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Where Will the Information Revolution Lead?
From: RAND
| By:
John Godges |
EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION |
The rate of technological change is increasing, a phenomenon which will create new winners and losers across industries and nations over the next decades. In this article, edited by John Godges of the RAND Review, RAND researchers, who have held high-level conferences with international participants, begin to sketch the possible implications of this information revolution, from increasing disparities in privilege to innovations in medicine and education. |
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| World Wide Web traffic emanates predominantly from the United States and Canada. RAND researchers say the information revolution is fostering a global "realm of the mind" that could form the backbone of an American information strategy. | |
 wenty years from now, by the year 2020, the information revolution will have altered life on this planet even more dramatically than in the last 20 years, according to the experts. Even if they hesitate to specify exactly what the technological changes might be over the next two decades, the experts offer even more intriguing insights into how those technological changes could, in turn, change us as people, as nations, and as a global web of human thought and action. |
With regard to technological breakthroughs, the fear of forecasting the future is forgivable. Back in 1980, a mere 20 years ago, almost no one could have predicted the explosive growth of the World Wide Web. The Arpanet was then the US defense department's precursor of the Internet, which later did lead to the emergence of the World Wide Web. But in 1980 there was still no hypertext language for navigating from website to website, still no graphical interface, nothing like today's chat rooms, no laptop computers, and no cell phones, let alone cell phones that could deliver e-mail via satellite. Conversely, predictions that once seemed reasonable now appear naive in retrospect. It's already the year 2000, for example, but cars still can't fly. |
With regard to overall technological trends, on the other hand, efforts to anticipate the future are more than exercises in futility. While it is risky to predict the future in detail, it may be even more foolish not to prepare for it at all, especially when the future promises to bring changes as swift and pervasive as those made possible by the information revolution. |
Consequently, several US government agencies have asked RAND to take the lead in broadly outlining what may lie ahead and boldly deducing the implications for government and society. The work has proceeded on three fronts: (1) to chart the future course of the information revolution throughout the world over the next 10-20 years; (2) to identify potential forms of global governance that might become necessary as a result; and (3) to suggest a national "information strategy" appropriate for a global information age. The research sponsors include the National Intelligence Council, a small center of strategic thinking within the US intelligence community; the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which created the original Arpanet in 1969; the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy; and the Office of the Secretary of Defense. Although the three strands of research have proceeded independently of one another, they build on each other in compelling ways. |
To chart the future course of the information revolution, a team of researchers led by Richard Hundley has initiated a series of international conferences of leading computer scientists, defense planners, and policy analysts. One conference, devoted to technological trends, looked beyond Moore's Law--the expected doubling of the density of integrated circuits on a silicon chip every 18 months or so--to envision the likely effects of information technology on various countries, regions, and cultures. Another conference considered the political, economic, and social consequences already affecting many parts of the world. Subsequent conferences will chart the course of the revolution in greater detail in Latin America, Europe, and Asia. The participants already agree that the information revolution will affect all nations, albeit in different ways. |
RAND researchers foresee that the information revolution will change not just the way people behave thanks to new technological devices, but, more essentially, the way people understand and organize themselves--socially, culturally, politically, economically, governmentally, militarily, and even spiritually. Similarly, the information revolution will transform the way nations behave and understand their roles in the world. These changes ought to be the most pronounced in the United States, the researchers aver. As the global leader of the information revolution, the United States should begin now to redefine its purpose in the world, to redesign its national institutions, and to update its national strategies in ways that befit the revolution it has wrought. |
The future of the revolution
The first two conferences organized by RAND to chart the likely course of the information revolution each convened about 40 participants. Most came from the United States. Others came from Australia, Britain, Denmark, France, India, Japan, and Russia. The next three conferences in this series will broaden and deepen RAND's understanding of the worldwide course of the information revolution as it pertains specifically to Latin America, Europe, and the Asia Pacific region. |
So far, the participants have agreed on the basics: Over the next 15-20 years, computing will get faster and cheaper, communications bandwidth (or capacity) will increase enormously, and interesting new devices will emerge. As a result, the industrialized countries could expect to encounter a plethora of new technological phenomena, particularly in five areas: |
1. Photonics. Optical transmission lines, amplifiers, and switches will allow a tremendous increase in the bandwidth of packet-switching technology. This will lead to major changes in computer architectures, operating systems, and networking protocols. Many present-day leaders in the computer and communications industries will be threatened with extinction. |
2. Universal connectivity. Wireless communications will provide seamless data, voice, and video services to anyone anywhere on earth at any time of the day or night. This will have a huge effect on business practices, international financial institutions, and governments. |
3. Ubiquitous computing. Computers will be everywhere: in smart home appliances, smart houses, smart offices, smart buildings, smart cars, and smart highways. Smart appliances, for example, could "talk" to one another and sense the presence of humans. Wearable and implanted computers will give people constant access to information services while mobile. |
4. Pervasive sensors. Sensors will be everywhere as well. Wireless sensors will include tiny video cameras, tiny microphones, accelerometers, gyroscopes, Global Positioning System receivers, smell sensors, food sensors, biosensors, and polymer-based sensors. They will provide directions, identify spoiled food, detect diseases, detect natural and synthetic compounds, and assist police and the military with instant feedback on individual or group activities. Privacy issues will continue to mount and will demand solutions. |
5. Global information utilities. It will be possible to plug information appliances into wall sockets connected to public information utilities in much the same way as we now plug electrical appliances into sockets connected to electrical utilities. Just as we obtain electricity, gas, water, and telephone services from wires and pipes to our homes, so will we be able to obtain information services. |
Today, however, high-speed Internet connections exist almost exclusively between the United States and Europe and between the United States and Asia. There are very few high-speed links to or among developing countries. About half of all Internet users reside in the United States and Canada. |
Further disparities between industrialized and developing nations could arise in several areas, including health care, education, and commercial supply-chain management. |
In health care, "telemedicine" will allow remote diagnoses, remote monitoring of vital signs, and easy transfer of electronic medical records (all of which will require high degrees of security). Telemedicine will probably widen the gap between rich and poor societies, because only those countries with the requisite infrastructure and bandwidth could exploit the full benefits. Even so, some benefits could accrue to the poor. For example, medical students and doctors in poor countries could get improved information and training over the Web. And countries short of doctors could reap huge gains from equipment now being designed by the US military. For example, a "smart stretcher" could transmit detailed information about an injured soldier (or civilian) to remote physicians, who could then instruct a medic at the scene to follow specific procedures. |
In education, the greatest benefits will probably go to adults who pursue lifetime learning, specialized training, or postgraduate education through "distance learning." Again, the need for an infrastructure would favor wealthy nations the most, but the opportunity for remote access to superior teachers and educational materials could also benefit people of poor nations.
Supply-chain management refers to the effort by businesses and manufacturers to reduce surplus inventories wherever possible and thus cut costs. New computerized management systems already have led to vast improvements in tracking inventories, reducing overhead costs, and allowing managers to understand intuitively the workings of very complex production systems. These kinds of improvements reduce the advantages that accrue to cheap laborers (those who produce and store surplus inventories) and thus could end the flight of manufacturing to the developing world. This could have profound consequences for the global distribution of income. |
The conferees expressed additional misgivings. The information revolution, they suspect, will widen the economic, social, and political disparities within societies as well as among nations. Privacy will be increasingly jeopardized. The spread of US culture could overwhelm other cultures. And nations will pay an increasing price for going their own ways. |
But the revolution cannot be stopped, the conferees concluded. For better or worse, it is leading to a future that will be characterized by many interrelated economic, social, and political features:
- the continuing rise of electronic commerce and the elimination of myriad "middlemen," creating greater efficiencies but also greater possibilities for social exclusion
- a growing fraction of economic activity performed by "information workers"
- flatter, less-hierarchical business organizations that place a higher value on social networks and informal communications
- challenges to the power and authority of the nation-state as a result of many factors, including the increasing porosity of national borders and the simultaneous assemblage of a wide variety of interest groups that operate largely beyond the control of individual nations
- new fault lines within and between nations, by virtue of the widening gulfs between the educated, wealthy, and "wired" of all nations and the less fortunate of all nations
- many new winners and many new losers among individuals, groups, nations, and regions.
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