A truly national information infrastructure will be much harder to shape than was the Internet … The broader the conceptualization of the information infrastructure – the farther it extends to embrace information generation and use as well as transport – the greater the planning needed to make it all work together and the broader the relevant policy framework. The scale, scope, and visibility of “wiring up” not only the education and library communities, but also every home and public entity in the United States, present an enormous challenge. Compounding domestic conditions is the fact that whatever measures are taken in the United States must anticipate and sometimes respond to conditions in the foreign networks and infrastructures to which the U.S. infrastructure is and will continue to be interconnected.
Predictor: National Research Council
Prediction, in context:In 1994, the NRENaissance Committee, appointed by the Computer Science and Telecommunications Board of the National Research Council, produced a special report titled “Realizing the Information Future: The Internet and Beyond.” Among the committee members were Internet pioneers Leonard Kleinrock, David Clark, David Farber, Lawrence Landweber and Robert Kahn. The committee’s goal was to “study issues raised by the shift to a larger, more truly national networking capability.” Among its statements, it says: ”A truly national information infrastructure will be much harder to shape than was the Internet. The Internet arose in a vacuum with little awareness outside the research community, the National Science Foundation (NSF), and other federal research-oriented agencies of what it was and what it could do. Commercial telecommunications and information services, on the other hand, have developed as a result of both market forces and public policy influences ranging from the federal, state, and local regulations that affect telephone and cable television offerings and rates, all the way to the intellectual property protections that affect electronic publication. The broader the conceptualization of the information infrastructure – the farther it extends to embrace information generation and use as well as transport – the greater the planning needed to make it all work together and the broader the relevant policy framework. The scale, scope, and visibility of ‘wiring up’ not only the education and library communities, but also every home and public entity in the United States, present an enormous challenge. Compounding domestic conditions is the fact that whatever measures are taken in the United States must anticipate and sometimes respond to conditions in the foreign networks and infrastructures to which the U.S. infrastructure is and will continue to be interconnected. Ongoing investment aimed at the future NII and the imminent roll-out of infrastructure, together with the uncertainty surrounding the future of the Internet, force consideration now of plans to be made, steps to be taken, and challenging policy issues to be confronted in the development of a broadly useful U.S. information infrastructure.”
Date of prediction: January 1, 1994
Topic of prediction: Information Infrastructure
Subtopic: General
Name of publication: Realizing the Information Future: The Internet and Beyond
Title, headline, chapter name: U.S. Networking: The Past is Prologue
Quote Type: Direct quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
http://stills.nap.edu/html/rtif/
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Anderson, Janna Quitney