Down and Out on the Electronic Frontier
We have all the evidence we need that as soon as you charge by the transaction you drive the [academic] user away.
Archives: Expert Predictions
Down and Out on the Electronic Frontier
Motorola’s Iridium scheme would, if launched, involve 66 satellites in low (777 km) Earth orbit, with links between the satellites. The company estimates the cost of hand-held receivers, with built-in data communications adapters, at $2,500 when the system is due to be available in 1998, and cheaper later.
Down and Out on the Electronic Frontier
The first problem of access is language … Even where scripts are available, different programs may use different codes to represent the same character, and the files may be very large – both factors making electronic mail impracticable. If you accept that in future all business and scientific communication will be in English, the solution to this problem is merely a question of improving education. However, almost every script and alphabet known to humanity should soon be available on computers – within two or three years … For technical reasons, the “header” on an electronic message – who sent it to you, when and whence – will remain in English-based computer gobbledegook.
Down and Out on the Electronic Frontier
It is projects like the electronic journals – primary sources of research information available only with new technology – which set alarm bells ringing for those concerned about what the U.S. organization Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility calls “the new information order.”
Down and Out on the Electronic Frontier
In a decade electronic publications will be worth $1 billion a year in sales. Most of this will be distributed on various forms of compact disk read-only memory – CD-ROM, CD-I and so forth – and will be entertainment, education and home reference.
Down and Out on the Electronic Frontier
In the future, Physics Abstracts will be a service which tells you in the morning which of the papers published overnight match a set of keywords which you have specified. You’ll be able to ask for reverse citations – all the later papers which reference the one you’re reading – and go directly to read them. And you could see the citation count, and the readership count, change day-by-day. Such tools will be the only way to keep up with the flood of information.
Down and Out on the Electronic Frontier
Will the people who, for whatever reason, cannot access electronic information – and cannot converse with colleagues from around the world on their own computer on their own desk – be consigned to a backwater of human culture?
Greetings from the Twilight Zone
She doubt[s] that the electronic research communities will be any harder [for women] to break into than non-electronic ones. “Based on my own experience, I expect they will be much easier to join.”
Greetings from the Twilight Zone
It’s possible that [the Internet] will influence the whole structure and nature of knowledge as much as the printing press did.
Greetings from the Twilight Zone
The real experiment I’m trying to do is e-mail science. The “anomalous heat” project is just an excuse. I think this is the media of the future.