Joe's Jottings
Jottings Number 43, by Joe Podolsky:
From: uunet!HP-PaloAlto-om4.om.hp.com!JOE_PODOLSKY
Date: Wed, 18 Oct 95 13:45:47 -0700
Nicholas Negroponte is Professor of Media Technology at MIT and Director of its Media Lab. Negroponte is an architect by training and a technology evangelist both by profession and by avocation. He's a regular columnist in _Wired_ magazine, and his _avant-garde_ views blend well with the psychedelic colors and graphics of that publication. The success of the Media Lab has brought him fame and fortune, but he's still preaching his messages, working the expanding boundary where technology meets humanity. His book, _Being Digital_ has a straightforward premise. The physical world is made up of "atoms." The world of computation and communication is made up of "bits." We are getting good at converting atoms to bits and bits to atoms, but, because we are limited by our traditional atom-based views of the world, we are not taking advantage of the tremendous opportunities that can come from the manipulation of those bits. For example, "When media is digital - because bits are bits, two fundamental and immediate results will be observed. First, bits commingle effortlessly...the mixing of audio, video, and data is called "multimedia"; it sounds complicated, but it is nothing more than commingled bits." In another example, we will hold all of what we now think of as hardware in digital form, and then, using "agile manufacturing techniques," convert the bits to atoms just when and where the consumer wants them. "Second, a new kind of bit is born - a bit that tells you about other bits...These header bits can be a table of contents or a description of the data to follow." These header bits can be manipulated independently of the content. The content can be manipulated so that we see and hear all the special effects that we're getting used to on our television and movie screens. Those jazzy effects, however, are only the beginning of Negroponte's vision. They're fun demonstrations of technology, but they stay within the confines of the media we've known for much of this century. Negroponte suggests that "being digital" will fundamentally affect society through forces that decentralize, globalize, harmonize, and empower. We in companies like HP have been living with these forces for a while, but Negroponte predicts that even governmental boundaries will be affected. Some early evidence of this exists, with, frankly, mixed success: Joint Venture Silicon Valley, the European Common Market, the North American Free Trade Agreement. Jobs, assumed up till now to be local, may give in to these forces as more people work mainly in cyberspace. Negroponte says that, "The information superhighway is more than a short cut to every book in the Library of Congress. It is creating a totally new, global, social fabric." But people will still live in neighborhoods, and raise their children in a specific community, independent of the geographic mobility of bits. Negroponte predicts that automated agents will become a major factor in our lives. These omnipresent electronic servants will create a new version of an "upstairs/downstairs" society. Our agents will talk to other agents, to networks and databases and computers all over the world looking out for our interests, learning about us heuristically. In a few years, we will ask our agent to set up a meeting. Our agent will contact the agents of the other attendees, coordinate calendars, and schedule the meeting. Then, based on already learned preferences, the agent will arrange the conference room, order refreshments, and set a flag to send out reminder notices. If I have to drive to the meeting, I might even train my agent to check the traffic reports to warn me to leave early if there's a jam on route. And, of course, the agent will automatically file the expense report for the mileage and parking. All this depends, of course, on "being digital." The key enabler is not the agent technology, but the data that the agent can access. The power of "bits about bits" will allow us to go at warp speed through the children of today's worldwide web and make all these connections. We might also put digital labels on non-electronic things so that they also join this cyberworld. Everything might have its own active electronic bar code so that we can always locate it. "In the future," predicts Negroponte, "the concept of 'being lost' will be as unlikely as being 'out of print.'" He envisions appliances that carry their own instruction manuals, guiding the unfamiliar user as needed. "The 'warranty' should be sent electronically by the appliance itself, once it feels it has been satisfactorily installed." Negroponte sees smart clothing that automatically adjusts itself to changing conditions in our body (e.g., sweating) or in the environment (e.g., raining), all powered by solar cells on our belts. The dark side of all this, of course, is the massive amount of change we will face, both as individuals and as professional and social communities. Ease of electronic contact may be just another name for invasion of privacy (Club Med may advertise the ultimate vacation in an "agent free zone"). Digital vandalism may be a painful reality. Long-lasting jobs may come in two types, exotic and mundane. On the high end, people will be building, implementing, and continuously improving these digital wonders; artists and politicians will probably thrive. On the other end, we will still need the human contact of policing, nursing and child rearing, and the physical labor involved in trash disposal and personal services. Much of the routine work we now do may well fall in the middle, jobs that will exist only until we have trained agents to do them. I started to type a really silly question: "How will all this affect information systems?" That's the wrong question. The digital world is coming, whether in Negroponte's form or in others, and we in information systems are its messenger. So, here are some better questions. How do we prepare ourselves and our customers for these changes? What should our schools systems be doing to prepare our children to live in the digital world? What values do we, as individuals and as companies, need as rudders in order to successfully survive the digital hurricane? How do we avoid "1984" and evolve toward a better, more human society in a world surrounded by bits? Regards, Joe