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Homepage / Publications & Opinion / Archive / Articles, Lectures, Preprints & Reprints![]() The Information Wave Peter Cochrane Prologue Home is where the heart is The next major wave of IT development will focus on the delivery of information and experience on demand, in the right form, at the right time, at the right price to fixed or mobile terminals anywhere, over networks of optical fibre, radio, satellite, and optical wireless. Bandwidth, distance and time will no longer be significant cost elements as service and access become the dominant features of the changing demands of an information focused society. The Human Condition Whilst there is an abundance of technology to address the fundamental problems associated with an increased expectation of improved life style, it is certainly not the case that everyone on the planet can enjoy the energy consumption standards of the USA. The average American currently consumes an average of 8kW for heating, air conditioning, physical transport, lighting and other services [4]. If mankind is to live and prosper whilst maintaining the planet in a habitable state, then a much lower level of consumption is necessary. As the sun's energy falling on earth amounts to 1kW/m]2, and given the available area for solar collectors, and their electrical conversion efficiency, we might assume a reasonable target to be 1kW per human [5]. Physical travel constitutes a primary destructive, and perhaps largely unnecessary, activity with almost 100Bn passenger miles (costing over ?15Bn) consumed in the UK alone just to get to work [6]. Much of this could be avoided today, and should be negated by information technology before the turn of the century. Not only is travel expensive in raw materials and energy, it also consumes vast amounts of time, with over [[sterling]]15Bn per year in traffic jams for the UK - and [[sterling]]10Bn of this in London alone! Similarly we might anticipate large gains in medicine, health care (?35Bn), care, education (?25Bn), training (?35Bn), and entertainment (?31Bn) in the UK [7]. The cost equation for each of these sectors is largely dependent on people, material, energy and transport. The application of new technologies is long overdue with the potential for substantial savings in raw materials, energy, time and productivity.
Where is the Money From the history of earlier industries, it is clear we can expect dramatic reductions in human involvement in manufacturing and services, with subsequent cost savings. This change will be predicated by new generations of robots, materials and manufacturing processes, releasing human and financial resource for a new wave of society. Interestingly, the financing of the Information Wave looks to be relatively minimal when compared to all previous waves of change since the printing press. In the information wave everyone should have access to the technology, and should be able to participate. All the key technology elements to make this happen are to hand, and even the market drivers are engaged and established in this direction. The Magic of IT Cost Reduction - Capability Growth In 1956 the cost of a transatlantic telephone call (Fig 4) was [[sterling]]2.80/minute - today it is [[sterling]]0.5/minute - computers in the home were unthinkable and the storage and transport of information was almost wholly conducted by paper. Today, we have a rapidly expanding global network of optical fibre already transporting 65% of all the telephone calls world-wide [11,12]. The first pocket calculator on the market in the early 1970's cost over [[sterling]]80 for just four functions - today superior technology is given away with petrol! A low cost electronic wristwatch now has more processing power than a mid-range computer of the 1960's, whilst the personal computer is realising a processing, storage and display ability for the office and home that completely surpasses the mainframe computers of only 10 years ago. This is all characterised by an exponential growth in ability, and a correspondent fall in cost - exponentially more for exponentially less!
The scale of change is perhaps best exemplified by the reduction in raw material usage. In the UK there is now an installed base of over 3M km of optical fibre supporting the communication needs of a 57M population. The entire fibre infrastructure was manufactured with just 90 tonnes of sand (silica) compared to the thousands of tonnes of copper cable it replaced! Similarly, the latest desk top computers are being designed to use materials that are over 95% recycled. In both cases the performance and capability are vastly superior, power consumption increasingly minuscule, and production cost far less than previous technologies. Instead of using Watts of power for a telephone call we now use mW. No Frontiers - No Barriers Organisations themselves will become increasingly, and in some cases, totally dispersed. They will be virtual and organic with people contributing in an electronic rather than physical space. People will work when and with whom they choose, as appropriate, having access to machine intelligence and information. This will revolutionise the way business is conducted and economies are driven. Already we see those at the forefront establishing group environments where work packages are passed around the globe, like a baton, from one daylight zone to another. Programmes, projects, developments, creativity and collaboration can then be non-stop, non-national, but virtual, fast and far more productive and effective than today. Interfaces for People Interestingly, the miniaturisation of technology will ultimately preclude the use of a standard QWERTY keyboard and predicate a move to verbal interaction. However, the real breakthrough will be technology that realises the human ability for a co-ordinated combination of sight, sound and touch. When augmented by artificial intelligence that is anticipatory, and able to fine tune responses in sympathy with the characteristics of the individual user, then we will have a really powerful and user orientated interface. Physical Travel New Capabilities Perhaps the greatest challenge is the creation of a machine that can understand and augment the human mind. It has taken us some 50M years to evolve, whilst electronic computers have emerged in less than 100. If we could converse with machines in the way we interact with each other, then we would have a true interface! However, this dream seems some way off as generalised machine cognition is not easy to realise - requiring a the loading and processing of the human equivalent of a lifetime's experience. In the short term we can expect to see voice I/O with a constrained cognition for specific fields of application. Today it is command and control, within a decade it might be communication, law, cookery and architecture etc. Past Industry
manufacturing and service sectors. All of this does not deny the continued existence of farming, the manufacture of clothing, hard and soft technologies - quite the reverse. All of these activities are required, but our expectation is to make them far more efficient and less intensive in human terms. A net result will be an increased percentage of the population working in an information space that need not be location specific [19].
manufacturing and service sectors. Information It is interesting that when addressing a problem the finding and assembly of all the related information represents the major task and the least interesting one. It is the manipulation of the information it's preparation and presentation that require a great deal of human input and perhaps the former can be overcome by artificial intelligence realised as autonomous software agents. It has been estimated that professionals can spend up to 80% of their active time trying to find information, and as little as 5% formatting it and making decisions. These proportions are probably true of students, researchers, and much of the creative population. Apart from serendipity; the chancing upon items that are not of immediate interest, or items filed under an obscure but indirectly related category, the looking for and finding of information is no fun, it is generally frustrating and a waste of time and energy. What we need are technologies to help us navigate through the growing field of information, find what we want, access and manipulate data so we can get down to the kernel - decision and action! The necessary technologies are all under development with Artificial Intelligence (AI) for navigation and location, plus Hebbian decay [20] mechanisms for filing, and automatic text summarisation [21]. However, there are still significant problems associated with the complexity and size of systems, data bases and connectivity expected by the year 2000. At this juncture much of the display, software, hardware platforms and interfaces will be available to a wide proportion of the population [22]. Publishing - More for Less The publishing industry is thus about to undergo a revolution far greater than the move from the scribe to the printing press. We might recall an old Chinese proverb:-
To date well over 20,000 volumes are already in digital form and will sell at a fraction of their paper predecessors. Some publishing houses are already predicting that they see the end of paper publishing in sight. For technical and reference volumes this is credible. For the rest it might not be - Paper is very user friendly! The extent of this difference is embodied in the riddle: what is the difference between a laptop and a news paper? The answer is: no one takes a lap top into the toilet! For general reading we need liquid crystal paper - high resolution, definition, contrast, flexibility and compact. Then we might see novels and light reading transformed also - but then again there are alternatives such as talking books! A further small advance could see custom information on line. Instead of buying a complete newspaper, magazines, books and databases, to discard large sections that are of no interest to us, we may have the option to pay more for less. The focused news, articles, detail, data and information would be far more beneficial. Barring serendipity that is! The future retailing, supply, updating, validation, security, charging, copyright, and format of publications thus pose some major challenges. Technology - Positive Feedback From a work perspective it means that a complete PhD study that took over 3 years to complete just 10 years ago, can now be completed in less than 3 months! In short, far more work can now be completed by far fewer people. Or more positively, the human race can achieve far more in a shorter time. The standard working lifetime of the previous generation was about 100,000 hours. We can now achieve their output in less than 10,000 hours or more impressively do 10x the work and get 10x the results! The next generation looks set to overtake us in a similar manner - provided we can keep pace with the technology. Telepresence - Infomatics surgeons to be positioned inside the human body through an endoscope or through the use of a surrogate head peering into an incision are already with us. The prospect of remote diagnosis, inspection and surgery is real and initial experiments are underway. Before long we will see surgeons in California performing operations in London [23]. Robots are already being used in hip replacement, brain and eye surgery. The trip to a doctor's surgery or the hospital outpatient's department could soon become an automated and remote activity. Further developments include the remote monitoring of patients through electronic interfaces mounted on the body. For the diabetic, drug and medicine dependent people it is already possible for them to be monitored at a distance by remote computers that can administer and optimise dosage. So far experiments have been confined to hospital wards, but there is no reason why this cannot be realised globally [24]. All of these concepts can be extended to other disciplines including the repair and maintenance of oil rigs, electronic and power installations and even activities in the home. Being able to call experts, teleport them to your location, and then have them guide you through the necessary steps to affect a solution is only a short step away - and is already being tested. Remote Education The nature of teaching and education can also be expected to see radical change. Since the ancient Greeks we have hardly strayed from scratching in the sand. Moving to the blackboard, to the white board and overhead projector is hardly revolutionary given the technology at our disposal. Might we expect experiments on the screen to become as respectable as experiments in the laboratory? After all, they are actually far more powerful and instructive! On-line tutorials, lectures and interactive teaching packages for the rapidly expanding science and technology based curriculum would seem a necessity. Packages are already being introduced in medicine and other professions. The dismantling of high tech structures; simulation of air flow across an aircraft wing; current flow in an electronic circuit; or the dissection of a frog or human organ are already available on trial systems. In many European universities it is becoming impossible to get a degree qualification without your own personal computer. Perhaps in the not to distant future we will be able to cruise the world's institutions, virtual or real, and drop in for a refresher course presented by an internationally recognised expert - anywhere, anytime! Perhaps project reports and theses will become active, and interactive documents and high quality visualisation will offer immediately informative representations of physical or other situations, rather than the traditional erudite and oft confusing prose. Most radical of all, mathematics and the physical science may be opened up to all. Those who have found the traditional long haul of a 15 years education, required to get even a rudimentary understanding, to tough, difficult, or plain indigestible, might find that visualisation and/or virtual reality puts them in the picture Our Children Limits to Change The information Wave might just be the ultimate challenge, and opportunity, for humanity - we can opt out, but we cannot escape. We have to rise to the challenge, solve the problems, and access the power of information About The Author Peter Cochrane joined the British Post Office in 1962 and is a graduate of Trent Polytechnic and Essex University. He is a fellow of both the IEE and IEEE, a visiting professor to Essex, Kent and Southampton Universities and a visiting fellow to UCNW at Bangor. He joined BT Laboratories in 1973 and has worked on a variety of analogue and digital switching and transmission studies. He has been a consultant to numerous international companies on projects concerned with systems, networks and test equipment development. In 1978 he became manager of the Long Lines Division and directed the development of optical fibre systems, photonic amplifiers and wavelength routed networks for terrestrial and undersea applications. He received the Queen's Awarded for Technology in 1990 for the production of optical receivers for TAT- 8 and the PTAT- 1 undersea cable systems. In 1991 he was appointed to head the Systems Research Division at BTL which is concerned with future advanced computing and communications developments. He was further promoted in 1993 to head the Core Technologies Research Department with 620 staff. References 1 Eric K Drexler. Engines of Creation. Oxford University Press. 1992. 2 D H Meadows et al. (1972) The Limits to Growth: A Report for the Club of Rome's Project on the Predicament of Mankind. New York. 3 P Kennedy (1993) Preparing for the Twenty First Century. Harper Collins, London. 4 B Cartledge. Energy and Environment.. Oxford University Press. 1993. 5 B Anderson. (1977) Solar Energy: Fundamentals In Building Design. McGraw-Hill. 6 1993. Social Trends 23, CSO, London. 7 1993. Annual Abstract of Statistics 1993, CSO, London. 8 Ed. R L Gregory. The Oxford Companion To The Mind. Oxford Press. 9 H W Hadenburgh. CPU Performances: Where are we headed?. Dr. Dobbs Journal, Jan. 94 Vol. 19. 10 I Pearson. When I'm 64. BT Internal Paper. May 1992. To be published in BTEJ 1994. 11 P Cochrane, D J T Heatley, P J Smyth and I D Pearson: "Optical Telecommunications - Future Prospects". IEE Electronics & Communication Engineering Journal, August 1993, Vol.5, No.4, pp.221-232. 12 P Cochrane and D J T Heatley: Modelling Change in Telecommunications. Special Issue of British Telecom Technology Journal, April 1994, Vol.12, No.2. 13 N P Negroponte. Products and Services for Computer Networks. Scientific American, September 1991 Vol. 265 No. 3. 14 A W Branscomb. Common Law for the Electronic Frontier. Scientific American, September 1991 Vol. 265 No. 3. 15 H D Crane & D Rtischev. Pen and Voice Unite. Byte. October 1993. 16 M H Lyons, P Cochrane, K Fisher (1993) Teleworking in the 21st Century. Computing & Control Engineering Journal, Aug. 93 p. 170. 17 K Cameron. CamNet the first telepresence system. Interlink 2000, August 92. 18 1993. Annual Abstract of Statistics 1993, CSO, London. 19 M H Lyons, M Gell, P Cochrane (1993) Companies and Communications in the Next Century. Proc. of Telecom '93. Canadian Business Telecoms Alliance (CBTA), Toronto. 20 P Russell (1980) The Brain Book. Routledge. 21 K R Preston & S H Williams. Managing the Information Overload. Physics in Business - Newsletter of the IOP. July 1994 22 P Cochrane, K Fisher, R Taylor-Hendry (1993) The Office You Wish You Had. British Telecommunications Engineering. July 93 Vol. 12 Part 2. 23 J McCrone. Computer chaos at medicine's cutting edge. New Scientist 25/9/93. 24 P Cochrane P and M Hobsley (1993) Visions of a Perfect Diagnosis. The Times Higher Education Supplement, 19 Nov 93, p8. 25 P Cochrane. Education, technology and change - a personal view. IEE Computing & Control Engineering Journal. Vol5, No2, April 94. |
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