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Preprints & Reprints SUPER HIGHWAYS - SUPER COMPUTERS & SUPER SOCIETIES The last fifteen years has seen a telecommunications revolution with the transition from copper cables to optical fibre, and from analogue to digital operation. Not only is BT's 3 million km fibre network vastly more economical than copper or radio, it is almost infinitely expandable in its ability to transport information. It is therefore available as the spine of a future super highway - a means for communication, computing, and information to transform the way we work and live. For society at large, super highways imply a change greater than the transition from the cart track to the motor way. Whilst we measure the capacity of copper and radio systems in hundreds or thousands of simultaneous speech circuits, for fibre we can think in millions. During the same period, computing has seen the dominance of the mainframe overtaken by the personal computer. Only six years ago the computer on my desk cost over ?3000 had only 4 Mbytes of RAM and 60 Mbytes of hard disk. My latest machine cost ?1700 has 16 Mbytes of RAM and 500 Mbytes of storage. Each year our computer ability doubles and will do so for at least another two decades. In ten years we will have 1000 times the power at our disposal, in twenty years 1,000,000 fold. But even today coupling this power into the fibre network, the super highway, is absolutely necessary if we are to realise the next phase of evolution centred on distributed computing and information. Mankind's information base doubles every 3 years; the curriculum in our schools and universities; our technology; and our training requirements are generally growing faster than we can traditionally cope. It is therefore essential that we find solutions if we are to maintain national prosperity. The need goes far beyond improvements in efficiency - it demands radical change. Accessing information over telephone lines at 14.4kbit/s is well established - as is internet. What is so limiting with this technology is delay! It takes tens of seconds to recover a page of text, minutes for a poor quality diagram and tens of minutes for a colour picture. For moving images the delays run into hours. What super highways offer is immediate gratification and interaction with information on demand at the stroke of a key! A 100 fold increase in operating speed is trivial - and can be supported on standard copper lines - with fibre, speeds well in excess of 1000 fold can be contemplated. The library of congress in the USA holds about 24 million books and receives 45,000 new volumes every year - but is only accessed by a few! Remote access is currently impossible - if it was electronic, then we could all cruise and experience. To date over 22,000 electronic books have been created and there are numerous interactive training packages available on CD-ROM. We can now fly the human body with millions of images taken a slice at a time so we can see structures, the intricacies of the brain, the ligaments, the bones, and understand without the need for the dissection of a flesh and blood version. The same is true in aerospace, electronics, geography, history and other fields. It is now possible to capture the best experience and explanations so they can be made available globally. The prospect is that video on demand could also be transformed into experience and information on demand. Superhighways are the only technology that can satisfy this need through low cost bandwidth from source to user, giving access to a growing information world. Many of us are already suffer from information overload and communication that is immediate and demanding. The office is now being overtaken by the home, the car, the hotel room and the hot desk. We see the office becoming a place of high chemistry where we come together to interact and exchange ideas. Most of our work requirements can be satisfied by IT where the need is for instant gratification, the removal of delay and interfaces that are far more humanised. When we are able to provide information and interaction that is compatible with us rather than the technology, then we are likely to see a leap forward in the numbers and willingness of people to participate in this new world. As humans we enjoy eye contact, gaze awareness, body language and intelligence. Soon it will be possible to recreate these features electronically to realise; the virtual office and the virtual organisation. We will then be able to access people, information and computer power on a global scale and be collectively far more productive and active. The superhighway is thus a vital component in the transition from the industrial to the information society. |