Most of the cost is in the end terminal. Does [universal service] mean that every user gets a Cray (supercomputer)? Does that mean everyone gets a free course on how to set it up and use it? This isn’t the phone, where you pick up and stick it on your ear – there are significant skills required.
Predictor: Rutkowski, Anthony Michael
Prediction, in context:In a 1995 article in CQ Researcher, Charles Clark quotes Internet Society Executive Director Anthony Rutkowski as he addresses the issue of universal service. Clark writes: ”Should the Internet be subsidized to guarantee universal service? … the widening gap between information haves and have-nots … has been dubbed ‘the civil rights and economic rights issue of the 21st century,’ ‘information apartheid’ and ‘electronic redlining.’ Currently, only 10 percent of Americans have the know-how and $1,000-plus worth of equipment – computer, modem, telephone connection and gateway software – needed to cruise the information superhighway … Only 20 percent of public libraries are hooked to the Internet, according to the ALA [American Library Association], the vast majority of them in urban areas. Only 12 percent of the classrooms in U.S. schools have a telephone jack, but only 4 percent of all classrooms are wired to the Internet, according to the National Education Association … The term ‘universal service’ in the context of the Internet is almost irrelevant, says Rutkowski. ‘Most of the cost is in the end terminal. Does [universal service] mean that every user gets a Cray (supercomputer)? Does that mean everyone gets a free course on how to set it up and use it? This isn’t the phone, where you pick up and stick it on your ear – there are significant skills required.'”
Biography:Anthony Michael (Tony) Rutkowski was a lawyer and engineer who was an executive director of the Internet Society during some key years of development in the 1990s. (Technology Developer/Administrator.)
Date of prediction: June 1, 1995
Topic of prediction: Information Infrastructure
Subtopic: Universal Service
Name of publication: CQ Researcher
Title, headline, chapter name: Regulating the Internet
Quote Type: Direct quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
http://library.cqpress.com/cqresearcher/search.php
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Anderson, Janna Quitney