Clifford A. Lynch

This paper critically examines several popular assumptions about the national information infrastructure (NII) vision that I believe are not entirely consistent with the evidence available to date and current trends. These assumptions include the following:

• Ensuring universal access to the NII and the resulting benefits are largely synonymous with ensuring universal connectivity, as has been the case with the electrical power grid or the telephone system. If such universal connectivity can be provided, immediate benefits in terms of improved access to information resources and services will follow.

• The NII will greatly increase the public's (free) access to information. The public will access digital libraries that will supplant the functions of traditional (physical) libraries. The digital libraries on the NII will be enormous storehouses of information that will include (but not be limited to) much of the existing literature of the world. Forward-looking traditional libraries are already transforming themselves into such electronic storehouses.

• In the new environment of the NII, libraries will continue (and expand) their current role as the key providers of information to the public (regardless of economic status). Libraries will be the mechanism through which we will balance the increased commodization of information with the public's need to have access to information.

• Libraries will benefit greatly from the NII. The new technology will facilitate efficiencies in resource sharing that will help to alleviate the budget crises facing libraries of all types and will improve the quality of library service nationwide, in part by reducing geographically based inequities among libraries.

The NII enterprise has two components. One component is the upgrading of the existing national telecommunications infrastructure to incorporate very high speed computer-communications facilities that will efficiently (and hopefully cheaply) move large amounts of digital information, including digital video. This is the realm of integrated services data network, asynchronous transfer mode, fiber to the curb and the home, "video dial-tone," and similar technologies. The issues are

FRONT MATTER (R1-R10)

INTRODUCTION AND OVERVIEW (1-20)

PART 1--SETTING THE STAGE (21-104)

PART 2--REGULATION AND THE EMERGING TELECOMMUNICATIONS INFRASTRUCTURE (105-172)

PART 3--PUBLIC INVESTMENT IN TELECOMMUNICATIONS INFRASTRUCTURE (173-226)

APPENDIX: CONTRIBUTORS AND PARTICIPANTS (227-230)