Unpredictable Certainty. Information Infrastructure through 2000

摘要

The authors have available an impressive array of information technology. Theycan transmit literature, movies, music, and talk. Government, businesses, and individuals are eager to go on-line to buy, sell, teach, learn, and more. The Unpredictable Certainty explores the national information infrastructure (NII) as the collection of all public and private information services. How will more and better services reach the home, small businesses, and remote locations. The Unpredictable Certainty examine swho will finance the NII, exploring how technology companies decide to invest in deployment and the vain search of 'killer apps' (applications that drive markets). It discusses who will pay for ongoing services and how they will pay, looking at past cost/price models relevant to the future. The Unpredictable Certainty discusses the underlying technologies, appliances, and services needed before the NII becomes a reality; reviews key features of important technologies, and analyzes current levels of deployment in telephone, cable and broadcast television, and wireless systems, and the difficulties in interconnection. The volume explores the challenge of open interfaces that stimulate new applications but also facilitate competition, the trend toward the separation of infrastructure from specific services, the tension between mature services and new contenders, the growth of the Internet, and more.