Vision of the Information Superhighway

The much-touted "information superhighway" that will bring exciting new communications capabilities may be getting closer to being a reality, but there are still many questions to be answered about what the new systems will entail, what services they will offer, what services the consumer will support, what technologies will be needed, how soon they will be available, and so on. Much about the new information superhighway is uncertain, and comparisons that have been made to existing communications systems and technologies may be interesting and may provide helpful data, but they also may be misleading. In truth, there will probably be no such thing as an information superhighway and will be a number of different information systems complementing one another and offering different capabilities to different people or for different purposes. We see the beginning of this today with fax machines, cellular telephones, computers, video-teleconferencing, home video systems, and other technologies which have already changed the ways people interact, the ability of the individual to acquire information rapidly, and the work and living habits of millions of people. The future will most assuredly bring more change, more interactivity, more access to information and working programs for computer, and other systems that will benefit a wide variety of professions, including that of technical writing. In addition to providing much to write about, the changes will provide new ways of do

from local telephone service customers. This has created a dilemma for Congress as it tries to determine how these new services will be held accountable and made to meet public interest goals. Different states are taking different approaches to these questions, and the federal government is addressing these issues from its perspective. the systems being constructed in North Carolina and California offer contrasting views of what the information superhighway will be like. North Carolina's system favors public institutions, and the state has been joining with private business to install sophisticated, two-way video and computer links over local telephone lines to schools, libraries, medical facilities, and other public institutions. The California system favors commercial interests by attempting to ease regulatory barriers to encourage private communications companies to link millions of homes to a less sophisticated two-way video system. In the long-term, it is intended that each state get what the other state begins with first so that the two approaches combine to constitute the entirety of the new electronic universe. Much of what is foreseen for the information superhighway is embodied in "The National Information Infras