Gerstner Says Network Computing is IBM’s Future
Network-centric computing, the ability to link computers of all types and sizes, will have a significant impact on business, education, and individual communication.
Subtopic: General
Intranets Will Outstrip the Net
Growth potential for intranets will outpace the Internet in the future … Intranets will be easier to use overall, and companies will have an easier time quantifying the benefits and justifying their usage for internal communication and productivity enhancements … It’s unlikely that tens of millions of home users will jump online.
Check Printers Fear Online Banking
The nation’s largest check printers are reevaluating the way they do business because they predict that online banking is going to take off in the near future. About 60 billion checks are written annually in the United States and, according to check printer Deluxe Corporation, the numbers will decline in the next century. Company officials say they are in the process of closing plants and cutting staff to begin focusing on other ventures.
Abort, Retry, Fail: Renaming the Info Highway
[While the Information Superhighway is a bad name, it could be a great acronym, standing for] Interactive Network For Organizing, Retrieving, Manipulating, Accessing, And Transferring Information On National Systems, Unleashing Practically Every Rebellious Human Intelligence, Gratifying Hackers, Wiseacres, And Yahoos.
Top Ten Anagrams for ‘Information Superhighway’
The number one anagram for “Information Superhighway”: New utopia? Horrifying sham.
A Normative View of Networking Applications
Our determinations of policy and regulation governing the operation of these industries should be determined by first making explicit the long-term goals and objectives of networking technology within a societal context. What are the benefits that this technology can offer the society in the future? What are the dangers to our democratic values posed by the technology? How do our decisions aid in encouraging the realization of the benefits and the avoiding of the dangers? … We need to be anticipatory as opposed to being reactive … Current regulatory mechanisms may not be the ones that will allow us to realize some of the more desirable benefits of networking technology.
A Normative View of Networking Applications
There are two areas that we believe are critical for the future of the society. The first is the introduction of truly free and open-access information marketplaces in the electronic networking environment. If, as a society, we truly believe in the free-enterprise system, then this becomes an obvious normative objective for the society. Along with this is the obvious need to make sure common-carrier pricing for digital-data transmission becomes independent of volume discounts. The second area is the potential this technology holds for education, training, and life-long learning objectives. It should go without saying that the functioning of a democracy is related to the educational level of its citizenship.
A Normative View of Networking Applications
Surveillance poses a tremendous potential for abuse. The serious problems in this area arise from new ways of using the technology. For example, one could have a program that went around and scanned all the message traffic and all the content of private group conferences. No human would illegally observe these communications. The program would have an expert system that examined the content to determine if there was some reasonable probability that the communications were discussing an illegal act and report that fact to a law-enforcement group that could then seek a court order to actually obtain and read those communications.
A Normative View of Networking Applications
A free market and open marketplace for information and communication services will go a long way toward eliminating many potential abuses of networking … We could greatly improve effectiveness if we considered more appropriate marketplace mechanisms. For example, the growing problem of junk phone calls (solicitations) would be solved if receivers could charge a fee that they set for anyone phoning them. This would be a very easy marketplace mechanism on any electronic message service and go along way toward eliminating junk electronic mail … There is no technology bottleneck for users to be able to charge a fee for the “privilege” of others to send them mail. When one considers this, it would seem to be the more desirable objective for society than the one we have now with physical mail.
A Normative View of Networking Applications
The digital network completely eliminates the classical model of a newspaper. If one considers newspapers, magazines, and publishing as the “warehouse” function of information flow, then digital networking is likely to do the same thing to this industry that computer-based inventory systems did to the manufacturing warehousing industry in this country. That industry, today, is only a shadow of what it once was. There will be roles for individuals and small organizations that act as information “gatekeepers” and “brokers.” Those who are able to organize and filter information for the benefit of others will take on the functions of what newspapers and magazines provide today.