of computing and media devices everywhere and supporting the freest possible ... munications Magazine for their patient and capable support. We wish to ...
GUEST EDITORIAL
ocial Aspects of Emerging Information Infrastructures Raymond Pickholtz
he construction and widespread use of information networking infrastructure, within countries and across national boundaries, is raising both expectations and concerns. How are the traditional communications operators and entrepreneurial access and services providers collaborating or competing on infrastructure development, and what are the implications for the openness and ubiquity of access? Will information infrastructure further exacerbate the gap between the information “rich” and “poor,” or will it provide significant access for the less wealthy and educated people of the world? How is information infrastructure changing social and economic activities, the latter including paradigms of markets and of group activities within and among economic entities? What are the platforms or mechanisms for future information services, and how consistent or evolutionary are they with traditional mechanisms such as paper publishing? What is the meaning of having tremendously increased access to information, and does it imply enhanced wisdom or even significantly enhanced knowledge and ability to take constructive actions? Are information access and dissemination facilities, first and foremost the World Wide Web, closer to publishing or to broadcasting (if either), with large implications for the social acceptability of government censorship and regulation? This Feature Topic offers six articles, by authors from five countries, that touch on most, if not all, of these issues. Koichiro Hayashi’s overview of NTTs Open Network Declaration describes the evolution of policy in Japan’s large national public communications operator toward a much more open network in a national information infrastructure including many other access and services providers, and the challenges of implementing the new policy. Carlos Afonso reviews the development of Internet access services in Brazil by a unique partnership of a grass roots-oriented nongovernmental entity, an academic research network, and a United Nations agency, and the difficulties of coexistence with access services provided by Embratel, the national operator. Albert Bressand describes the phenomenon of “relations” in markets and organizations made possible by the linkages and services of information infrastructure, asserting that relations in themselves constitute a key element of economic activity. Martin Fransman attacks the difficult question of the value of more information in the electronic information world, perceiving ambiguities in the interpretation of user reactions to new capabilities and reiterating once again that information and knowledge are two different things. Tom Kalil, reflecting an enthusiasm in Washington
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Stephen Weinstein
Tetsuya Miki
for a “bottoms-up” evolution of information infrastructure, considers how information infrastructure can be leveraged by affinity communities to do things that individuals and organizations would otherwise consider impossible or uneconomical. And in the concluding article, Nobushiko Shimasaki suggests the range of terminals, information-providing facilities, and services classes that are relevant to the needs of knowledge workers and ordinary citizens. And what do we Guest Editors think? We believe that an open information infrastructure, accomodating billions of computing and media devices everywhere and supporting the freest possible evolution of community and ideas among human beings, is a vision that serves the interest of all. We communications professionals should not consider ourselves just technicians implementing today’s deliverables. We are uniquely positioned to aim technology toward broader access for entire populations and more profound and lasting goals, and it will be to our credit if we understand and consciously strive for those goals. We wish to express our thanks to Dr. Botaro Hirosaki of NEC, who stimulated this Feature Topic and continued to assist the editorial effort, and to the staff of IEEE Communications Magazine for their patient and capable support.
BIOGRAPHIES RAYMOND L. PICKHOLTZ [FI is a professor and former chairman of the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science a t The George Washington University, Washington, DC His research interests include multiple access for mobileand personal comunications, including CDMA; congestion control in high speed networks. secure communications; and image processing He received his Ph D from the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn, where he began his academic career after working at RCA and I n Labs. He has published scores of papers in major scientific journals, holds a number o f U.S. patents in communications, i s the editor for a book series, and is on the editorial board of several journals. He i s a Fellow of the Washington Academy df Sciences and the AAAS. He was President of the IEEE Communications Society during 1989-90.
STEPHEN E. WEINSTEIN LFI, a Fellow in NEC’s Princeton C&C Research Laboratory, explores broadband communication access networks, network control, and multimedia systems and applications. Ue recelved his 5.8.. M.5, and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from MIT, the University of Michigan, and UC Berkeley, respectively. He is 1996-97 President of the IEEE Communications Society and active in the Cross-Industry Working Team (XIWT) on the National Information Infrastructure and NSF activitles. He is author of Getting the Picture: A Guide to C A W a n d the New Electronic Media (IEEE Press, 1986). co-author of Data Communication Principles (Plenum, 1992), and is co-authoring a new book on multimedia systems. TETSUYA MiKi [ S ‘70-M ’70-SM ’951 received a B.E. degree from the University of ElectroCommunications, Tokyo, Japan in 1965, and M.E. and Ph. D. degrees from Tohoku University. Sendai, Japan, in 1967and 1970, respectively. Hejoined the ElectricaiCommunicatlon Laboratories o f NTT in 1970, where he was engaged in research and development o f high-speed digital transmission systems using coaxial cable, optical transmission systems, optical access systems, ATM transport systems, networkoperation systems and networkarchitecture From 1980 t o 1982, he was a senior staff engineer o f NTT Engineering Bureau, where he developed the first optical transmission systems for public networks in Japan. From 1992 t o 1995. he was the executive manager of the NTT Optical Network Systems Laboratories. In July 1995, he joined the Department of Electronic Engineering, University of Electro-Communications, where he is a full professor. His research interests are ATM networks, optical access networks, photonic networks, multimedia information communications, and social implications of advanced information communications.
IEEE Communications Magazine
July 1996
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