INTERVIEW:
Question 1
Can you give us your opinion on the development of new network technologies and the
project to create a satellite network?
Answer
The prospect of creating a global satellite-based infrastructure is enormously
exciting. There are many, many possibilities of bringing services into communities where
it has been difficult to do so before. I think that the services for businesses will be
much more differentiated than they have been in the past, that the speed of commerce,
because of these satellite networks, will increase. But, like all new generations of
technology, we have to be careful not to expect too much. The large consortia that are
planning the new global satellite networks have put the prospect out into the market and
give the impression that the take-off of the new services will be very rapid. This may not
be the case. The reason it may not be the case is that the manufacturers must create the
new terminals, put enough of them out into the market, make them accessible to people, and
the cost of talking on the telephone or sending data needs to be lower than it is today
around the world. And there are regulatory barriers to providing the new global services.
So there are two sides to the coin. One is that there are exciting possibilities for new
services, and the other is that there are barriers and hurdles which the suppliers will
need to overcome, if we are to have a really transparent global infrastructure.
Question 2
The Internet is an international system for communication. Millions of people daily
exchange messages for business or pleasure and study, play or research information. We
will need stronger digital highways to support all of this. What do you think will be the
new technologies of the future and what will be their impact on everyday life?
Answer
It seems to me that the Internet of the future, the broadband, high-capacity networks
which will be available in cities and to some degree in rural areas will be comprised of a
mix of technologies. There will not be one single dominant technology. There will be
wireless and wire-based technologies. There will be fiber, there will be the use of some
copper, there will be the use of satellites. And the big key to whether the mix works and
whether the Internet can continue to expand will be whether or not it is coordinated well,
whether all the technological bits of the network are coordinated well, and whether or not
it continues to be reasonably inexpensive for the users But I think there’s another
side as well, and that is that as users become more sophisticated in doing their research
on the network, as children in schools begin to explore and meet people in cyberspace,
they will need to develop increasingly sophisticated skills. And it is not clear whether
those skills will be available everywhere, that every school in every country will be able
to keep pace with the need to develop the new skills and capabilities. I think that
insofar as people do have the skills, they will be able to use the new network
possibilities and it will grow and grow. But there will be some people who don’t. And
they need to be the focus, I think, of government policy, very specific policies to build
up the skills base in all European countries, but also in the developing countries as
well.
Question 3
How can this digital world help the development of the poorer countries?
Answer
I have been involved in recent years in a large study of what the risks are for
developing countries who have choices for where they spend their scarce funds for
investment. They can spend them on health or they can spend them on the environment or
they can spend them on building up information technology applications. This involved 45
countries around the world. At the end of their studies they concluded that although there
are risks there are also enormous potential benefits from investment in information
technology applications. Those countries which do not develop new strategies to build up
their national information infrastructures will be worse off. Therefore, even though they
may have to make choices between investing in information technology and in increasing the
skills base, they have really very little choice. They need to find ways of building up
their national information infrastructures, and a way of joining the global information
infrastructure, despite the risks. We investigated applications of information technology
in the environmental field, public health and safety, manufacturing, and in financial
services on a world-wide basis. We found that the benefits of using the new services,
whether it was data services or Internet-based services, was enormous as long as a couple
of things happened. One was that companies and local organizations would always need to
reorganize themselves tremendously in order to make use of the applications, and that one
of the biggest conditions in effectively using information technology was organizational
change, not just the complexity of the technology but the organizational changes that went
with it. And the second biggest condition for effective use was the possibility of
training programs. So again, the technology is just the first step on the ladder; the
second step is to understand the organizational changes, which are culture-specific. They
differ between countries, between political systems, between economic systems, and so
there is not one recipe or standard way of applying information technology. One has to
understand the particular conditions in a country, the cultural conditions. If one does
that, it is likely that the social and the economic benefits will follow. I think this was
a consensus which was reached even on the part of people who are engineers and
technologists, who normally may not think about the cultural aspects and the social
aspects. But this group of people who I worked with over two years, came round to this
consensus view that technology, organization and training were the most important
elements.
Question 4
What about the problems of copyright on the Internet?
Answer
The question of intellectual copyrights and the Internet is one that causes much
discussion and some disagreement. There are those who say that because information on the
Internet is in many cases free to the end user, perhaps all the information should be free
to the end user. There are also those who say we want to sell our services on the
Internet. The way to do that is to protect that information, to strengthen copyright, and
to ensure that others cannot have access to that information unless we pay for it. So
there are two views of the world. One is the information be free and you pay for other
services that are related to the free information, or you pay for the information
directly. The big publishing companies who want to engage in electronic publishing
obviously want to sell their information on the Internet. They want to strengthen
copyright. The software companies who produce packaged software, like Microsoft, want to
sell and protect through copyright their products. But there are many other businesses
that are growing up, particularly in the United States, but also in Europe, where their
business is to enable us to have access to free information and advertising in order to
attract us to other services. So I think for the moment, particularly the United States
but also the European Union, will continue to push for stronger copyright on the Internet.
But they will only push so far, because if they push too far, consumers will resist and
they will not want to pay the prices for the services. It’s a bit of a double-edged
sword.
Question 5
What are the current strategies regarding satellite distribution?
Answer
There are a number of different consortia of companies who want to put these systems in
the air, and in a way they have two different strategies. One is that they keep the
intelligence of the new satellite systems in the air. They put it in the space segment, so
the software and the switching is in the air. And the other strategy is to put most of the
intelligence on the ground in a traditional way, so you have a satellite in the air, but
it hasn’t got all the software. The question is which one of these strategies will be
more successful in providing very low cost services to the customer, no matter where the
customer is. This is a major issue and since these low-earth orbiting satellites are not
yet fully operational, nobody really knows what the outcome will be. There is lots of
speculation but no clear answer. We will find out when they become operational in the
coming months and we begin to see what their pricing strategies are and how consumers
respond. All of them are targeting the high end of the market in the first instance. They
are targeting business customers, people who travel a lot, as tourists from one country to
another, who will look to these new global services to supply something which they
can’t otherwise get. Eventually they will have the capacity and hopefully the low
cost to provide services in areas where it just hasn’t been possible in the past.
Question 6
How will digital technologies change the way we live?
Answer
Information and communication technologies are what we call pervasive technologies: they
go everywhere. They are very influential in changing the way business is done. But one of
the things that people sometimes overlook is the way they’re changing the way we live
our everyday lives. It’s not just how we do business and whether we can shop on the
Internet or whether we can do our banking on the Internet or whether we can work from
home. It is also the way we interact, the way we build communities, whether we use the
Internet to talk with a person in the local community or whether we use it to talk with a
person on the other side of the world. It changes the way we understand time, and how
quickly life happens, it changes the way we understand space, and it changes really the
way we communicate with each other altogether. Although there are many languages being
used on the Internet, the predominant language is English, which has implications. The way
people develop communities, the way people engage in politics, the whole understanding of
what it is to be a social person and to live in the late 20th century is really being
changed by information technologies. There is a lot of evidence that says that if you
become too much affected by information technology in your everyday life, you could be
very isolated. You have the image of the young male person sitting with his computer. This
is one image, a stereotype. But the evidence is beginning to show that this is a
stereotype, and it is only one of many, and that people are finding more and more ways
creatively to use information applications in no matter what walk of life they’re in:
to learn from the home, to develop new businesses which may be very simple for
communicating artistic ideas. All of things can really transform the way the household
works and the way you run your everyday life. And it is very exciting.
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