Communication Technology and Telenetworking

Raymond S. Nickerson

INTRODUCTION

Among the more significant events in the recent history of long-distance communication
have been the building of computer-based communication networks and the development
of technologies that have made possible the implementation and exploitation of these
networks. In this chapter we focus on these technologies and on the challenges and
opportunities for human factors research that they present.

We begin with a brief historical overview of computer-communications networking

technology. We then focus on current trends, especially the phenomenon of "global
connectivity" that networking is coming to represent and some of the implications this
could have. In the remainder of the chapter we discuss some of the human factors issues
and research needs that relate to networking and its future development and applications.

HISTORICAL OVERVIEW

Networks that link computers from different geographical locations are a relatively recent
phenomenon. Since the first such networks were implemented, the technology has
advanced rapidly. It appears that this rapid advance will continue and that applications of
the technology will become increasingly widespread over the near term.

The first experimental networks connecting independent, nonhomogeneous,

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geographically distributed computers were established in the mid-1960s (Davies and

Barber, 1973; Marrill and Roberts, 1966). The ARPANET, which was to become the
largest operational network in the world and to remain so for many years, was started as a
four-node system by the Advanced Research Projects Agency of the U.S. Department of
Defense in 1969 (Heart, 1975; Heart et al., 1978). According to Pool (1993), its
successor, the Internet, connected about 1.7 million host computers and between 5
million and 15 million users as of 1993, and the numbers have been doubling annually.

The establishment and proliferation of computer networks have been accompanied—

indeed made possible—by an ever-increasing blurring of the distinction between
computer and communication technologies. The Internet and the many smaller networks
that connect to it depend on computing resources for all aspects of their operation and for
the provision of the various services, such as electronic mail and bulletin boards,
teleconferencing, information utilities, and the many others that they offer.

Today there are several types of networks: local networks, long-distance networks that
use telephone lines, satellite networks that communicate by radio transmission, and
network complexes that use a variety of means of transmission. Some networks are
designed to connect only the terminals in a single building or office complex; at the other
extreme are those that connect facilities in different countries and regions of the world.
Networks have been established to serve the interests of government agencies, business
corporations, educational institutions, and the general public.

Not only have networks been rapidly increasing in number and size; the bandwidth or
"throughput" capacity of the individual links of which they are composed has been
expanding greatly as well. Wide-area networks now typically operate at 1.5 megabits
(million bits) per second, and many local-area networks have transmission rates of 10
megabits per second. Systems that use optical fibers as the transmission medium support
rates of 100 megabits and, in a few cases, 1 gigabit (billion bit).

TECHNOLOGY TRENDS AND EXPECTATIONS

Network enhancements will come from the development of increasingly powerful

computing devices, many of which are especially designed for network applications, as
well as from improvements in the methods for transmitting information from point to
point and from the development of new network configurations and new ways of linking
networks together.

Rapidly Increasing Bandwidth

Probably the most significant predictable trend in networking is a continuing increase in

network bandwidths at all levels of network operations.

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Suggested Citation:"6 Communication Technology and Telenetworking." National Research
Council. 1995. Emerging Needs and Opportunities for Human Factors Research. Washington,
DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/4940.
×

Systems with transmission rates of 10 gigabits per second could be in place by the end of
the century or soon thereafter (Kahn, 1987); and there is already speculation that terabit
(trillion bit) capacity systems might be feasible in the not-distant future (Partridge, 1990).
Optical fiber will become increasingly used as the information conduit for future systems
(Bell, 1989; Desurvire, 1992); it is expected that most homes will have access to
broadband fiber networks within 10 to 20 years (Shumate, 1989). Wireless terminals,
foreshadowed by cellular telephone technology, will also become more generally
available, as will high-resolution color terminals with three-dimensional graphics
capability.

If network bandwidth continues to increase at anything like its recent rate, it will soon be
feasible to transmit enormous amounts of data (including digital voice and video) at very
low cost. As more and more systems acquire the capacity to transmit high-quality speech
with little or no compression, digital voice seems certain to be an increasingly practical
mode of communication between one person and another through computer networks,
and between people and computers (Makhoul et al., 1990). Speech recognition
technology is also becoming sufficiently mature to be useful in a variety of contexts
(Waldrop, 1988).

Although bandwidth limitations have been a problem for digital speech transmission, the
consequences of these limitations have been more severe for picture transmission. Trying
to transmit pictorial information through a channel that can handle, say, 50,000 bits per
second is a little like trying to fill a swimming pool through a straw. But again, if network
bandwidths increase at rates close to those experts have been predicting, digital video
transmission will become a practical reality for many applications reasonably soon.

This is not to suggest that there will not be a desire for still greater bandwidth; to date the
appetite for increased bandwidth has always managed to stay ahead of the technology's
ability to deliver, and there is little evidence that this will change right away, if ever. For
present purposes, the important point is that the technology is advancing rapidly, its
applications and potential applications multiplying apace.

Global Connectivity

One way to characterize what is happening in telecommunications is to say that the

degree to which people everywhere are connected, or could be connected, to other people
and to information resources of all kinds, independently of location, is rapidly increasing.
The National Research Council's (1988) Computer Science and Technology Board has
recently called for the development of an integrated national computer network system
that would permit communication between any two computers in the country. This call

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Council. 1995. Emerging Needs and Opportunities for Human Factors Research. Washington,
DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/4940.
×
has been echoed in legislative proposals to make the establishment of high-speed data
highways a matter of national priority (Gore, 1991). There is similar interest in the
establishment of national networks in other countries around the world. Such networks
could be linked by Internet gateways.

The evolving macro-system of interlinked networks can be thought of as one enormous

global nexus that has the potential to increase by many orders of magnitude the degree to
which individuals and information resources all over the world are interconnected and
therefore accessible to each other. Some technologists envision, within the next decade or
two, a single worldwide integrated services digital network that would be capable of
handling digitally encoded information of any type (data, facsimile, voice, graphics,
motion pictures) and that would link offices, schools, and homes to information resources
of various sorts (libraries, museums, national and international data banks) throughout the
world (Denning, 1989b; Forester, 1987).

What the continuing development of computer networking and the global connectivity it
represents will mean is very difficult to say at this point, but it seems a safe bet that the
implications—technological, political, social—will be profound. Denning (1989b)
believes an emerging worldwide network of computers, which he refers to as ''Worldnet,"
could be a pervasive reality by the year 2000, and he has argued that such a facility would
quickly become indispensable to businesses that wish to remain competitive in a
networked world. One suspects that the implications for education, for recreation, for
politics, and for daily life will be equally great.
Access to Information and to People

A global wideband network has the potential to give individuals unprecedented access to
information and information resources independently of their location. Such access will
be used to provide the ability to browse through the world's libraries, dial up movies for
home viewing, consult interactive encyclopedic information services (including process
simulations and manipulable microworlds), make "virtual" visits to museums and other
places of interest, study in classrooms without walls (including using international
collaboratives for educational purposes), participate in instantaneous polls and referenda,
enjoy interactive media ("tell [or show] me more" news and entertainment), and
undoubtedly take advantage of possibilities that we cannot now imagine.

The kind of connectivity that computer networks are expected to provide in the future
will increase not only access to information and information resources but also access to
people, independently of their location. It is to be expected that new patterns of
interpersonal communication will emerge from the widespread use of this technology.
Already electronic

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Council. 1995. Emerging Needs and Opportunities for Human Factors Research. Washington,
DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/4940.
×

mail, which accounts for a very substantial fraction of the total traffic over computer
networks (Denning, 1989a), has significantly changed the communication patterns of
many people who use it.

Unlike the telephone, radio, and television, computer networks are used for both point-to-
point and broadcast communications. Electronic mail tends to be used for person-to-
person communication; that is to say, messages are sent to specified individual recipients
although they can also be readily sent to groups of recipients. Electronic bulletin boards
are used to post messages that can be read by anyone who has access to the boards on
which they are posted. Often this means a fairly large number of people.
New Methods of Information Distribution

The idea of electronic information repositories accessible to the general public is not new.
For decades, forward-looking technologists have given visionary accounts of what
interaction with such systems could be like (Bush, 1945; Licklider, 1965; Parker, 1973).
Parker, for example, envisions the ability of the reader of an electronic newspaper to call
up a bibliographic sketch of an individual who is the subject of a news story, to get
tutorial information on a topic that is in the news, to do an automatic search of
advertisements for items of interest, and, in general, to access information resources that
could transform the reading of the news into a much richer experience than it now is.

Advantages of electronic communication of information include speed—information is

communicated to everyone within a community of interest essentially instantaneously—
and representational versatility—conventional text can be supplemented with animations
and process simulations, including those with which the user can interact. In addition, the
technology could provide users with a variety of tools and capabilities for working with
very large information stores and getting what they want from them, without being
burdened with a mass of data in which they have no interest.

Despite the considerable interest in the idea of electronic newspapers, magazines, and
journals, not much has been done along these lines to date (although a great deal of
"prepublication" information and data are exchanged among scientists via computer
networks and much debate of topical scientific questions takes place on electronic
bulletin boards that serve specific user communities). One wonders why the idea has not
caught on more rapidly. One possibility is that not enough people have the terminal
equipment and network access that is needed to make electronic distribution feasible on a
large scale. Other impediments to the widespread use of electronic media for the
distribution of news and technical information may be general resistance to change,
distrust of (lack of confidence in) the medium, unacceptability of the quality of visual
displays (as compared with

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Council. 1995. Emerging Needs and Opportunities for Human Factors Research. Washington,
DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/4940.
×

conventional print media), and the intangibility of the medium (people—especially

authors—may see printed pieces as more "real" than electronic ones). Research on the
question of why people often object to reading print on visual display terminals as
opposed to print on paper has provided some leads that need to be explored further
(Gould et al., 1987).
Changing Roles and Functions

Given the type of connectivity global telenetworks are expected to provide and the
information handling tools that are already beginning to appear, new methods of
information distribution are likely to become increasingly widely used. These innovations
will change our fundamental ideas about information packaging and dissemination and
will have implications for the traditional roles of editors, publishers, librarians, and other
information workers. Questions abound. What, in the age of electronics, will constitute a
"document" or its electronic analogue? What will publication mean? Who will perform
the functions of quality control historically performed by editors and publishers? What
will be the nature of a library? What services will it provide?

It seems likely that there will be a continuing need for publishers, librarians, and other
"information brokers" in a world in which information is increasingly gathered, stored,
distributed, and used in electronic form. The daily tasks that information-handling
professionals perform will change, however, as will the nature of the services they
provide.