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THE POTENTIAL OF MULTIMEDIA
Peter Cochrane

THE RACE
For nearly 100 years, the telecommunications network was technically ahead of the peripheral technologies, and able to serve the needs of society. However, during the last 15 years, it has increasingly been challenged by developments such as the personal computer (PC). We now have massive computational power constrained by old copper based protocols, 14.4kbit/s modems, computer architectures, software and operating systems that induce long delays. Transferring pictures, information, movies and interacting in general can be infuriatingly slow. Telecommunications can offer a significant step forward with the ISDN at 2 x 64kbit/s, but adding multiples of 64kbit/s - up to 2Mbit/s and beyond, is even better. However, this problem will re-occur as computer power increases, and the ISDN is but a stepping stone to an ultimate objective of a network infrastructure able to stay ahead of peripheral developments.

THE TERMINAL NETWORK INTERPLAY
Personal computers are doubling in power every one to two years. Clock rates are now commonly above 25MHz, and at the top end, power PCs are using 160MHz, with the next generation aiming at over 300MHz. The amount of RAM is now commonly 8MBytes and rising to 32MBytes with disk storage commonly 500MBytes. Given these trends, it is clear that current network technologies will ultimately introduce significant bottlenecks and limits too interactive working. Telecommunications networks therefore have to respond to the demands of the peripheral terminals or they will fundamentally constrain progress in the first part of the next millennium.

Realising the full potential of existing networks and terminals is important if the new market possibilities of multimedia are to be fulfilled. The following are examples of how the innovative coupling of current network service options can be used to deliver multimedia applications.

Interactive Multimedia Services (IMS) combine television and telephone to allow customers to select, and order services from an on-screen menu. The key technology is video compression, which allows economic storage and retrieval of electronic images, and reduces the bandwidth required for transmission. The potential range of IMS applications is extensive. Customers could call up movies, TV, educational and training material, information services, and video games, or purchase soft and hard products.

PC Based Multimedia Conferencing Services can be realised with a low cost video camera, VC8000 Codec, and ISDN connection. Users can have video conferencing at their desk, complete with a shared workspace and white board. Still pictures can be captured and transmitted without any loss in quality, whilst multimedia interactive sessions are supported on the desktop with passive, active and interactive demonstrations.

PUBLISHING - MORE FOR LESS
In the 15th Century the Vatican library had less than 400 books and it was one of the biggest libraries on the planet. Today most of us own more books as individuals and the library of Congress has an estimated 22 to 24M volumes. To access and keep up to date in an information space so vast is clearly impossible. We cannot afford the trees, the paper or energy, and most of all, the sheer inaccessibility. Already we see CD-ROM technology delivering 650Mbytes of information. Such a medium is capable of holding all the classics and most of the specialist books we could desire in a few tens of discs. Indeed, 2000 classics have recently been published on one CD-ROM. Complete encyclopaedias, art galleries, museums and, perhaps most importantly, with animation and interaction, are now possible.

At the present rate of progress we should each have enough storage capacity at work and home to hold the contents of the Library of Congress within 15 years. But this is not the whole story - we only need access - we do not need copies of everything. The first book store on Internet has opened with 50 volumes selling at 5$ each At this price our purchasing algorithm changes! Buy it and try it - who cares - it is so cheap I can afford to throw it away if I don't like it!

The publishing industry is thus about to undergo a revolution far greater than the move from the scribe to the printing press. 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! 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.

TELEPRESENCE - INFOMATICS
The developed world's population is getting older, and it is highly unlikely that there will be the resources to provide the care that is necessary. In Japan programmes are underway to manufacture robots to take on the task. Other alternatives involve the teleportation of expertise, experience and presence itself. Technologies that allow 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 examination, diagnosis, and surgery is also real with experiments already underway. In the UK, operations on humans have been performed over dial up ISDN lines. The transfer of medical images such as X-rays, ultra sound scans, and medical records, has also been successfully demonstrated. These technologies will allow, surgeons in California to perform operations in London assisted by robots of a similar form to those currently used in hip replacement, brain and eye operations. By using technology to make more effective use of qualified and expert people, could provide considerable savings.

A trip to a doctor's surgery or the hospital outpatients' department could become a thing of the past, and become an automated and remote activity. Further developments in tele-medicine include remotely monitoring patients through body mounted electronic devices. For diabetics and other medicine-dependent people, it is already possible for remote computers to calculate and administer optimum doses of their drugs. So far the experiments have been confined to hospital wards, but there is no reason why this cannot be done globally.

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. Applications which teleport experts into your location, and have them guide you through the necessary steps to effect a solution are already being tested.

REMOTE EDUCATION
We might also anticipate that the very process of education will have to change. The vast majority of universities are small, with small departments increasingly stretched by a widening curriculum. Staff have to cope with larger numbers of students and teach a wider range of courses in a shorter time. Why then do we have fifteen lectures giving the same lecture on different days to different groups of students? It is possible for all the students to attend any one of the lectures, or indeed, for the one lecture course to be prepared and delivered by a small team at one university. This would allow specialism by the departments, an increased efficiency and depth of understanding, a real opportunity to conduct meaningful research and perhaps most valuable of all an ability to allow students to mix and match modules and create their own degrees at a distance. The distributed degree among five or six key universities would then be a real possibility!

The nature of teaching and education can also ve 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 PC.

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 15 years of 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

FUTURE PROSPERITY
Experience has shown that cost savings in excess of 35% in production engineering and time savings of more than 50% in the design cycle can be achieved by using advanced visualisation techniques. The ability to build a 3D model, on screen, is a significant advance over 2D paper drawings. When dynamics and animation are included, the process improves beyond recognition. To ve able to test out all the physical, systemic and integrated dynamics of a design, before production begins, offers vast savings. Limiting this process, today, is a lack of communication bandwidth. What should take seconds or minutes can take days or weeks!

The same is true for education, training, health care and all other activities. As the technology speeds up, rapid access to data, information, experience and solutions will be essential. What is relevant will change continually - keeping informed and up-to- date will not be possible with the old tools of teaching, learning, recording and decision making.

The speed of communication, interaction and information access now dictates the productivity of economies. Soon, operating without a super highway will be like running a country with cart tracks instead of motor ways. It will be possible but not as part of the developed world.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Peter Cochrane is a graduate of Trent Polytechnic and Essex University. He is currently a visiting professor to UCL, Essex, and Kent Universities. He joined BT Laboratories in 1973 and has worked on analogue and digital switching and transmission. From 1988 he managed the Long Lines Division and was involved in the development of intensity modulated and coherent optical systems, photonic amplifiers and wavelength routed networks. His team received the Queen's Award for Innovation & Export in 1990. In 1991 he established the Systems Research Division and during 1993 he was promoted to head the Research Department with 660 staff.

He has published widely in all areas of telecommunications and received the Martlesham Medal for contributions to fibre optic technology in 1994; the IEE Electronics Division Premium in 1986, Computing and Control Premium in 1994 and the IERE Benefactors Prize in 1994.