Chapter 12: Critical Issues

This network, and the computer-based machines connected to it, will form society’s new playground, new workplace, and new classroom. It will replace physical tender. It will subsume most existing forms of communication. It will be our photo album, our diary, our boom box. This versatility will be the strength of the network, but it will also mean we will be come reliant on it. Reliance can be dangerous … A complete failure of the information highway is worth worrying about. Because the system will be thoroughly decentralized, any single outage is unlikely to have a widespread effect. If an individual server fails, it will be replaced and its data restored. But the system could be susceptible to assault. As the system becomes more important, we will have to design in more redundancy.

Chapter 12: Critical Issues

If people do gravitate to their own interests and withdraw from the broader world – if weight lifters communicate only with other weight lifters, and Latvians choose to read only Latvian newspapers – there is a risk that common experiences and values will fall away. Such xenophobia would have the effect of fragmenting societies. I doubt this will happen, because I think people want a sense of belonging to many communities, including a world community.

Chapter 12: Critical Issues

American popular culture is so potent that outside the United States some countries now attempt to ration it. They hope to guarantee the viability of domestic-content producers by permitting only a certain number of hours of foreign television to be aired each week … The information highway is going to break down boundaries and may promote a world culture, or at least a sharing of cultural activities and values. The highway will also make it easy for patriots, even expatriates, deeply involved in their own ethic communities to reach out to others with similar interests no matter where they are located. This may strengthen cultural diversity and counter the tendency toward a single world culture.

Chapter 12: Critical Issues

This new access to information can draw people together by increasing their understanding of other cultures. Some believe it will cause discontent and worse, a “Revolution of Expectations,” when disenfranchised people get enough data about another lifestyle to contrast it with their own. Within individual societies, the balance of traditional versus modern experiences will shift as people use the information highway to expose themselves to a greater range of possibilities. Some cultures may feel under assault, as people pay greater attention to global issues or cultures, and less to traditional local ones.

Chapter 12: Critical Issues

Knowledge workers in industrialized countries will, in a sense, face new competition – just as some manufacturing works in industrialized countries have experienced competition from developing nations over the past decade. This will make the information highway a powerful force for international trade in intellectual goods and services … The net effect will be a wealthier world, which should be stabilizing. Developed nations, and workers in those nations, are likely to maintain a sizable economic lead. However, the gap between the have and have-not nations will diminish. Starting out behind is sometimes an advantage. It lets those who adopt late skip steps, and avoid the mistakes of the trailblazers. Some countries will never have industrialization. They will move directly into the Information Age.

Chapter 12: Critical Issues

Because so many people will find the combination of rural lifestyle and urban information attractive, network companies will have an incentive to run fiber-optic lines to high-income remote areas. It is likely that some states, or communities, or even private real estate developers will promote their areas by providing great connectivity. This will lead to what one might call the “Aspen-ization” of parts of the the country. Interesting rural communities will high marks for quality of life will deliberately set out to attract a new class of sophisticated urban citizen. Taken as a whole, urban areas will tend to get their connections before rural ones.

Chapter 12: Critical Issues

The fully developed information highway will be affordable – almost by definition. An expensive system that connect a few big corporations and wealthy people simply would not be the information highway – it would be the information private road. The network will not attract enough great content to thrive if only the most affluent 10 percent of society choose to avail themselves of it … Advertising income will allow a lot of content to be free. However, most service providers, whether they are rock bands or consulting engineers or book publishers, will still ask that users make a payment. So the information highway will be affordable, if used judiciously, but it won’t be free.

Chapter 12: Critical Issues

Before the information highway can become fully integrated into society, it must be available to virtually every citizen, not just the elite, but this does not mean that every citizen has to have an information appliance in his house. Once the majority of people have systems installed in their home, those who do not can be accommodated with a share appliance at a library, school, post office, or public kiosk. It’s important to remember that the question of universal access arises only if the highway is immensely successful – more successful than many commentators expect. Amazingly, some of the same critics who complain the highway will be so popular it will cause problems also complain it won’t be popular at all.