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  • 3) Rflections On Information Society and Related Technologies

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    The "networking effect" and new scenarios, knowledge, and changing patterns of human activities, the need of systems thinking and awareness of ICT education are Leitmotives of the paper

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    3) Rflections on Information Society and Related Technologies

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    The "networking effect" and new scenarios, knowledge, and changing patterns of human activities, the need of systems thinking and awareness of ICT education are Leitmotives of the paper

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    5 vues14 pages

    3) Rflections On Information Society and Related Technologies

    Transféré par

    Angelo Luvison
    The "networking effect" and new scenarios, knowledge, and changing patterns of human activities, the need of systems thinking and awareness of ICT education are Leitmotives of the paper

    Droits d'auteur :

    © All Rights Reserved
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    COMCON 7 - 1999 Seventh Annual International Conference on Advances in Communication and Contvol PROCEEDINGS Edited by William R. Wells COMCON 7 - 1999 Seventh International Conference on Advances in Communication and Control PROCEEDINGS Telecommunications/Signal Processing June 28 — July 2, 1999 Athens, Greece Edited by William R. Wells OPTIMIZATION SOFTWARE, INC. Publications Division, New York « Los Angeles BOOKS IN MATHEMATICS & ENGINEERING/SCIENTIFIC APPLICATIONS SOFTWARE. REFLECTIONS ON INFORMATION SOCIETYAND RELATED TECHNOLOGIES Angelo Luvison Angelo.Luvison@cselt.it CCSELT, Centro Studi e Laboratori Telecomunicazioni S.p.A, Via Reiss Romoli 274, 10148 Torino, Italy Abstract Basic activities of the human society are education, work, leisure, entertainment and commer- ce, These terms are used here ina very broad sense, eg. education may stand for academic or voca- tional training, commerce may be trading of both material and immaterial goods. The information society will be shaped by the modifications occurring in applications, services, systems and techno- logies that support these activities, The paper outlines major issues relating to the information socie- ty as well as to the associated Information and Communications Technology (ICT). It describes the imajor innovations in “networked” applications, where the attribute “networked” may imply diffe- rent meanings, like “distance", “tele”, “remote”, even “mobile” and “virtual”. The “networking effect” and new scenarios, knowledge and changing patterns of human activities, the need of systems thinking and awareness for ICT education are letmotivs of the paper. 1 Introduétion It is alzeady 4 common opinion—almost a clické—that all human activites, education, work, leisure, entertainment and commerce, are undergoing a deep change. Of course, the various activities are related together, e.g. vocational training is a fundamental policy tool to help employment and work, Their common denominator is to have information as input and to evolve through communi- cation between different organizations or bodies. ‘The information revolution (1) (2] will thus shape the world of the 21st century, when kno- wledge—or “contents”—will mean power and profit. The transition from an industrial society to the new information society is accelerating as a result of a process involving the progressive fusion of telecommunications, computers, consumer electronics and interactive media, The emergence of this {ype of society is linked to the spread of innovative services and products in the private business sec- tor, in public administration, in public utilities and at individual level (3). ‘Communication systems intertwined with advanced information technologies give birth to the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) which is a pillar of the new information society ‘The constraints of time and distance have been removed by networks (eg. telephone, cables and satellites) which carry the information. by services (e.g. email and online interactive services) which allow people to communicate, and by applications (e.g. telework, or telecommuting, distance educa- tion and electronic commerce) which offer solutions to end-user groups. The Internet per se and its ‘evolution(s) as well as its underlying technologies are expected to play an increasingly pervasive role, provided that security, privacy, copyright, congestion and quality issues are coped with Governments of most industialized countries, following the example of the United States, are ANGELO LUVISON carrying out plans for the next-generation information infrastructures (in a more catching parlance, information supechighiways or Infoéahn) in which networking, is going to play a fundamental role The underlying idea is that bandwidth will become a commodity to be traded, like coal or oil, and the service and information will represent the most lucrative market. Technological innovation and progress make it possible to rethink the network and system solutions considered so far (4. Basic technologies such as microelectronics, optics, radio and software provide the giue for the new net. ‘working platforms. Technology is too often charged with both intended and unintended social, political, economic leanings and meanings, A great misconception is the idea that technology is completely tree of bias, ‘because it provides inanimate artefacts. Technology is neither good or ded, nor is it even neutral: this was the assumption of Melvin Kranzberg, professor at Georgia Tech until 1988, who carried out a syste- matic study of the history of technology means. He found that technology is affecting work, life and economy in unpredictable ways, introducing new forms of tersion and distraction as well as posing new threats to the cohesion of our physical communities. On the positive side of the coin technology— (CT in particular—is making life more convenient and many people healthier, wealthier and wiser. The future of modem dvilization is depending more and more on the decisions that are taken today. We are now witnessing a return to the central role of man. This means a refocusing around the basic needs and ensuing requirements of the human beings themselves. All the ongoing trends in the human-centzed information society (technology, processes, institutions) should have the common aim to eventually satisfy the needs coming from human deings as consumers, users, subscribers, customers or citizens. Therefore, when we think or work to develop new systems, products, services, itis necessary take the person into account, trying to foresee all the implications, from the social to the cultural, from the economic to the psychological. ina sense, we live at the dawning of a “Novel Humanism”, where the focus and centre is the Homo novus mentioned above. No longer should he be considered only a user, a subscriber, a customer 0, even worse, a number. It should be recognized that he is a person fully aware of his ights, highly demanding, eager of knowledge (which is something more than pure information), someone who is comfortable with both challenges and risks of this new era. = _, InSection 2 of the paper, the leitmctiv is the “networking effect” stating that the value of a net- ‘worked application grows exponentially with the number of its users. A word of criticism is also spent towards the excessive amount of information, and the corresponding lack of knowledge, affec- ting the Net today, Section 3 outlines the moves towards data-centric networks, growing mobility and networking of smart appliances. The focal point is that different data applications may entail diffe- rent user requirements but similar (ie, networking) requirements. Section 4 discusses the demand for ‘ew jobs inthe ICT sector and also the increasing availabilty for leisure with the consequent issue of “downshifting’, featured by less career and salary expectations, New models for esearch and tech- ‘ological innovation are the topics of Section 3. Changing engineering education and learning models are briefly discussed in Section 6 with the explicit assumption that an ICT engineer should develop his systems thinking skill further in a scenario dominated by nonlinear complex processes and. pat- terns. Conclusions are drawn in Section 7, To delve deeper into some of the topics alist of selected references is reported. The paper tries to look at the various points mentioned above both in retrospect and in pro- spect. In retrospect because the past contains the seeds ofthe present. In prospect because~as the inventor of the electrical ignition system, Charles Kettering, said—“My interest isin the future becau- se Lam going to spend the rest of my life there”, 2. Value of networks and information ‘The definition of community as reported by dictionaries is more of less “A group of persons with a feature or an interest in common within a wider society, considered as a whole”. Actually, in 30 REFLECTIONS ON INFORMATION SOCIETY AND RELATED TECHNOLOGIES 2 growing way the virtual communities are shaping around specific interests, hobbies. professions, specializations, political activities, religions (or pseudo-religions). For example, quite recently, the ‘New York Times (August 1999) reported an experience called Neighbors On Line (NOL) in which & umber of neighbours in Cambridge, MA, established an Intemet community sharing views on almost averything: from suggestions for bat removal to the search of a plumber. However, by looking at the Internet, the Net par excellence, it becomes apparent that living toge- ther in the same geographic place is no longer a binding assumption. The ensuing applications are expanding as witnessed by the plethora of sites and links met in surfing on the Net with the Web. From 2 qualitative viewpoint the risks are oversimplification, superficiality, repetitiveness, inaccu: racy—in some cases boredom, too, But from a quantitative viewpoint what isthe diference between a networked appiication (or service) and a non-networkad ona? The answer lies in the network exter- ality law or “networking effect” {5} (6). Economists say that a network externality exists when the amount that one party is willing to pay for access to a network depends on how many other parties are connected to it. More precisely, the law states thatthe degree of utlty, or value, of a network serv ice grows with the square of the total rumber of users of that application. The proof—even trivial — is that if the users are N, the number of possible relations among themn is the binomial coeificient N(N-1)/2, a number just proportional to the square of N. This property of networked services makes the difference with the majority of other consumer and market goods. The total value of the Net for one single user is low if there are few other users that share the same service or application, whereas it becomes very large if many other users are con nected through the interest group communicating by means of the appl in the adoption of a new networked service there are two distinct regimes: Jow value to everybody and low incentive to new users to joining in; 2) a dense regime with great value to everybody and great incentive to new users. ‘The stumbling block for any new service is getting from the fist regime to the second. It is a block that a few services have crossed: the Picturephone is the most emblematic and quoted case of failure. On the other hand, the success and boom of the Web are often pinpointed, even though the main reasons (ease of use and no charge) are rarely stressed. Another big success in Europe, cellular ‘communications, is an almost unique example of European cooperation in standardizing the GSM and anticipating socieval needs. A partial list of genéric key factors of success (or failure) consists of: Price, usability, transparency, seamless but open architecture, modularity and scalability. Sparse | Dense Regime | Regime Value of a Notworked Application Number of Users Figure 1—Netuort externality law o the “networking effect” The result above is well known in queuing theory and traffic engineering, but, strange enough itis not so popular as an indicator of the value of the network. This also reflects the apparent para- lox between the physical and the logical levels of a network: at the physical level the objective is to ‘minimize the number of links; whereas at the logical level, the goal isto maximize the numtoer of rela~ ANGELO LUVISON tfonships, interactions, connections, This is rounded off by another unsuspected aspect of the Net: the possibility that bandwidth—the most basic commodity—is traded like cocoa futures or pork bellies by some upstart Web sites to keep up with the rapidly changing demand of telecommunications. The effec is even amplitied by the asynchronicity, the typical property of communicating in the Net, with the annihilation of the categories of time and space (think of the e-mail). The total immersion ‘on the screen and computer of the person entails that reality is hidden in an undefined “nowhere”, The traditional system of knowledge generation and spreading, e.g. academic education, is for- ‘mal, closed and hierarchical. On the internet, the model becomes flat, open and non-hierarchical; kno- wledge management and growth mainly develop through horizontal circles and nonlinear processes. ‘The networks support the extension of what we know as mind, Derrick de Kerchove says (7), towards new and connected intelligence (not only collective). They provide the operating environments for the convergence of all the data. A mind, which we still can denote as ours is looding the Net, while we engage ourselves in it more interactively, more intimately, more sensitively than ever. Three major features of a new ecology of the networks—both the economics of the associated industries and the new enabled cognitive, socal and personal habits—are: 1. Interactivity: the physical links between persons or the ICT environment (“the industry of body”) 2. Hypertextuaity: the links of the content or the knowledge environment ("the industry of memory"). 3. Being connected or “webbing”: the mind links between persons or the networking envitonment (“the industry of intelligence”) Interactivity, hypertextuality and webbing together lay the foundation for the globalization of both common people and corporations, nations and regions by means of a permanent, adaptive and autopoietic synergy of physical networks and infrastructures for transmission, routing and swit- ching, De Kerchove's vision is in the rut of new humanism of the Global Village of Marshall McLuhan. Frtfof Capra, one of the gurus of the so-called New Science, is another herald ofa similar ecological vision (8]. De Kerchove emphasizes mainly the social side of the coin, whereas Capra underlies the holistic systems thinking, based on networks of relations, pattems and processes, ‘which, originally emerged from life sciences, has been then affecting other scientific disciplines. Note that the vision of Pierze Lévy (9} seems to be somewhat different, He focuses on the col> lective intelligence in a shared context allowed by the wit usage of available facilities or new media and application tools, without implying a real coordination among the individuals, “Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?” These questions trom Thomas S. Eliot (The Rock, 1934) provide a good basis of reflec- tions about the peremptory assertion that with the Intemet we can achieve wisdom. The foregoing issues—virtual communities, network externality, access cost decreasing—justify the plethora of ‘number of sites. These issues however lead to considering the overwhelming quantity of available information—in some cases, also misinfocmation or propaganda. Too often the great wave of infor- mation becomes an overload with the danger of confusion and superficiality. The horizontal or trans verse element is prevailing over the vertical one, the surface over the depth, ‘The techno-optimist maintains that the telecommunications improvement results in a positive derivative of the production of knowledge. However, Amo Penzias, a technology pioneer who won a Nobel Prize in physics in 1978, disputes the attainable depth, especially from young people. To him, the major concem is to stimulate problem-solving abllity and to develop creativity in youngsters, who too often live on pure data gathering, long list processing or prétot-penser answers and “truths” Network access makes easy getting to big “malls” that provide information as consumer goods with the risk of information overload oF misinformation (10), Without resorting to internal or external fil ters, surfing from one link to the other becomes very easy. But the logic is often more a matter of crea- fing associations rather than fostering in-depth research and study. Intelligent and mobile agents are therefore needed to steer the sailor without a compass, capable of discriminating effectively and sear- ching autonomously, interactively, atively and proactively. In summary, “Learning without thought is labour lost, thought without learning is perilous” (Confucius, The Analects, I1-13). ee ak an. REFLECTIONS ON INFORMATION SOCIETYAND RELATED TECHNOLOGIES 3. The roaring 2000s ‘Three elements are changing the traditional telecommunications scenario: two crossovers and the appearance of consumer information appliances. The first paradigmatic overtake is that in the ‘ear future the number of cellular phones will exceed the wired ones {in a few counties, like {taly and Finland, this already happened). The second breakthrough event is that the packet traffic gene- rated by data services (the Internet included) is exceeding, or will exceed within a few years, the cir- cuit eraffic mainly generated by voice services, A prediction concerning the precise timing of wireless- to-wired and packet to circuit crossovers is not easy; however itis wise to predict that brand-new net- working models and architectures must be envisioned to cope with the consequent changing, and alas unpredictable, market needs, In addition, they will have an impact on the overall telecommuni- ‘ations (service providers and equipment suppliers) industry, its business models and policies. At the outset, telecommunications and computing shared many technologies, but differed in how they employed them. With the move towards more complex and heterogeneous systems and applications, itis necessary to redefine network architectures in terms of functions provided to the user rather than the underlying technologies, which enable them. The ICT environment may benefit, fon the one hand, from the telecomurunications industry's experience in dealing with such problems 4s real-time connections, bandwidth, management and control, billing, and ensuring an uninterrup- (ed service with required quality guarantees, t may benefit, on the other hand, from computing p: adigms such as community of users in business models, transportable computation by mobile agents, and network computing in which all information, data and software applications reside on a network and are accessed on demand by users (5), Many experts—not all—predict that information appliances, based on devices so intelligent that a naive user might ignore its existence, will satisfy the user’s needs and requirements better than a complex device like a personal computer. One of the drivers of growth for residential users will be the proliferation of information appliances, personal digital assistants, set-top boxes, personal net- works, intemet-enabled TVs, and other dedicated devices (smart things which form a kind of ‘mass) in addition to personal computers (11]. A current assumption is that in the year 2005 the rato between the number of infoappliances and that of personal computers will be ten to one. Network access at the home side will be provided by an intelligent gateway. A distinctive feature of this sce- nario will be the myriad of devices (soon a billion) that shall be connected and will communicate through the Net. It, in turn, will warrant extensive connectivity and will be a seamless holistic system, apparently, for its easy usage, transparent, even invisible, tothe application. This property, together with the interactive dynamical interplay benween any application and the Intemet, provides a splen- did evidence of McLuhan’s memorable saying “The medium is the message”. ‘The intrinsic nature of the “multimedia strand or chain” requires the integration of many com- Ponents, as represented in Figure 2, a six-ier pyramid representing the multimedia business (3). The first ter shows the components and key techniques and technologies (related to microelectronics, optics, radio and software) which play an enabling role for the fundamental ICT functions of the see- ond tier. The third ter comprises the telecommunications networks including the operation support services (from administration to customer care), The fourth refers to the customer equipment (tele- Phones, facsimiles, TVs and decoders, PCs, CD-ROM players, infoappliances, etc). The next tier con- sists of packaged products and networked services provided to the customer. The top represents the contents in different forms targeted to information, communication and entertainment. ‘ais scheme, as well as the chain concept, focuses on the value added by the upward transi- tion between two adjacent ters. The tiers correspond, ideally, to separate market segments and, the- ‘efore, to different core businesses from the development of technological bricks to content produc- tion, The different players can specialize themselves in their differentiated and distinctive segments bat can also cooperate by integrating their complementary resources to achieve a commen objective. The model is that of “virtual organizations”. For example, electronic commerce and digital libraries are two increasingly important areas of computer and information sciences with different user requi- ANGELO LUVISON = Pc v ‘ TERMINALS OTHER END-USER EQUIPMENT ‘OPERATIONS SUPPORT s RADIO SATELLITE CABLE ISON PROCESSING COMPRESSION TRANSMISSION —\__r. STORAGE SWITCHING SOFTWARE MICROELECTRONICS OPTICS RADIO —> Figure 2A business model for the multimedia ler FUNCTIONS ENABLING TECHNOLOGIES ements but similar infrastructure cequirements. Similarly, many of the advanced applications fore- seen by the Internet2 and the Next Generation Intemet (NGD)-—interactive network-based instruction, {eleoperation, virtual reality, ete—fit in the networked interactive multimedia pyramid desorbed above. Another implication embodied in this picture is the nature of products and processes deman- ded by today’s global marketplace is changing: in particular, the most successful commercial techno- logies over the past quarter of this century have become more complex [12]. In 1970, nearly sixty per-

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