Information Superhighway

The "information superhighway" is spoken of by politicians and businessmen, is advertised on television, written about at length in newspapers and magazines, and remains a mystery to a number of Americans as to what it actually means. Its proponents and subscribers describe it as the way that Americans will not only do business, but also shop, communicate and receive entertainment in the future. Still in its infancy, the information superhighway is not the creation of any one company or organization, but rather encompasses many different offerings from a broad variety of companies. This research examines the information superhighway and where it might lead in the future.

There is no single definition as to what the term "information superhighway" actually means (Allen, 1994, p. 1). Vice-President Al Gore generally receives credit for coining the term, which generally connotes the interconnectivity of computers, information services and electronic mail services. From a single computer terminal or personal computer, individuals on the information superhighway are able to connect to a variety of other electronic resources for entertainment, information or to conduct business; most of these connections take place over telephone lines.

The telephone system that connects the world was originally developed to enable people to talk with people. Facsimile machines made it possible for machines to communicate with machines, but the printed

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en to the on-line service subscriber. Costs associated with this option include an on-line service fee, a per-hour connect charge (beyond a minimum provided by the service fee), and e-mail message charges in some cases (Ayre, 1994, p. 119). There are two aspects to the Internet that help make it an attractive candidate for the global interconnectivity that is associated with an information superhighway. This is the Internet's use of gophers and webs. World-Wide Web (WWW) servers use hypertext to join pieces of information in separate documents. Links are maintained using standard coding, and the resulting WWW pages are similar to chapters in a book. Gophers provide another way to retrieve information from the Internet, but present information in a menu system that is similar to a table of contents. Users select an item in the list, and the Internet displaces the next level of menu. Both WWW and gophers are client/server based, which may mean that users need additional software for them to work (Ayre, 1994, p. 132). The National Information Infrastructure The communication infrastructure within the United States is one of the best in the world. Telecommunications, electronic communication (via television and radio), even

Category: Science - I