Elon University

Subtopic: General

Balancing the Commercial and Public-Interest Visions of the NII

t seems likely that the enormous consumer markets for electronic entertainment and for voice communications will dominate the modest resources invested in the many networks that make up the Internet and the bulletin board and other innovative information services accessible through the Internet. Thus the first responsibility of the Information Infrastructure Task Force is to assign responsibilities and formulate legislation to set policies, regulations and standards that ensure that the vision of a wired, information-rich nation is not obscured by the much larger emerging electronic entertainment markets.

Balancing the Commercial and Public-Interest Visions of the NII

These new capabilities can evolve in either of two directions. They can provide the broadband access to the “last mile” – the connection to the home – thus extending the Internet vision to broadband access to anyone with a TV set. Or they can see the vision of a better informed, more efficient and democratic society overtaken by saturation of viewer attention by access to home shopping and a choice among 10,000 movies.

Balancing the Commercial and Public-Interest Visions of the NII

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.

Whatever Happened to the Information Revolution in the Workplace?

Improvements in IT enable us to gather, store and transmit information in vast quantity, but not to interpret it. But what are we going to do with all that information? We have plenty of information technology – what is perhaps needed now is more intelligence technology, to help make sense of the growing volume of information stored in the form of statistical data, documents, messages, and so on.

Whatever Happened to the Information Revolution in the Workplace?

The argument that developments in consumer electronics, computers and telecommunications will dramatically alter the nature of economic and social activity in the home is not supported by the available evidence … A succession of revolutionary “homes of the future” incorporating various “home automation” systems have been built in the U.S. and Europe in recent decades, but by and large they have left consumers cold.

Will There Be a Job for Me in the New Information Age?

If too many workers are let go or marginalized into jobs without pension benefits, the capitalist system is likely to collapse slowly in on itself as employers drain it of the workers’ funds necessary for new capital investments. In the final analysis, sharing the vast productivity gains of the Information Age is absolutely essential to guarantee the well-being of management, stockholders, labor, and the economy as a while. Sadly, while our politicians gush over the great technological breakthroughs that lie ahead in cyberspace, not a single elected official, in either political party, is raising the critical question of how we can ensure that the productivity gains of the Information Age are shared equitably.

Will There Be a Job for Me in the New Information Age?

The Information Age may present difficulties for the captains of industry … By replacing more and more workers with machines, employers will eventually come up against the two economic Achilles’ heels of the Information Age. The first is a simple problem of supply and demand: If mass numbers of people are underemployed or unemployed, who’s going to buy the flood of products and services being churned out? The second Achilles’ heel for business – and one never talked about – is the effect on capital accumulation when vast numbers of employees are let go or hired on a temporary basis so that employers can avoid paying out benefits – especially pension fund benefits. As it turns out, pension funds, now worth more than $5 trillion in the United States alone, keep much of the capitalist system afloat.

Will There Be a Job for Me in the New Information Age?

Many of the disaffected white men who make up ultraright-wing organizations are high school or community college graduates with limited skills who are forced to compete for a diminishing number of agricultural, manufacturing, and service jobs … The new militants view the government and law enforcement agencies as the enemy. They see a grand conspiracy to deny them their basic freedoms and constitutional rights. And they are arming themselves for a revolution.

Sex & the Superhighway

The superhighway – or hypeway, as one skeptic calls it – is supposed to knit our computer, television and telephones into networks that will allows us to work, shop and run errands in ‘virtual communities’ without ever leaving our armchairs. All this activity is expected to generate a mind-boggling $3.5 trillion global-communications industry by the end of the century, according to no less an expert than John Sculley, the former CEO of Apple Computer. He might add that it could be rocky getting there: He himself left Apple for a job that didn’t pan out.