Expectations -- a reality check

It is late in the 19th century and twilight has arrived as I sit down in my home in London, England, write a short letter, and drop it in the post box at the corner of my street. I expect that it will be delivered tomorrow morning and that I will likely get a reply later that day. My friend lives at the other end of the country, but the railway service is very fast and dependable. Mail sorting is done on the train, and I have come to depend on twice-a-day delivery. Since I am in a privileged class and can read and write, I can access this postal system, which for me seems very inexpensive. How times have changed from the days when mail was carried via horseback!

For me, this is an extremely fast way to communicate, although I am never really sure if my mail has been delivered. Little do I know that telephone technology is emerging and I will be able to send my voice across the miles and hear the voice of my friend immediately acknowledging my message. What should I expect? Will I be impressed by that new technology or will I be frustrated by the loss of privacy that instant access will bring? One person's delight is often another's aversion.

INFORMATION AGE.   Well, a few more years go by and new technological advances occur. The age of the so-called information highway is beginning. This highway starts with computer operators in the '50s who begin to communicate among themselves using weird specialized languages and obscure protocols. These secretive rituals slowly spread to other computer users as non-operators are permitted to touch and then control the new breed of smaller, simpler computers. The invention of the modem causes a quantum leap in accessibility, and the number of computer techies grows.

The Internet is born from roots of military secrecy and academic researchers engaged in hush-hush projects. Other academics become interested in the rapidly expanding world of computers that do less computing but process words, draw pictures and exchange electronic mail messages. Then innovative business leaders realize they can develop and sell information services that access airline schedules, stock market listings, weather reports, on-line dictionaries and the like, along with some e-mail exchanges among fellow subscribers. The result -- the commercial fee-for-service networks and a whole new breed of nontechnical users.

Then the media discovers the Internet. Almost everyone knows about the Internet. Freenets are developed. Internet access services are developed. Extensions to the Internet are developed. Millions of people start to use the Internet. More and more users transfer larger and larger files more frequently. What would happen if that many people suddenly discovered the automobile (at the price of a PC) and started to use a system of roads and gas stations that had been designed for a very small subset of the population?

A DIGITAL WORLD.   Today, we are integrated in an electronic communications world that spans the globe, and offers a myriad of services -- some for payment, some free. We can come to expect that since this new world is digital, it must be accurate, reliable and very low-cost. Perhaps. In some cases. At times. Yes, e-mail is transferred across the Internet in split seconds. However, if it crosses a boundary between the Internet and a relatively restricted network or hits a bottleneck, there can be delays of seconds, minutes or hours -- just like leaving a superhighway and encountering a toll booth, customs checkpoint, road construction or a washout.

Perhaps your e-mail is delivered promptly. Who will read it? Is that person busy, out of town or overworked? Maybe he or she simply does not know what is needed to answer you. We need to distinguish between our expectations of the communications technology and our expectations of the people with whom we communicate. By the way, you can often double-check the address of a recipient or see when that person last logged on. It's called the finger command and is used as follows. From the system prompt, type "finger name@host", where host is the computer address and name is either the first name, surname or the log-on ID. You usually get back all matches to "name" on the computer "host" as well as when the person last logged on and if they have unread mail.

LOST MAIL.   Perhaps your e-mail did not arrive. The vastness of the Internet is also a liability. With a small, closed network, the network/system manager knows all possible users and can tell you if you did not send to one of a relatively small number of known recipients. There is no worldwide Internet system manager -- unless we wish to enter the realm of religious speculation. But that may be more dangerous than getting too technical!

WEB WARNINGS.   The world of text has expanded to include graphics and sound clips. The advent of the World Wide Web and the free availability of Web browsers on FTP sites is leading to a topsy-turvy expansion of Web sites. Everybody is putting up "home pages." This is exciting in one sense, but it has to be tempered with the realization that most of the current Web sites and services are experimental. An example of this involves an address I quoted in the March issue of The Institute. I noted that it is possible to use e-mail to access the text of Web pages by sending a message to "listproc@www0.cern.ch". Shortly after I wrote that column, that address changed to "agora@mail.w3.org"! My thanks to many of you who helped us discover both the problem and the solution.

Do not be surprised if there is very little content after the home page. Many of the "clickable" keywords lead only to a "under construction" sign or an "unavailable" message. Do not be surprised if the graphics seem to take forever to download. Many people use the option -- present in most browsers -- to turn off the automatic downloading of graphics. Beware of content accuracy or timeliness -- it is much easier for an enthusiastic individual to post information once than to set up a system within the company to responsibly manage that information-posting over time. At IEEE we have only recently hired our first-ever director of electronic communications with a specific mandate to do just that -- manage our rapidly expanding use of electronic communications services. We welcome Tom Brisco.

CHALLENGES.   These are interesting times -- exciting to some, frustrating to others. We have a lot of new technology with the potential to help us communicate widely, quickly and efficiently. But to reach this potential, we need to improve the bandwidth of our communication channels, we need to improve the software packages we use to access this technology, and we need to adapt how we do the business of creating, managing and accessing the content. Changing the mindset of the people involved and coping with the new responsibilities that this developing technology brings is perhaps the most difficult part. To have realistic expectations, we need to understand the current infrastructure limitations.