When someone or something moves from the backwaters to the front page overnight, you can usually write it off as just another instance of Andy Warhol's "15-minutes-of-fame" axiom, particularly when said item fades from the headlines faster than it appeared. It's true that after its moment in the Silicon Valley sun, almost all mention of Bill Clinton and Al Gore, Jr.'s "information highway" disappeared. But plans for the information highway are alive and kicking, and work is underway on what may be one of the more important proposals made in recent years -- and not just for techno-buffs who want more and bigger toys.
As corny as it sounds, the "highway" analogy is right-on. As with today's interstate highway system (which, as a cog in our national defense wheel, was championed by Al Gore, Sr.), backers of the multibillion-dollar project see an ocean-to-ocean, fiberoptic, electronic-data roadway carrying information to your curbside just as cable television or telephone systems do -- but at the rate of 1 billion-plus bits per second. Along the way, it will have countless on and off ramps allowing business, education, research, and individuals to access distributed databases and communicate with each other.
But if the network is really to be built, a number of pieces --technological, financial, and political -- have to fall into place. Predictably, the "if" is a very big one.
In theory, the technology issue is easy: You simply lay thousands of miles of fiberoptic cable, install sophisticated switching equipment that just happens to conform to standardized protocols, and write software that makes the thing useful. Granted, there are stumbling blocks, the least of which is that fiber optics is still prohibitively expensive and continues to be challenged by technological advances in relatively inexpensive copper cable (like 100-Mbit Ethernet at less than $100.00 per node).
And then there's the standards issue. There are many competing proposals, including the ANSI-backed open-interconnect Fibre Channel protocol that IBM, HP, and Sun have teamed up to support. ISDN is still hanging around, although now it may never have a chance to get off the ground, no matter what your RBOC says.
Assuming the cable is laid, the protocol is agreed upon, and the software is written, how do you know if it works? You test it, and that's where any number of other competing consortia jump into the fray. AT&T, DEC, and MIT, for instance, have formed the "Wideband All-Optical Network Consortium" (funded by an $8.4 million DARPA grant) to build a testbed for proof-of-concept demonstrations of universal, scalable, optical networks. DARPA pumped another $7 million into a similar Bellcore consortium that includes the seven RBOCs, Columbia University, Hewlett-Packard, Hughes Aircraft, Lawrence Livermore National Labs, Northern Telecom, Rockwell, and United Technologies. And at least three other similar testbed projects are proposed or underway.
How much will all this cost? That depends on who you talk to and what exactly they're talking about. Clinton has allocated $17 billion to jumpstart the project, followed by $54 billion in 1994 and $150 million in 1995. No matter how you slice it or dice it, a lot of money is going to change hands before this thing is up and running.
Okay, now we're down to it -- big money for a big project. So the big question is, who's going to pay for it? There are all kinds of suggestions for this, most with fingers pointing the other way. Gore's idea is that the government should fund, build, and regulate the information highway, arguing that a public information highway is at least as important to the country's future as the interstate highway system. He adds that the inevitable private-sector network-access charges would limit public access (as with toll roads), making it available only to those who could afford it. (One funding solution might lie with the House's recently passed bill to reallocate the radio spectrum. Clinton has supported auctioning rights to the highest bidder, raising billions of dollars.)
At the other end of this ten-foot pole are those like AT&T CEO Robert Allen, who speaks for the telephone and cable-television companies when he says that the government can't afford to build the system and, even if it could, construction should still be left to private enterprise.
Straddling the electronic median strip are those favoring public/private partnership, a position supported by companies like Apple and IBM that are as much motivated by the prospect of selling more boxes as by the public good. (Apple CEO John Sculley can still pitch some of that old-time Apple religion when he says, "through a public-private partnership, we can create an infrastructure that will forever change the way we educate our children ... earn a living ... deliver services ... and interact with family friends.")
Assuming the technological and financial barriers can be skirted, the biggest hurdles may be the gaggle of commercial and political special interests involved, each with its own agenda. The commercial players see a potentially huge market, while the politicians are already licking their chops over this high-tech pork barrel.
That isn't to say that there aren't dedicated people in both camps who truly believe the information highway is critical to our future and want to make it happen no matter what. If the highway project succeeds, it will be because of their energy, spirit, and ability to mold disparate interests into a common vision.
Whatever happens, it's clear that the information highway isn't going to be a free ride. One of the pet scenarios of those pushing a publicly funded, open-access network is that of an isolated child in a rural locale who can't get to the local library, but can get into the electronic stacks of the Library of Congress via the information highway. This is fine until you consider that the Library of Congress recently petitioned Congress to begin charging the general public for information services, particularly those wanting computer access.
Information-highway proponents also like to point to the success of the Internet. But keep in mind that the Internet didn't have all these competing interests vying for special favors. If nothing else, what we've learned from the Internet experience is that, given something as powerful and flexible as a nationwide network, you can't predict how and why it will be used or guess at all the new businesses and jobs that will spring up to support it.
In the short term, what we're likely to see emerge is a hybrid system littered with compromise that's nothing like what visionaries envisioned. There's no question that the information highway is too important to trust to either private avarice or governmental inertia. But neither is there any question about whether or not we should move forward with it.
Copyright © 1993, Dr. Dobb's Journal