing list by email to [email protected]. Use the command SUB DEVEL-L . For more general information about packet radio, check out HamNet on CompuServe, and especially its library 9. Retrieve the file 'packet_radio' (Packet radio in earth and space environments for relief and development) from GNET's archive (see chapter 7). ILINK has an HAMRADIO conference. There is a packet radio mailing list at [email protected] (write PACKET- RADIO-REQUEST@@WSMR-SIMTEL20.ARMY.MIL to subscribe). Usenet has rec.radio.amateur.packet (Discussion about packet radio setups), and various other rec.radio conferences. There is HAM_TECH on FidoNet, and Ham Radio under Science on EXEC-PC. The American Radio Relay League (AARL) operates an Internet information service called the ARRL Information Server. To learn how to use it, send email to [email protected] with the word HELP in the body of the text. Cable TV -------- Expect Cable TV networks to grow in importance as electronic high- ways, to offer gateways into the Internet and others, and to get interconnected not unlike the Internet itself. Example: Continental Cablevision Inc. (U.S.A.) lets customers plug PCs and a special modem directly into its cable lines to link up with the Internet. The cable link bypasses local phone hookups and provide the capability to download whole books and other information at speeds up to 10 million bits per second. Electronic mail on the move --------------------------- For some time, we have been witnessing a battle between giants. On one side, the national telephone companies have been pushing X.400 backed by CCITT, and software companies like Lotus, Novell, and Microsoft. On the other side, CompuServe, Dialcom, MCI Mail, GEISCO, Sprint, and others have been fighting their wars. Nobody really thought much about the Internet, until suddenly, it was there for everybody. The incident has changed the global email scene fundamentally. One thing seems reasonably certain: that the Internet will grow. In late 1992, the president of the Internet Society (Reston, Va., U.S.A.) made the following prediction: ".. by the year 2000 the Internet will consist of some 100 million hosts, 3 million networks, and 1 billion users (close to the current population of the People's Republic of China). Much of this growth will certainly come from commercial traffic." We, the users, are the winners. Most online services now understand that global exchange of email is a requirement, and that they must connect to the Internet. Meanwhile, wild things are taking place in the grassroots arena: * Thousands of new bulletin boards are being connected to grassroots networks like FidoNet (which in turn is connected to the Internet for exchange of mail). * Thousands of bulletin boards are being hooked directly into the Internet (and Usenet) offering such access to users at stunning rates. * The BBSes are bringing email up to a new level by letting us use offline readers, and other types of powerful mail handling software. Email will never be the same. Cheaper and better communications --------------------------------- During Christmas 1987, a guru said that once the 9600 bps V.32 modems fell below the US$1,200 level, they would create a new standard. Today, such modems can be bought at prices lower than US$200. In many countries, 14,400 bits/s modems are already the preferred choice. Wild dreams get real -------------------- In the future, we will be able to do several things simultaneously on the same telephone line. This is what the promised land of ISDN (Integrated Service Digital Networks) is supposed to give us. Some users already have this capability. They write and talk on the same line using pictures, music, video, fax, voice and data. ISDN is supposed to let us use services that are not generally available today. Here are some key words: * Chats, with the option of having pictures of the people we are talking to up on our local screen (for example in a window, each time he or she is saying something). Eventually, we may get the pictures in 3-D. * Database searches in text and pictures, with displays of both. * Electronic transfers of video/movies over a telephone line (fractal image compression technology may give us another online revolution). Imagine dances filmed by ethnologists at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., or an educational film about the laps in northern Norway from an information provider called the Norwegian Broadcasting Corp. The "Internet Talk Radio" is already delivering programs by anonymous ftp (e.g., through ftp.nau.edu in the directory /talk-radio). * Online amusement parks with group plays, creative offerings (drawing, painting, building of 3-D electronic sculptures), shopping (with "live" people presenting merchandise and good pictures of the offerings, test drives, etc.), casino (with real prizes), theater with live performance, online "dressing rooms" (submit a 2-D picture of yourself, and play with your looks), online car driving schools (drive a car through Tokyo or New York, or go on safari). The Sierra Network has been playing around with these ideas for quite some time. * Your favorite books, old as new, available for on-screen reading or searching in full text. Remember, many libraries have no room to store all the new books that they receive. Also, wear and tear tend to destroy books after some time. Many books are already available online, including this one. * Instant access to hundreds of thousands of 'data cottages'. These are computers in private homes of people around the world set up for remote access. With the technical advances in the art of transferring pictures, some of these may grow to become tiny online "television stations." These wild ideas are already here, but it will take time before they are generally available. New networks need to be in place. New and more powerful communications equipment has to be provided. Farther down the road, we can see the contours of speech-based electronic conferences with automatic translation to and from the participants' languages. Entries will be stored as text in a form that allows for advanced online searching. We may have a choice between the following: * To use voice when entering messages, rather than entering them through the keyboard. The ability to mix speech, text, sound and pictures (single frames or live pictures). * Messages are delivered to you by voice, as text or as a combination of these (like in a lecture with visual aids). * Text and voice can be converted to a basic text, which then may be converted to other languages, and forwarded to its destination as text or voice. One world --------- Within the Internet, the idea of "the network as one, large computer" has already given birth to many special services, like gopher and WAIS. Potentially, we will be able to find and retrieve information from anywhere on the global grid of connected systems. Bulletin boards have commenced to offer grassroots features modeled after telnet and ftp. These alternatives may even end up being better and more productive than the interactive commands offered "inside" the Internet. The global integration of online services will continue at full speed, and in different ways. Rates ----- There is a trend away from charging by the minute or hour. Many services convert to subscription prices, a fixed price by the month, quarter or year. Other services, among them some major database services, move toward a scheme where users only pay for what they get (no cure, no pay). MCI Mail was one of the first. There, you only pay when you send or read mail. On CompuServe's IQuest, you pay a fixed price for a fixed set of search results. Cheaper transfers of data ------------------------- Privatization of the national telephone monopolies has given us more alternatives. This will continue. Possible scenarios: * Major companies selling extra capacity from their own internal networks, * Telecommunications companies exporting their services at extra low prices, * Other pricing schemes (like a fixed amount per month with unlimited usage), * New technology (direct transmitting satellites, FM, etc.) So far, data transporters have been receiving a disproportionate share of the total costs. For example, the rate for accessing CompuServe from Norway through InfoNet is US$11.00, while using the service itself costs US$12.80 at 2400 bps. Increased global competition in data transportation is quickly changing this picture, supported by general access to the Internet. Prices will most likely continue their dramatic way toward zero. Powerful new search tools ------------------------- As the sheer quantity of information expands, the development of adequate finding tools is gaining momentum. Our major problem is how to use what we have access to. This is especially true on the Internet. Expect future personal information agents, called "knowbots," which will scan databases all over the online world for specific information at a user's bidding. This will make personal knowledge of where you need to go redundant. Artificial intelligence will increase the value of searches, as they can be based on your personal searching history since your first day as a user. Your personal information agents will make automatic decisions about what is important and what is not in a query. When you get information back, it will not just be in the normal chronological order. It will be ranked by what seems to be closest to the query. Sources for future studies -------------------------- It seems appropriate to end this chapter with some online services focusing on the future: Newsbytes has a section called Trends. The topic is computers and communications. ECHO has the free database Trend, the online edition of the Trend Monitor magazine. It contains short stories about the development within electronics and computers (log on to ECHO using the password TREND). Usenet has the newsgroup clari.news.trends (Surveys and trends). Why not complement what you find here by monitoring trends in associated areas (like music), to follow the development from different perspectives? The music forum RockNet on CompuServe has a section called Trends. CompuServe's Education Forum has the section Future Talk. What educators think about the future of online services (and education) is always interesting. The Well, based just outside Silicon Valley in the United States, has The Future conference. UUCP has info-futures. Its purpose is "to provide a speculative forum for analyzing current and likely events in technology as they will affect our near future in computing and related areas." (Contact: [email protected] for subscription.) Usenet has comp.society.futures about "Events in technology affecting future computing." It is tempting to add a list of conferences dedicated to science fiction, but I'll leave that pleasure to you. Have a nice trip! Appendix 1: List of selected online services ============================================ To make a list of online services is difficult. Services come and go. Addresses and access numbers are constantly changed. Only one thing is certain. Some of the details below will be outdated, when you read this. Affaersdata i Stockholm AB ------------------------- P.O. Box 3188, S-103 63 Stockholm, Sweden. Tel.: + 46 8 736 59 19. America Online -------------- has the CNN Newsroom (Turner Educational Services), The Washington Post, the National Geographic magazine, PC World and Macworld. AOL has tailor-made graphical user interfaces for Apple, Macintosh, and PC compatible computers, and about 300.000 users (in June 1993). Sending and receiving Internet mail is possible. Contact: America Online, 8619 Westwood Center Dr., Vienna, VA 22182-2285, USA. Phone: +1-703-448-8700. APC --- The Association for Progressive Communications (APC) is a worldwide partnership of member networks for peace and environmental users with host computers in several countries: Alternex (Brazil). Email: [email protected] Chasque (Uruguay). Email: [email protected] ComLink e.V (Germany). Email: [email protected] Ecuanex (Ecuador). Email: [email protected] GlasNet (Russia). Email: [email protected] GreenNet (England). Email: [email protected] Institute for Global Communications (U.S.A.), includes EcoNet, PeaceNet, ConflictNet, LaborNet. Email: [email protected] Nicarao - CRIES (Nicaragua). Email: [email protected] NordNet (Sweden). Email: [email protected] Pegasus (Australia). Email: [email protected] Web (Canada). Email: [email protected] While all these services are fee based, they bring a wealth of information on environmental preservation, peace (incl. Greenpeace Press Releases), human rights, grant-making foundations, Third World Resources, United Nations Information Service, Pesticide Information Service, and more. For information about APC, write to [email protected] , or APC International Secretariat, Rua Vincente de Souza, 29, 22251-070 Rio de Janeiro, BRASIL. Fax: +55-21-286-0541. For information about the PeaceNet World News Service, which delivers news digests directly to your email box, send a request to [email protected]. Bergen By Byte -------------- Norwegian online service with conferences and many files. Modem tel.: +47 05 323781. PDN (Datapak) address: 0 2422 450134. Telnet: oscar.bbb.no (192.124.156.38). English-language interface available. Annual subscription rates. You can register online. Limited free usage. BIBSYS ------ Book database operated by the Norwegian universities' libraries. Send Internet mail to [email protected] with your search word in the subject title of the message. Big Sky Telegraph ----------------- is an online community for educators, business people etc. living in rural areas in North America. Address: 710 South Atlantic, Dillon, Montana 59725, U.S.A. BITNET ------ "Because It's Time NETwork" started in 1981 as a small network for IBM computers in New York, U.S.A. Today, BITNET encompasses 3,284 host computers by academic and research institutions all over the world. It has around 243,016 users (source: Matrix News 1993) All connected hosts form a worldwide network using the NJE (Network Job Entry) protocols and with a single list of nodes. There is no single worldwide BITNET administration. Several national or regional bodies administer the network. The European part of BITNET is called EARN (European Academic Research Network), while the Canadian is called NetNorth. In Japan the name is AsiaNet. BITNET also has connections to South America. Other parts of the network have names like CAREN, ANSP, SCARNET, CEARN, GULFNET, HARNET, ECUANET, and RUNCOL. Normally, a BITNET email address looks like this: NOTRBCAT@INDYCMS The part to the left of the @-character is the users' mailbox code. The part to the right is the code of the mailbox computer. It is common for Internet users to refer to BITNET addresses like this: [email protected] . To send email from the Internet to BITNET, it has to be sent through special gateway computers. On many systems, this is taken care of automatically. You type [email protected], and your mailbox system does the rest. On some systems, the user must give routing information in the BITNET address. For example, North American mail to BITNET can be sent through the gateway center CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU . To make mail to NOTRBCAT go through this gateway, its mail address must be changed as follows: NOTRBCAT%[email protected] Explanation: The @ in the initial address is replaced with % . Then add the gateway routing: "[email protected]". If you must use a gateway in your address, always select one close to where you live. Ask your local postmaster for the correct addressing in your case. BITNET has many conferences. We call them discussion lists or mailing lists. The lists are usually administered by a computer program called LISTSERV. The dialog is based on redistribution of ordinary email by mailing lists. Consequently, it is simple for users of other networks to participate in BITNET conferences. A list of discussion lists (at present around 1,600 one-line descriptions) is available by email from [email protected]. Write the following command in the TEXT of your message: LIST GLOBAL [email protected] and NETMONTH (from [email protected]) distribute regular notices about new discussion lists. Subscribe to NEW-LIST by email to [email protected]. Use the following command: SUB NEW-LIST Your-first-name Your-last-name This is how we usually subscribe to discussion lists. Send your subscription commands to a LISTSERV close to where you live. The command "SENDME BITNET OVERVIEW" tells LISTSERV to send more information about the services. BIX --- is operated as a joint venture between General Videotex Corp. and the North American computer magazine BYTE (McGraw-Hill). To some extent, it mirrors what you can read on paper. BIX offers global Internet email, telnet and ftp, multiple conferences. In 1992, the service had about 50,000 members. The NUA address is 0310600157878. On Internet, telnet x25.bix.com . At the Username: prompt, enter BIX as a user name. At the second Username: prompt, enter NEW if you don't already have an account on the service. You can sign up for the service, and play during your first visit to the service. Read BYTE for more information, or write to General Videotex Corporation, 1030 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, MA 02138, USA. Phone: +1-617-354-4137. BRS --- Bibliographic Retrieval Services is owned by InfoPro Technologies (see below). BRS/After Dark is a service for PC users. It can be accessed during evenings and weekends at attractive rates. InfoPro offers connection through their own network in Europe, and through the Internet. BRS contains about 120 databases within research, business, news, and science. The service's strengths are medicine and health. Membership in BRS costs US$80 per year, plus hourly database usage charges. It is also available through CompuServe (at a different price). Contact in Europe: BRS Information Technologies, Achilles House, Western Avenue, London W3 OUA, England. Tel. +44 81 993