Chapter 6 Imperative Issues in the Utilization of the Exploding Multimedia Content on The Information Superskyway

Abstract

Bill Gates, who feels that with respect to Windows and CDROMs, he overestimated in the short‐run, and underestimated in the long‐run, would probably expect Broadband Network Technology (BNT) to arrive in less than a decade. No matter when BNT arrives, there is a fundamental question that has to be raised and answered, which is the theme of this chapter: the UTILIZATION of the exploding multimedia content of the Information Superskyway. How will people USE 1,000 times the current content, arriving 1,000 times as fast? We discuss nine imperative issues of utilization. (1) Use of Content on the Information Superskyway. More than 20 years before IT became a household word, the US National Science Foundation issued a Request for Proposal entitled: “Systems Approach to Evaluate the Use of Science and Technology Information in the Electronic Alternative to Paper‐based Communication.” The same approach is germane toward the use of the entire IT content today. (2) Use of IT Data in Corporate Decision‐Making. In 1972, IBM headquarters removed the computer consoles placed next to the desk of senior executives because the computers were hardly used in two years. How can nonuse be avoided? (3) Networks obsoleting skills, structure. The fusion of computers and communications empowers all the workers to form, dissolve, and re‐form networks based on their relative competitiveness. With the ability to source globally, virtual corporations can be formed, dissolved, and re‐formed based on their competitiveness and credibility. (4) Significant resource commitment to unproven technology. With the very survival of Great Britain at stake, the non‐specialist Churchill had to lay all the technology eggs in the single basket called the “radar,” trusting that “the promises made by our scientists for the still unproven radar would be kept.” It would remain unproven for four years yet. (5) Sensitivity of significant resource commitment to technology forecast. Far more tenuous than the “promises for radar” was Einstein's opinion that nuclear‐energy could be released. Roosevelt launched the atomic bomb project on that opinion. Had he sought a second opinion from an eminent physicist like Niels Bohr, he would have questioned Einstein's opinion as scientific arm‐waving. (6) Sensitivity of significant resource commitment to technology‐generated market forecast. Churchill's reliance on Lindemann for technology advice is echoed in IBM CEO Watson's reliance on Birkenstock. In 1948, the latter encouraged the former to stand up against Watson, Sr. and abandon punch cards for magnetic tape. In 1956, he persuaded Watson, Jr. to negotiate with Texas Instruments to cut down the price of IC to $1.50, making it economically feasible to use IC in System/360. (7) Protection of Primogeniture of Ideas on the Internet. In order not to inhibit the inventor from collaborative interactions, the paternity of seminal ideas has to be unambiguously established when interactive exchanges are instantaneous, as on the Internet. (8) Inter‐disciplinary (synergistic) linguistics. The prerequisite to any inter‐disciplinary communication is the ability of each to understand one language in addition to one's own discipline. A truly inter‐disciplinary language would enable those in different disciplines to communicate with everyone else, enabling synergy to be generated. (8) Putting the Content in the Context. The explosion of instantaneous data racing thousand times as fast as at present is sand without substance, unless the symbols written in sand are given substance by the context of the decision‐maker. The data should be ordered and processed to answer questions of the type: Must I expand the external boundaries; if so, in which direction? Must I expand the internal boundaries; if so, in which direction?

Citation

(1997), "Chapter 6 Imperative Issues in the Utilization of the Exploding Multimedia Content on The Information Superskyway", Asia Pacific Journal of Marketing and Logistics, Vol. 9 No. 1/2, pp. 85-111. https://doi.org/10.1108/eb010283