Using the Information Superhighway1

Abstract

The Infonnation Superhighway raises several uncomfortable questions which need careful consideration. New technologies create new opportunities but they highlight the realities of world in which the take-up of new inventions is not necessarily related to their merits. Betamax was the right answer, but everyone standardised on VHS. Also, the adoption of new inventions is not necessarily related to the underlying intentions of the technology's inventor. Alexander Graham Bell knew he was on to something important when he came up with the telephone. He believed one of its great virtues would be the fact that you could listen to an opera without having to go to the perfonnance. Right idea wrong technology! Again, the take-up is not even necessarily related to the imagination or creativity of those who could benefit. Alfred Hitchcock, film director who could make the. beating of wings or the hissing ofa shower curdle your blood, scorned the idea ofmovies with sound when The Jazz Singer came out in 1927. Sound, he said, was a complete gimmick and waste of time, which would ruin the dramatic effect. He even ended up having to re-shoot one film to add voices. These examples all demonstrate that we have never been very good at predicting the future use of technology, even when we have had some success in predicting technology changes themselves. We may, by now, have shrewd idea about some of the new tools that will be available to us. We should be very wary indeed about assuming we know how they will make their impact. With the Infonnation Superhighway, it is going to be important to distinguish between technological developments that we know are going to happen and the consequences of these developments, where history tells us our predictions may well be far from accurate. This is especially, and infuriatingly, true when it comes to forecasting what will happen in mass-market consumer areas. The best strategy to adopt there is one that allows for number of different outcomes. But though the actions of large corporations are not entirely ruled by logic, we do stand more of chance of being right

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