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Information Technology for Development
JOHN S. MAYO
President Emeritus, AT&T Bell Laboratories
Recent developments in information technology will enable all countries-
and especially the developing nations-to leap into the Information Age. Hap-
pily, no longer must these countries watch the advances in communications and
information networking that they are seeking move forward one step at a time, as
might have been the case in the past. With this in mind, this paper will delve into
the possible impacts of the available information technology on developing coun-
tries. But any discussion of the role that information technology might play in
such countries first must be placed in context by examining the forces propelling
the emerging multimedia communications revolution and the evolution of the
information superhighway, including AT&T's vision of it.
THE FORCES DRIVING THE MULTIMEDIA REVOLUTION AND THE
EVOLUTION OF THE INFORMATION SUPERHIGHWAY
The key underlying information technologies are the prime drivers and the
major enablers behind the emerging multimedia communications revolution and
the paving of the information superhighway as well as a host of other advances
that together are changing the way in which people live, work, play, travel, and
communicate. Because these key information technologies are changing the work
and home environments, they also are helping to address consumer needs. In fact,
the more they can do, the more new products and services the consumer wants,
Dr. Mayo addressed the symposium via video conferencing from AT&T in Basking Ridge, New
Jersey.
137
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Marshaling Technology for Development
producing an upward spiral that has lasted over three decades and will surely last
at least one or two decades more.
But what are these key underlying information technologies? They are sili-
con chips, computing, photonics or lightwaves, and software. The technology
capabilities have been doubling every year in a number of such domains for
example, in computing and photonics and doubling every 18 months in silicon
chips. Even software once a "bottleneck" technology because of quality and
programmer-productivity problems-is beginning to advance rapidly in such
major areas as telecommunications because of advanced programming languages
and reuse of previously developed software modules. Such modules contribute to
programmer productivity because they can be used in more than one project, and
they improve quality because they have been tested.
Perhaps the most widely known example of technology advancements is the
explosive growth in the power of silicon chips one measure of which is the
number of transistors that can be crammed onto a chip the size of a fingernail.
This number, now in the millions, is moving steadily toward known physical
limits. In the early part of the next century, today's familiar solid-state devices
may mature, with transistors measuring about 400 atoms by 400 atoms each-the
smallest such transistors likely to operate reliably at room temperature. The new
frontier, then, will not be in making the devices smaller, but in using creatively
and economically the vast increase in complexity and power made possible by
this remarkable technology.
The amazing progress of silicon chips forms a microcosm of the broad thrust
of information technology and all the associated forces that are leading to the
multimedia communications revolution and the evolution of the information su-
perhighway. But what progress is being made in the related driving forces, and
what impacts are they having?
After the invention of the integrated circuit, every time the number of tran-
sistors on a silicon chip increased by a factor of a thousand, something had to be
reengineered-that is, something had to be radically changed or improved be-
cause it was a new ball game. As researchers headed toward the first thousand-
fold increase, the reengineering took the form of changing all of AT&T's design
processes, which had been based on discrete components. When the milestone of
a thousand transistors per chip was attained, the new digital circuitry was used by
AT&T to reengineer its products from analog to digital, as did many other indus-
tries. This early progress toward digital products, made possible by silicon chips
and software, brought about the digitalization of most systems and services-
both domestically and, more and more, globally-creating a powerful force that
is driving the information industry toward multimedia communications and the
information superhighway.
When, about a decade ago, researchers approached the milestone of a million
transistors per chip, powerful microcomputers became possible, along with all
the periphery related to them and the needed software systems. All this resulted in
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JOHN S. MAYO
139
an explosion of advanced communications services, forcing the antitrust process
that led to the reengineering of AT&T: from a company that provided largely
voice and data-on-voice telecommunications services to a company focused on
universal information services. The theme of universal information services is
voice, data, and images anywhere, anytime, with convenience and economy.
Such advanced services, provided on an increasingly intelligent global network,
constitute the beginning of multimedia communications, now emerging as the
revolution of the 1990s and beyond.
In this era of yet another thousand-fold increase in transistors per chip,
reengineering has extended beyond AT&T and toward the merging of the com-
munications, computer, consumer electronics, and entertainment industries. The
bringing together of these four industries has started out in the obvious ways-
that is, through joint projects, joint ventures, mergers, acquisitions and some new
start-up companies. This reengineering of the information industry appears to be
the next to the last step in the information revolution brought on by the invention
of the transistor.
The last step, and one that may go on forever, is the reengineering of soci-
ety of how people live, work, play, travel, and communicate-creating a whole
new way of life. For example, it will change education through distance learning
and school at home; it will change work life through virtual offices and work at
home; and it will diminish the need for people to transport themselves elsewhere
for work or such routine tasks as visiting and shopping. But social change as well
as technology will be needed to make many of these changes happen.
Another driving force toward multimedia communications and the informa-
tion superhighway is the worldwide push toward common standards and open,
user-friendly interfaces that will encourage global networking and maximum
interoperability and connectivity. Photonic or lightwave transmission facilities,
for example, will be based on the evolving international standard known as SDH
or synchronous digital hierarchy. Because SDH defines standard network inter-
faces, service providers and customers will be able to use equipment from many
different vendors without worrying about compatibility. This will facilitate the
upgrading of existing networks and the construction of new networks on a world-
wide basis. SDH also will provide efficient transport of broadband services and
will simplify networks. Similar standards in domestic networks will enable digi-
tal communications to the workplace and home and will make possible high data-
rate services.
The broadband integrated services digital network or B-ISDN is a new digi-
tal format as well as an international standard that supports such multiple services
as voice, data, and new video services over lightwave transmission facilities. This
development could introduce an exciting new era in global communications net-
working as equipment vendors and service providers adopt compatible standards
to provide sophisticated high-bandwidth, or high-information-capacity, services.
B-ISDN is currently defined at interface rates of 155 million bits per second and
622 million bits per second.
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At present, the force pacing behind the multimedia and information super-
highway revolution is not so much the technology as it is marketplace demands.
For the greater part of this century, the user willingly accepted whatever techno-
logical capabilities were available. Thus the telecommunications industry was
supplier-driven, and suppliers managed the evolution of the industry and the
information highway. But eventually the technology became so rich that it made
many more capabilities available than the user could accept that is, developers
were able to design a lot more products and services than customers were willing
to pay for. That marked the transition from a supplier-driven industry to today's
customer-driven industry from supplier push to marketplace pull. Globally, the
transfer and assimilation of information technology are combining with political
and regulatory forces such as the move toward the privatization of telecommu-
nications in both developed and developing countries to result in the growth of
ever-stronger competition in the provision of communications products and ser-
vices. Such emerging competition is another force driving the evolution of both
multimedia communications and the information superhighway. Moreover, pub-
lic policy is being challenged not just in the United States but also globally to
provide a framework within which that evolution can occur with full and fair
competition for all players.
THE MULTIMEDIA REVOLUTION
The pursuit of multimedia is placing social pressures on the evolution of the
information superhighway both in the United States and around the world. But
what exactly are multimedia? The term refers to information that combines more
than one medium, where the media can include speech, music, text, data, graph-
ics, fax, image, video, and animation. AT&T tends to focus on multimedia prod-
ucts and services that are connected over a communications and information
network. Examples of such networked multimedia communications range from
videotelephony and video conferencing; to real-time video on demand, interac-
tive video, and multimedia messaging; to remote collaborative work, interactive
information services such as electronic shopping, and multimedia education and
training. Eventually, advanced virtual reality services will enable people to indi-
rectly and remotely experience a place or an event in all dimensions.
Public-switched networks-or information highways can presently accom-
modate a wide array of networked multimedia communications, and the evolu-
tionary directions of those networks will enable them to handle an increasingly
vast range of such communications. Moreover, there is a potentially vast market
for multimedia hardware and supporting software. Although actual projections
differ widely, the most commonly quoted projection for the total worldwide
market for multimedia products and services is roughly $100 billion by the year
2000.
AT&T is playing a major role in facilitating the emerging multimedia revo
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lution as a service provider, as a provider of network products to local service
providers, and as a provider of products to end users. These are familiar roles for
AT&T, but it also is studying another, perhaps less familiar, major role in relation
to the multimedia revolution: that of "host" for a wide variety of digital content
and multimedia applications developed by others. Hosting is a function that
connects end users to the content they are seeking that is, it provides easy,
timely, and convenient access to personal communications, transactions, infor-
mation services, and entertainment via wired and wireless connections to tele-
phones, hand-held devices, computers, and eventually television sets. Indepen-
dent sources of this digital content eventually will range from publishers to large
movie studios to small cottage industry software houses.
The role of host illustrates one of the key challenges of the information
superhighway because openness of critical interfaces and global standards are
vital to the complex hosting function. The entertainment industry, for example,
must have software systems that are compatible with those of the hosting indus-
try, and these software systems, in turn, must be compatible with those of the
communications and information-networking industry, which then must be com-
patible with those for the customer-premises equipment industry.
The tremendous growth in available information and databases will then
stimulate the need for personal intelligent agents. Software programs activated by
electronic messages in the network, these "smart agents" find, access, process,
and deliver desired information to the customer. In fact, they can perform many
of the time-consuming tasks that have discouraged a number of users from taking
advantage of on-line services and the emerging electronic marketplace. One fea-
ture of AT&T's recently announced enhanced network service, AT&T
PersonaLink Services, these smart agents can make shopping for the best mort-
gage, or finding the best new car deal, or finding out which store has a particular
sought-after item much easier by avoiding the people at the interface who add
negative value. For example, a replacement part is needed, but two calls to the
store that might have it produce no satisfactory response. A trip to the store and a
wait in line then produce a salesperson who queries the store's database and says,
"We don't have it in stock." A smart agent could have queried the store's data-
base and saved the store and the customer a big investment in a zero-revenue
operation. There was never a problem with the database; the problem was the
people who were inadvertently in the way of the customer's ability to access it-
adding negative value but diligently trying to do their jobs. A smart agent simply
could have done it better.
On an even more personal level, people who are geographically apart in the
age of multimedia communications will not, for example, just play games to-
gether over networks; they will visit and build their relationships. Consumers and
business associates will seek new relationships based on "telepresence," a new
type of community, and a social experience independent of geography. This
potential for interactive networks is quite unlike that found in the proposed avail
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Marshaling Technology for Development
ability in the United States of 500 preprogrammed TV channels; rather people
will have the freedom to choose any subject or service from the intelligent termi-
nals in their homes and offices. Indeed, they will be able to network clusters of
friends or associates to enjoy such services as a group.
Networked multimedia communications will dramatically change the nature
of work and therefore will have a broad impact on business first in developed
nations and eventually in developing nations. Video conferencing, for example,
will enhance productivity, save time, and reduce travel. And current develop-
ments in multimedia telephony are making the possibility of remote collaborative
work more and more realistic. In a few years, for example, a person working in
real time with colleagues or suppliers in branch offices in New York, Hong Kong,
Paris, and Sydney could accomplish the combined task of producing printed
materials, presentation slides, and a videotape introducing a new product line.
AT&T'S VISION OF THE INFORMATION SUPERHIGHWAY
As noted earlier, the pursuit of multimedia communications is driving social
issues related to the evolution of the information superhighway. AT&T envisions
that the information superhighway will bring people together, giving them easy
access to each other and to the information and services they want and need-
anytime, anywhere. According to this view, the information superhighway is a
seamless web of communications and information networks together with other
elements of the national information infrastructure, such as computers, databases,
and consumer electronics- that will put vast amounts of information at the fin-
gertips of a variety of users. The information superhighway is, quite simply, a
vast interoperable network of networks embracing local, long-distance, and glo-
bal networks; wireless; broadcast and cable; and satellites. In addition, the infor-
mation superhighway embraces the Internet, as well as the test bedsi associated
with the High-Performance Computing Initiative2 such as the experimental
communications network known as the Blanca test bed with which AT&T is
associated. The information superhighway is not a uniform end-to-end network
developed and operated by government or any one company. It is the totality of
networks in the nation, interconnected domestically and globally. And it is an
important part of the evolving global information superhighway.
THE IMPACTS OF TECHNOLOGY TRENDS
ON DEVELOPING NATIONS
Advanced information technology trends, multimedia communications, and
the information superhighway will have a variety of broad, beneficial social
impacts on developing nations. Advanced communications, growing in ubiquity,
could slow the migration of rural people to urban areas a traditional problem in
such countries as the People's Republic of China. For example, people living in
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rural areas would be less inclined to move to the cities if advanced communica-
tions systems gave them access to jobs and sophisticated social services where
they already live. In the United States, the pervasive communications infrastruc-
ture has enabled information-intensive businesses to flourish anywhere in the
country. The information superhighway even could alleviate congestion and com-
muter traffic pollution in cities by making telecommuting possible by bringing
good jobs to people wherever they are. The work-at-home movement is gaining
momentum, and trials with certain kinds of jobs show that employees can be even
more highly productive without leaving their homes. One side benefit here is
reduced costs for urban office space.
Information technology also could revolutionize education and eliminate
differences in quality between rural and urban education systems by enabling a
limited number of the very best teachers and professors to reach huge numbers of
students. Both students and teachers could be located practically anywhere in
"virtual" classrooms, and they could enhance learning by accessing multimedia
network databases on a great variety of content areas.
Information superhighways also could revolutionize medical care by helping
to deliver high-quality medical care far from large population centers. Advanced
communications would permit frequent meetings between rural health workers
and physicians located in more populated areas. The same capability would per-
mit direct doctor-to-patient consultation and follow-up.
Advances in information technology also are stitching together a truly global
society and a global economy in which developing nations would be able to
participate fully. Peoples and countries would be able to retain their ethnic and
cultural identities, yet at the same time communicate, transact, and interact
seamlessly across geographic and political boundaries. Within political bound-
aries, a modern information infrastructure would help to strengthen the ties that
hold a nation's people together. In a large country such as China, for example, the
huge distances between cities and regions and the enormous complexity of re-
gional dialects have made communication among the Chinese people exception-
ally difficult. Thus the information superhighway could help to lessen both the
obstacle of distance and the barrier of language. Information technology also will
eventually make possible real-time translation of languages (speech in one lan-
guage is automatically translated into another language and vice versa).
In addition to these social impacts, the key information technology trends,
multimedia communications, and the information superhighway will have some
broad public policy impacts on developing nations. For example, in general,
investment in communications infrastructure contributes significantly to a
nation's overall economic development. Fortunately, the new technologies in
which developing countries would be investing are becoming more and more
cost-effective, and in choosing the technology path that will move them most
directly into the Information Age, these countries will have the opportunity to
"leapfrog" many of the older technologies that preceded today's advanced net
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work systems for example, to install glass fiber in local distribution networks.
Indeed, the technology is available to actually "jump-start" a developing nation.
For example, cellular radio can provide telephony almost overnight and serve
large markets while the fiber-optic infrastructure is put in place. But any such
investments in physical infrastructure also will require a heavy investment in the
development of the human infrastructure. The global leaders of the twenty-first
century will be those countries that have invested not only in the right technolo-
gies, but also in the intellectual growth of the people who will use them.
Information technology is vital as well to economic reform and development
and to attracting and meeting the needs of foreign investors. In the area of finan-
cial management, for example, information technology could enable a country to
move away from a cash economy to one in which electronic transactions not only
are faster, but also provide much greater visibility into economic activity.
Finally, information technology would both facilitate and complicate the job
of governing. It would facilitate by making available to decision makers vastly
expanded resources of timely information. And it would complicate by greatly
expanding the numbers of people who would be informed about important issues
and who inevitably would want to play a role in deciding them.
In the United States, the government has played a crucial role in nurturing
rapid technological progress, as well as the rapid application of new technologies
in the marketplace. In the communications sector, for example, the government
has established a clear set of national objectives such as universal service, techno-
logical leadership, and broadband capability into all population centers. The gov-
ernment also has created a strong, independent regulatory structure designed to
ensure that private companies serve the public interest in a fair and competitive
marketplace, although there is still a way to go toward genuine and effective
competition in the local exchange. Many, if not most, developing nations are still
evolving their policies, laws, and regulations governing the communications in-
dustry a very important task.
In summary, rich information technology, the worldwide push toward global
standards, ever-increasing customer demands, and growing global competition
are the key forces driving the emerging multimedia communications revolution
and the evolution of a information superhighway-developments that promise a
broad range of Information Age benefits to virtually every citizen of the United
States. They also promise to extend these Information Age benefits to virtually
every citizen of the world, including the developing nations.
NOTES
1. A test bed is a technical trial of leading-edge technology in order to evaluate the technology
and its application.
2. The High-Performance Computing Initiative is a U.S. government initiative that funds a
number of programs aimed primarily at improving computing.
Representative terms from entire chapter:
multimedia communications