Information Superhighway

For the half-century that digital computers have been available, they have nearly always been seen as stand-alone devices. If a person had a computing problem, he or she would somehow connect to a computer, transmit the problem to it and receive the solution back. The sophistication of the input devices and the problems to be solved have changed substantially as computers have evolved. The basic model of input, compute and output, however, has remained relatively static. Computers have been simply the middle member for a pair of binary interactions with human beings.

Recently this model has been expanded by an entirely new vision of the appropriate flow of information between human beings and computers. The closed circle of input, compute and output is replaced by a web. In the new model, computers and humans are part of a complex network of communication that may flow from human to machine to human (as in the old model) but also from human to human or machine to machine. This arbitrary flow of information across an ill-defined web of computers is popularly called the Information Superhighway.

So far the Information Superhighway is more dream than reality. But that dream is taking form in quite concrete political and technological choices that we are currently making. The essence of the dream is accessing information on computers around the world without regard to physical location. All our information—commercial transactions, descriptions of skills and capabilities, credit histories, and even personal communications—can be retrieved, transferred and edited remotely, regardless of what computer they actually reside on.

Evolving the Highway System

While the Information Superhighway is mostly a matter of political vision and planning, a number of current realities give us an insight into the ways it would transform our lives. These capabilities will be enhanced as our current information network (which is still a kind of “Information Oregon Trail”) evolves into a secure medium with tools that can support access to its information treasures.

Over the past few decades, the United States Department of Defense (mostly through its Advanced Research Projects Agency, ARPA) and several large European agencies have independently explored the significance of allowing computer systems to network with each other. Research along these lines marked a dramatic change in thinking about the way computers could serve human needs.

Much of the evolution of computer systems involved making them faster and more powerful so that individual machines could be used to solve increasingly complex problems. Networking machines together did not help them solve more complex problems at all, because the control integration required to martial networked resources against a single computational problem was lacking. But networking did create and solve an entirely different set of problems.

Although computers, when networked, cannot solve more complex problems, they can exchange information more easily and widely. This information exchange turns out to be profoundly important because it makes use of computers for what they have come to do most: remember our information. When computers are networked, they have the potential to share the information they maintain for us with other people and other computers. In the end, this entire web of the Information Superhighway will allow information to travel along arbitrary paths to its destination.

When compared against this vision, today’s tools are quite primitive. But they provide access to some information across some paths to some destinations on the network. People today access information networks in two basic, and basically different, ways.

On-line Access Vehicles

Commercial On-line Services. A number of providers such as CompuServe, America Online and Prodigy offer their subscribers electronic messaging and discussion services as well as a set of resources provided by the content industry. Messaging in on-line services is usually easiest and most transparent with other members of the same service. Messaging outside the on-line service is now often possible but may be more convoluted.

Another service provided by on-line services is discussion. “Chat” groups and other topical discussion groups are a major draw of the on-line services. These groups may be for users of particular computer software, or for shared interests like rock climbing, or “just” for company. Some can be conducted in real time while others have built-in delays.

On-line services also provide a vehicle for content providers to distribute their goods. News services such as Dow Jones News Retrieval, magazines like Consumer Reports and Worth, and encyclopedia vendors all use on-line services as distribution channels for their content.

On-line services are for the most part self-contained islands of information. If yours has a good encyclopedia available, all is well, but if it is available only on another service, you are out of luck. Connections outside the on-line services are becoming more common and easier to navigate all the time, but they are still exceptional. Most subscribers stay on their original on-line island.

The Internet. If the on-line services are like isolated neighborhoods of users, the Internet is like a complex urban megalopolis. The Internet, a direct outgrowth of ARPA’s experiments in computer networking, is a loose confederation of thousands of computers that offer various kinds of information services to each other and the users who have accounts on member machines.

Many of the services provided by Internet computers are very similar to those of the on-line services. Messaging, discussion groups and file archives are all part of the Internet’s diffuse resources. Some content providers also allow basic Internet access to their resources, but this is less developed than in the on-line services.

In general, people gain access to the Internet through their work or school. Private access is relatively more expensive than group access to the on-line services, so Internet access tends to be organizationally mediated. The Internet also tends to be more arcane and cryptic than the on-line services. This is because it originated in a culture of computer professionals who had learned to have no problem with such a lack of user-friendliness. This aspect of the Internet is slowly changing, but the power lying behind the Internet’s rather brutal veneer keeps people coming to it in spite of the learning curve it requires.

Current Pathways

Whether people access the on-line world of information through an on-line service or over the Internet itself, they do so to obtain a variety of services not easily available elsewhere. Even where similar services are available outside the on-line world, the on-line versions are distinctive.

Electronic Mail. The most transparent example of this distinctiveness is electronic mail. From one point of view, electronic mail (e-mail) is just another form of instant communication like the telephone or fax. But for several reasons electronic mail turns out to be extremely convenient for a variety of communications.

E-mail uses the same tools for responding as for receiving. By contrast, a conventional letter requires a letter opener to receive but a pen, paper, envelope and stamp to respond. This difference in reception and response tools adds a substantial overhead to the communication, and busy people will not complete it unless it is very important. One can, however, dash off an e-mail reply with very little overhead and no tools other than the ones used to receive the mail.

People can receive e-mail quickly and respond to it at their leisure. As it happens, many communications need to reach their destination quickly but do not require quick response. Electronic mail is ideal for these communications.

E-mail mail leaves a “paper trail” automatically. Many business communications need to leave documentation behind them. Telephone calls, while personal, are not self-documenting and so require an additional activity to create an audit trail. Electronic mail is often just as personal and quick as a telephone call but documents itself in the communication process.

Discussion Groups. At their most puerile, these discussion groups are mere college “bull sessions” without even the grace required by face-to-face communication. In some cases, however, the discussion can be extremely helpful. The most common helpful discussions currently focus on using various pieces of computer hardware and software. People are more than happy to share their success and failure stories and can be quite helpful to others in the discussion group.

Discussion groups in the on-line services can be called chat sessions or bulletin boards. On the Internet, they are referred to as Usenet groups. Information tends to flow quite freely in these groups, and all advice is offered in a “let the buyer beware” mode. This tends to give on-line discussion groups a frontier air about them. Good information is out there, but finding and using it requires determination and discernment.

In general, the signal-to-noise ratio in on-line discussions is extremely low. So little useful information is provided by some groups that readers routinely use automatic means (filters, robots and “kill files”) to sort out the potentially interesting from the useless. Other groups have spawned “mediated” counterparts where postings to the group are passed through a judging process before being distributed. One example of this is the mediated counterpart of the rec.humor Usenet group, appropriately called rec.humor.funny to distinguish it from its unmediated cousin.

Information Files. The traditional content industries (publishing, education and entertainment) and other information providers now also have offerings on the Information Superhighway. Information files may be computer software or encyclopedia articles or technical specifications. They are usually provided in relatively portable file formats so they can be downloaded and adapted or printed on the user’s computer.

The information provided on-line has managed to raise anew the problems with traditional copyright laws that the photocopy machine hinted at. For centuries, content providers have charged for their information by charging for the medium which carried it. Book publishers were really selling information, but they made their money by restricting the supply of the medium that carried that information, the printed page. Electronic media, in contrast, are virtually free, and as a result information carried electronically can be duplicated again and again at marginal cost. This aspect of the on-line world is causing serious heartburn for the traditional information providers because their ability to restrict information by restricting the supply of the distribution medium is disappearing.

The World Wide Web. The Web, or WWW, is a distributed ad hoc system of information, sound, graphics and other media files. It originated at CERN, the European nuclear research facility in Switzerland, and now has linked nodes all over the world.

The Web works by giving Internet-connected computers the ability to serve “Web pages,” documents composed in HTML (HyperText Markup Language). HTML allows authors to provide platform independent content that refers to Web pages on other Internet computers using hyperlinks. These hyperlinks refer to files on computers anywhere in the world using a Universal Resource Locator (URL).

Using software called a Web browser, these hyperlinked URLs can be traversed without the user even knowing where the resource resides. Several browsers (especially Mosaic and Netscape) have made the Web popular and have fed the explosion of Internet resources as well as provided access to them.

The Future of the Superhighway

The World Wide Web and the browsers that exploit it are our most important glimmer of the power available to us over a future Information Superhighway. Vast amounts of information navigated using arbitrary hyperlinks sounds like a set of services useful to business, educational and commercial concerns.

One important piece of the Information Superhighway that has yet to be constructed is the ability to send secure information over the network. Credit card orders and bank transfers cannot currently be accommodated on the Internet because the security of the transactions cannot be guaranteed.

Even in the absence of these security systems, commerce on the Internet has grown substantially in the last few years. Today it is a remarkable advertising medium, especially for that dimension of advertising which is essentially informative. As pioneering organizations like Commercenet and their descendants chart the course of business over the network, we can expect it to have a profound impact on many forms of commercial life, such as mail-order catalogs (which can be distributed far more cheaply and widely in soft copy over a network) and service negotiation.

Eventually we can expect service, delivery, education and even government to be conducted substantially over the Information Superhighway. On-line “town meetings” and public discussions have already occurred in the United States and elsewhere. And government entities are providing Web pages and other information sources for constituents and other interested parties. Participation in democracies around the world has another important vehicle with the Internet, for it is certainly easier to drop your senator e-mail than to write and send a traditional letter.

Challenges for Christians

The Information Superhighway offers many benefits, but with these come several challenges.

As with all advances in technology this one is a mixed blessing, facilitating our communication and exchange and at the same time extending some present imbalances. On one hand, the Information Superhighway opens up possibilities of improving access to a wide range of sources and democratizing discussion of them. This is a real advantage, one that is in many respects similar to what happened when the telephone was first introduced. On the other hand, it may reinforce the dominance of data and information over interpretation and wisdom, increase information overload and induce people to spend more time on their computers than with people. It could have further implications as well.

On the Social Level. Although the cost of computers continues to decrease, it still costs money to obtain equipment and use a provider to get on the Information Superhighway. Thus poorer and more marginal groups in society may still to some extent miss out and become further disadvantaged. Also, people with poor relational skills may be tempted to feel that they are achieving intimacy through electronics when there is no technical fix for these. While using the Net may help some to grow in confidence in their ability to communicate, relationships mainly grow through speaking and listening to actual others, preferably when eye contact can be made and feelings “read.”

On the Moral Level. Parts of the Net are in danger of being co-opted by advertisers looking for fresh ways to get customers. It is also already being used to solicit a wider audience for pornography. There is a need for users of the Net to monitor both their own and their children’s use of it. In some cases technical devices can be used to block children from gaining access to certain services. While legislated regulation of suppliers is one course of action here, unlike television, Net providers are more information exchanges than prepackaged senders. As with other technologies, all dimensions of grappling with the principalities and powers are involved in using, developing and harnessing this new tool.

On the Spiritual Level. All power-based technologies offer an implicit temptation to idolatry. This is part of the “technological illusion” (Ellul). Many people spend too much time on the Net and direct their major energies to exploiting its potential. Computer addiction is a serious alternative focus for daily life. It is important to keep the Information Superhighway in its place, as a servant. One way of doing this is to “fast” or take a “sabbath” from its use on a regular basis, so as to keep it in proper perspective. Another is to maintain something akin to old-fashioned leisurely letter writing where this is the more appropriate form of communication.

At the same time, the Information Superhighway allows for some level of communication—consider it “small talk” if you like—between members of family and colleagues separated geographically. Small talk is not to be despised, especially if the new technology allows generations to communicate (grandparents and grandchildren, for example). Relationships are partly built on regular small talk, and the latter can also lead to big talk, the full sharing of personhood in community, family, church-family and in spiritual friendships. And anything that makes it possible for people to keep in touch with one another at minimal expense over long distances can be welcomed by Christians.

As private citizens, churches, businesses, government and banks increasingly turn to the Information Superhighway, there will undoubtedly be an ever-deepening hunger for the personal and for warm human relationships. Since persons are always at the center of the kingdom of God, God’s people face an unparalleled opportunity to humanize the world for God’s glory.

» See also: Computer

» See also: Computer Games

—Hal Miller