Two challenges face the administration. The first is to bring three diverse service environments together into an information infrastructure that integrates three different worlds: Knowledge Infrastructure … Integration Infrastructure … Telecommunications Infrastructure … The second policy challenge is to prove the incentives that will stimulate the creation of the services, public and private, that are so promising for the nation’s future.
Predictor: Branscomb, Lewis M.
Prediction, in context:The 1995 book “Public Access to the Internet,” edited by Brian Kahin and James Keller carries the chapter, “Balancing the Commercial and Public-Interest Visions of the NII” by Lewis Branscomb, director of the Program on Science, Technology and Public Policy at Harvard University and principal investigator of the Information Infrastructure Project. Branscomb writes: ”The promise of an information-rich society, supported by a digital electronic infrastructure, is both very compelling and disappointingly elusive … What is now required to realize the vision – both of the new applications and the new communications and computer services? Two challenges face the administration. The first is to bring three diverse service environments together into an information infrastructure that integrates three different worlds: Knowledge Infrastructure … Integration Infrastructure … Telecommunications Infrastructure … How can the openness, flexibility, interconnectivity, and low user cost seen by users of the Internet be preserved in networks that also serve the faster response times and higher reliability requirements of commercial information service? Will the entertainment-driven broadband capabilities emerging in the market also be able to support the needs of supercomputer applications in science and engineering? If the usage pricing common to many commercial services displace the access pricing of knowledge networks, will the values that have driven the growth of the Internet be lost of professional communities? How can the government leverage private investment and commercial markets in building information infrastructure and still achieve the goal of universal access to public services? The second policy challenge is to prove the incentives that will stimulate the creation of the services, public and private, that are so promising for the nation’s future. How will these new services be financed? What combination of public and private investments will be required? What incentives, standards, and regulations will best promote the establishment of the envisioned capabilities? Are policies needed to prevent the home-shopping and movie channels from suppressing or displacing these services (through inappropriate architecture or pricing policies) an merely expanding the scope of Newton Minow’s ‘vast wasteland’ of television?”
Date of prediction: January 1, 1995
Topic of prediction: Information Infrastructure
Subtopic: General
Name of publication: Public Access to the Internet (book)
Title, headline, chapter name: Balancing the Commercial and Public-Interest Visions of the NII
Quote Type: Direct quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
Pages 24-26
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Guarino, Jennifer Anne