Connectivity: the road to the future
02/01/2002
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What will do the most to propel national economies forward over the next couple of decades? In the US, as our "leaders" debated over the right formula to stimulate the economy, the main focus of one group was on extending unemployment benefits for laid-off workers to stimulate spending, while the other pushed for corporate tax rebates to encourage capital spending and thus create more jobs. Laying aside humanitarian arguments, neither approach promised to provide much stimulus. The unemployed would probably spend most of the money on food and monthly bills, and, in the face of extensive industrial overcapacity, the corporations would use tax breaks to help the bottom line rather than buy new equipment.
The quality of this debate is typical of the general irrelevance of politically tainted, hollow arguments that resound across the halls of Congress. Short-term remedies packaged to appeal to major donors and voter blocs substitute for any real vision. During the recent record-breaking economic build-up, improved productivity was coming from a rapid rise in the interconnectedness of American industry and commerce. As with so many promising things, excessive greed took over, leading to the dot.com bubble. When it burst, it choked off the tremendous investment going into creating a robust, broadband infrastructure. What would really help the US economy in the future, and in turn help other economies around the world, would be to encourage the continuation of this transformation toward an interconnected information society. Myriad products, both plug-in and wireless, would spring onto the market to take advantage of the universal access to broadband information and services.
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After World War II, Dwight Eisenhower, a popular general, became president at a time of reconstruction. His administration, with taciturn Dean Rusk as the Secretary of State, was considered relatively colorless, with few wars or major international disputes. Once someone made a comment to Rusk about how nothing much had happened during his term. He carefully explained that achieving some peace and tranquillity had taken great skill and a lot of hard work. That time of calm enabled a tremendous burst of energy to go into building a fantastic infrastructure to support vibrant economic growth in the US, while programs like the Marshall Plan helped rebuild Europe, and efforts led by General Douglas MacArthur resulted in the eventual tremendous economic success of Japan.
During that period, work began on the greatest engineering project ever: the US Interstate Highway System. It took decades to complete, but immeasurable economic benefits have accrued to the US national economy and to countries all over the world that sold billions of dollars' worth of goods to the US. New towns sprung up with industries that could ship goods more efficiently and quickly than had ever been possible before. The automobile and oil industries soared as Americans found travel much more convenient, enjoyable, and inexpensive. We became a mobile society.
We have a similar opportunity right now. While the dot.com craze seemed like a bout with lunacy, it actually was based on the tremendous potential for efficiency and progress through connectivity. Commerce and business continue at a rapid rate to streamline their systems to take advantage of the Internet as it now exists, and millions of new users are going on-line and finding more applications every day. The trouble is that the rapid build-up of the infrastructure to improve our connectivity has stalled. In many locations it is still hard to get broadband service to the home or office, and mushrooming growth of new uses for this fantastic new resource depends on virtually total coverage.
Amazingly, according to a study cited by Information Gatekeepers, Korea leads the world in number of broadband connections per 100, at 9.2, because government programs and subsidies spur the development of the infrastructure. Singapore and Hong Kong are not far behind. The US is fifth, just below Canada! Paul Polishuk, IGI president, believes that France will move up into the top spot soon because of an extensive program to push broadband interconnect services. Europe and Japan are leading the push toward 3G (third generation) wireless broadband services, allowing even video to be transferred over the Internet to small screens built into pocket phones.
While the government should stay out of direct involvement in building the systems, it could act as a facilitator. Government agencies and the military could get wired up and improve their operations with broadband information services. Some targeted tax breaks could encourage large complexes like hospitals, universities, cities and towns, and state and local government agencies to make more effective use of broadband services. A few visionaries with some minimal support built the Arpanet, based on packet switching (using IMPs, or interface message processors at the nodes of a spider-web-like networking structure), leading to today's Internet. For a time I served on the IEEE Data Communications subcommittee, and observed the dedicated work of these pioneers. More programs like this could lead to standards and improved technology to help facilitate tomorrow's interconnected services.
A calmer world, without the fear bred by terrorists and ethnic clashes, could support the rapid development of not just an interstate but a global information highway system. Everyone would benefit. That's what our leaders should be working toward.
Robert Haavind
Editor in Chief