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Communications: The future
49
Communications: The Future Philip H u g h e s
Forecasts
The future of telecommunications is especially vulnerable to emotive speculation: combined with computing, it becomes the harbinger of the PostIndustrial Society. Arthur C. Clarke for example foresaw the Communications Satellite. Elsewhere he wrote "... What we are building now is the nervous system of mankind which will link together the whole human race, for better or worse, in a unity which no earlier age could have imagined." At the same time he said "... There are no wholly beneficial inventions." Other writers are clear of the balance between optimism and pessimism. At the turn of the century H.G. Wells, the father of technological forecasting, foresaw ..... " M a n y Londoners in the future may abandon the city office altogether, preferring to do their business in more agreeable surroundings." He went on "... The telephone will almost certainly prove a very potent auxiliary indeed to the forces making for diffusion." Wells's cautious optimism was, as the century advanced, eclipsed by a more spectacular pessimism, expressed mainly in science fiction. In 1911, four years before the opening of the first New York to San Francisco telephone line, E.M. Forster wrote in his story The Machine Stops, "Imagine, if you can, a small room, hexagonal in shape like the cell of a bee." In this room is a woman " . . . . with face as white as a fungus. It is to her that the little room belongs .... " He continues "... There were buttons and switches everywhere ... buttons for food, for music, for clothing. There was a button that produced literature. And of course there were buttons by which she communicated with her friends .... " "The clumsy system of public gatherings had long since been abandoned." Towards the end of the story comes the final d6nouement .... "There came a day when, without the slightest warning, without any previous hints North-Holland Computer Networks and ISDN Networks 9 (1985) 49-53
of feebleness, the entire communication system broke down, all over the world, and the world as they understood it, ended .... " We have now arrived in the year 1984. George Orwell's view was more feasible than Forster's, more human, and at the same time more terrifying: "Behind Winston's back the voice from the telescreen was still babbling away about pig iron and the overfulfilment of the Ninth Three-Year Plan. The telescreen received and transmitted simultaneously." He goes on "There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time." Clarke, Wells, Forster, Orwell; differing views at different times of the communications future. Most of the technology they foresaw already exists, but the future they foresaw does not. Perhaps they gave us a warning which has prevented us; or perhaps they were just plain wrong. The "expert" when forecasting is so often wrong. He so often underestimates the resistance to change - be it political, social or commercial. Consider the Picture Phone. A T & T forecast that in the USA by 1980 3 percent of all business telephone sets and 1 percent of all domestic sets would be Picture Phone - some 3 million installations in all. In the event there were none. Whilst it is easy to overestimate the rate of adoption of new technology, it is almost impossible to anticipate radical changes in technology. These can emerge suprisingly quickly. For example, it is only in recent years that the phenomenal capabilities of optical fibres have been appreciated. By now I have perhaps convinced you of only one thing. Anything I say about the future will be wrong.With this discomforting background I will nevertheless press ahead.
Today Let us start with a look at the present. Whilst the underlying technology of telephony has changed
0376-5075/85/$3.00 © 1985, Elsevier Science Publishers B.V. (North-Holland)
50
P. Hughes / Communications: The Future
greatly in the past 40 years, the nature of a telephone call has hardly changed at all. The quality has improved a little, especially for an international call. The costs have fallen in real terms, especially for an international call. Going via a switchboard operator has become, in the developed world, the exception rather than the rule. Push buttons are replacing the dial. But a telephone call now is little different from one 40 years ago. Contrast this with computing. In this same period we have moved from the construction of the first ever computer to the era of the all pervasive microprocessor, Why this contrast? The answer lies in thefundamental nature of telecommunications. It is essentially a network that must work to common standards. Developments have to be built upon the superstructure already in place. The new has to be added carefully to the old. The strength of telecommunications is its universality. From almost any phone in the U K you can directly dial 140 countries and reach 450 million subscribers. You can send a message direct via telex to over a million other telex terminals around the world. In the most developed economies the telephone is considered almost essential. Not to have a phone is a sign of eccentricity or poverty. In the USA there are over 175 million telephones, 80 phones per 100 population. In Sweden the figures are similar. In the U K the installation of the telephone is at about 60 percent of the equivalent levels in the USA and Sweden and about the same level as countries like the Netherlands, Germany and Japan. For Eastern Europe the figures are much lower - 11 telephones per 100 population for Hungary and 9 per 100 for Poland and for Yugoslavia, But the real contrast comes when comparing with the less developed countries. Countries like China and India with their huge populations have fewer telephones than the smaller European countries. For example, India has 4 phones per 1000 population; one two hundredth of the level of Sweden. India has only 2.6 million telephones, in a country where there are an estimated 700,000 viilages. For a village to have a single phone is a privilege. In the Indian countryside making a call is a major undertaking; receiving a call almost impossible. We, who take the phone for granted,
and can dial around the world, too easily forget our privileged position.
" T h e Future" Let me turn again to the future. I believe, perhaps rashly, that the next 40 years will see much more dramatic change than the past 40 years. This springs from three fundamental developments in the underlying technology. First, optical fibres. The use of light as the carrier through fibres of glass is a truly dramatic step forward over the use of electricity as the carrier through copper wires. At present optical fibres are only being used in the trunk network for high capacity links. In this the UK, credited with their invention, leads the world. The dramatic possibilities lie ahead when their bandwidth, that is their capacity to carry huge volumes of data, is brought right to the subscriber - to the home, the office. Second, communications satellites. Their true potential is as yet hardly tapped. It lies in the simple fact that any one geostationary satellite can "see" one third of the world at any moment and can be "seen" by the same one third. It follows that, in principal, it can instantaneously switch information from anywhere to anywhere else within its view - the telephone exchange in the sky. The third fundamental development, more important even than the other two - for without it they could not exist - is micro electronics. The continuing shrinking in size, increase in power and reduction in cost in electronics pervades all technological development. Communications is no exception. What changes in service can these technologies bring about? I will suggest just a few. Electronic mail There will be complete interconnection via networks of message terminals in the home and office. Through this network personal computers will communicate with each other, and with huge information files. Video communications. The Picture Phone, so long delayed, will come at last. At its simplest this will allow the traditional two-way call to have full colour vision with vOice. It will also allow multiple calls, with three or more places communicating at o n c e - remote conferencing. Do not think of this as limited to us peering
P. Hughes / Communications: The Future
into screens. Holography will allow full three-dimensional remote conferencing. To quote Arthur Clarke again (writing 20 years ago) " . . . The busihess lunch of the future could be conducted perfectly well with the two halves of the table 10,000 miles apart; all that would be missing would be the handshakes and exchanging of cigars." I might add you could not within the foreseeable future pass the salt. Next, the Mobile Phone. Today we think of the mobile phone as a luxury, the requisite of the business tycoon, reclining in his Rolls or Mercedes, calling his office, always in touch. Today's idea of the mobile phone is the phone in the car. This is not the future that I have in mind. It is more like Dick Tracey and his famous two-way wrist watch, or the device that allows M to reach James Bond wherever he is. We shall each be able to have a unique code and be reached wherever we are. To quote Clarke again, " T h e time will come when we will be able to call a person anywhere on Earth, merely by dialling a number." He goes on to say, "This device alone may change the patterns of society and commerce as greatly as the telephone, its primitive ancestor, has already done." Perhaps you think these new services are in the realm of science fiction - after all I am quoting liberally from one of the great writers of science fiction. But no fundamental breakthroughs in technology are required. The essential components exist. British Telecom have a remote conferencing service going into limited trial, installed in clients' premises. A great expansion of cable television is planned, some of which could, with switching technology, bring two-way picture capability into the home. A new technique, cellular radio, has been developed and is in use in the USA. This overcomes the previous severe restriction on mobile phones due to the limits on the use of the radio spectrum. Such techniques are already planned for the UK. Direct Broadcasting Satellites are planned for various countries including the U K in 1987. Full two-way satellite communication to the end subscriber already exists in the USA. The ground stations are still expensive, but are rapidly falling in cost. When these new services come into widespread use, what effects would this have on our work and leisure environment?
51
Changes to Environment The key change will be telecommunications substituting for travel. In theory this should have happened already, but there is little evidence of it's having done so. International calls have increased very rapidly at 22 percent per annum compared to 7 percent per annum for inland calls. But then so has business travel increased. Perhaps this has been slower than it might have been. My personal experience is that a business phone call very seldom substitutes for a meeting. This will change, but only with the use of full video conferencing in the place of work. Visual contact is a very important part of communications - without it, much is lost. But with it we could move to an era when, to quote Clarke again, " T h e business of the future may be run by executives who are scarcely ever in each other's physical presence. It will not even have an address or a central office." The more exciting possibilities are not in the way that executives will change their work patterns, but in the way that communications, combined with computing, could change the work patterns of the whole community. The U K is clearly moving away from being an Industrial Society. Our future cannot lie in traditional manufacturing. It must lie initially with service industries and then with the knowledge based industries of the future. They will be characterized by an intense use of information technology. If we believe in this future - and I see no alternative - then this has many implications. We have to move from treating further education as a luxury, to treating it as a necessity. We have to recognize that the traditional pattern of employment, a 40 hour week for the majority, and unemployment for an increasing minority - is not the way ahead. We can and should look forward to a society with much less time spent in work as currently characterized. Work, and the associated wealth created at much higher levels of productivity, must be fairly shared. Much more of this work will be based in and around the home and the local community. And we shall have much more leisure. The vital infrastructure of this future is telecommunications, just as railways were the vital infrastructure of the industrial age. Through the telecommunications networks we
52
P. Hughes / Communications: The Future
shall buy and shall sell many commodities of the future. We shall learn and we shall teach. We shall debate and we shall meet. We shall receive and give advice, for example medical diagnosis. We shall receive and transmit entertainment. If you are a pessimist you believe that these trends move us to the nightmare world of Forster the individual cells from which we do not move. If you are, like me, an optimist you see the new telecommunications as a liberation. It will allow more and more of us to work in the country, in small communities. It will reduce the indignities of commuting, with its waste of time, and human wear and tear. It will reduce the centripetal pull of London, which drains the rest of the country, dominating Government, Business, the Arts and Entertainment. By allowing us to work from wherever we are, and get education for children and adults from wherever we are, it will allow us to choose more freely where we live. -
Social Questions This is the optimist's view. Is it too naive? Many completely new social questions are raised by this telecommunications future, For example - do we want a Picture Phone? It was not well accepted in early trials. We are very used to the voice only telephone. It gives us visual privacy, dressed as we like, making any expression we like, whilst carrying on a conversation. We would lose this privacy. The Picture Phone would no doubt have a facility for "vision o f f " - " s o u n d only." But will we tolerate calls that are vision one way only, being seen but not being able to see? Even more problems surround the individual Mobile Phone. In order for the cellular systems of the future to work, your whereabouts will have to be known to the system, perhaps to the nearest mile or so. Computers will keep track of you as you move around the city a n d the countryside, The potential for surveillance by the State or a similar authority is clear. Also would you want callers always knowing your whereabouts? Doubtful, I would say. Will the caller be able to get that information from the system? Will you be able to turn yourself off? Disappear? We could move to a situation where in certain circumstances the Law demanded that you not only always carried your receiver, but also that it was always switched on: lorry drivers, for example, as an extension to the
compulsory use of tachometer; drivers on motorways so that they could receive advanced warning of accidents; certain vital professions always on call. Orwell created the ultimate Big Brother concept - the extention of phone tapping to the permanent watch. In 1984 he wrote "... you had to live - did live, from the habit that became instinct - in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized." Already in 1983 we may laugh at this, but we can see more clearly a different danger. Through telecommunications, the cashless society of electronic transactions will be hastened on. These transactions will include social payments, unemployment benefits, health records, tax records as well as the commercial transactions of sale and purchase. The files kept and built up from these transactions could be linked and patterns of movement and behaviour deduced. The issue of privacy of data is increasingly vital. The technology, neutral in theory, can be used to great advantage by a centralized State wishing to control its citizens. The fears are real. In this context, it is deplorable that we do not have proper data privacy legislation in this country. An Act, so very long in preparation, was progressing through Parliament when the election was called. Another social issue is the possible alienation and separation that could flow from electronic communication increasingly substituting for face to face meetings. There will be no more contact with the bank cashier: it will all go through the electronic hole in the wall or via home banking. Tele-shopping will replace the visit to the local store. There will be less meeting at the traditional place of work. Forster gives this at its bleakest. So far I have mainly described a highly developed society with advanced telecommunications, though I have already shown the huge gulf that exists between the developed and less developed world in telecommunications. This gap could widen. The less developed countries see how important telecommunications is to their progress, but can ill afford the huge investments involved. Lacking as they do the transport infrastructure, and having long distances and difficult terrain to cross, they have a greater need for telecommunications than do the rich countries. Whilst we can develop our information networks, they cannot afford to.
P. Hughes / Communications: The Future
53
The contrast between the information rich and information poor is becoming increasingly marked.
Far Future
Furthermore the rich countries grab the available frequency bandwidths and the best positions for their geostationary satellites, hence making matters even more difficult for the poorer countries in future, In the developed countries there is an extremely marked contrast in availability between one-way and two-way communications. Above nearly every shanty in the huge sprawling suburbs of Mexico City there is a television antenna. But none has the phone. The information, the TV programmes mainly created in the USA, comes flowing in electronically, but none goes out. The social and cultural effects of saturation television watching are marked. But we are moving to an era of participative use of electronics in the home, initially home computing, and then electronic mail. Just as we get these potential cultural and social benefits, the less developed countries get the intense barrage of one-way communications, the homogeneous culture we produce for export, In doing so we swamp their indigenous culture.
To close let me look still further ahead. So far, all developments spoken of are within known technology. What guesses can we make about the unknown? Central is the suspected phenomenon of telepathy. The idea should not be dismissed as belonging to the idiot fringe. There is increasing evidence that the more intelligent animals, such as dolphins, uncluttered by our technology have natural ways of communication that we do not understand. Could we not just think the ideas and images that we wish to communicate and this act itself be enough to implant remotely that information in the mind of the recipient? In that future not only need I not be present to give a lecture, because of three-dimensional holography transporting my image, but neither need the audience be present. I would sit at home and think it and by mass telepathy others could receive wherever they like. Perhaps I could get the contents into a person's brains without him even knowing, when they are asleep. I leave it to you to work out how that communications future could be controlled!
Communications: The Future Philip H u g h e s
Forecasts
The future of telecommunications is especially vulnerable to emotive speculation: combined with computing, it becomes the harbinger of the PostIndustrial Society. Arthur C. Clarke for example foresaw the Communications Satellite. Elsewhere he wrote "... What we are building now is the nervous system of mankind which will link together the whole human race, for better or worse, in a unity which no earlier age could have imagined." At the same time he said "... There are no wholly beneficial inventions." Other writers are clear of the balance between optimism and pessimism. At the turn of the century H.G. Wells, the father of technological forecasting, foresaw ..... " M a n y Londoners in the future may abandon the city office altogether, preferring to do their business in more agreeable surroundings." He went on "... The telephone will almost certainly prove a very potent auxiliary indeed to the forces making for diffusion." Wells's cautious optimism was, as the century advanced, eclipsed by a more spectacular pessimism, expressed mainly in science fiction. In 1911, four years before the opening of the first New York to San Francisco telephone line, E.M. Forster wrote in his story The Machine Stops, "Imagine, if you can, a small room, hexagonal in shape like the cell of a bee." In this room is a woman " . . . . with face as white as a fungus. It is to her that the little room belongs .... " He continues "... There were buttons and switches everywhere ... buttons for food, for music, for clothing. There was a button that produced literature. And of course there were buttons by which she communicated with her friends .... " "The clumsy system of public gatherings had long since been abandoned." Towards the end of the story comes the final d6nouement .... "There came a day when, without the slightest warning, without any previous hints North-Holland Computer Networks and ISDN Networks 9 (1985) 49-53
of feebleness, the entire communication system broke down, all over the world, and the world as they understood it, ended .... " We have now arrived in the year 1984. George Orwell's view was more feasible than Forster's, more human, and at the same time more terrifying: "Behind Winston's back the voice from the telescreen was still babbling away about pig iron and the overfulfilment of the Ninth Three-Year Plan. The telescreen received and transmitted simultaneously." He goes on "There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time." Clarke, Wells, Forster, Orwell; differing views at different times of the communications future. Most of the technology they foresaw already exists, but the future they foresaw does not. Perhaps they gave us a warning which has prevented us; or perhaps they were just plain wrong. The "expert" when forecasting is so often wrong. He so often underestimates the resistance to change - be it political, social or commercial. Consider the Picture Phone. A T & T forecast that in the USA by 1980 3 percent of all business telephone sets and 1 percent of all domestic sets would be Picture Phone - some 3 million installations in all. In the event there were none. Whilst it is easy to overestimate the rate of adoption of new technology, it is almost impossible to anticipate radical changes in technology. These can emerge suprisingly quickly. For example, it is only in recent years that the phenomenal capabilities of optical fibres have been appreciated. By now I have perhaps convinced you of only one thing. Anything I say about the future will be wrong.With this discomforting background I will nevertheless press ahead.
Today Let us start with a look at the present. Whilst the underlying technology of telephony has changed
0376-5075/85/$3.00 © 1985, Elsevier Science Publishers B.V. (North-Holland)
50
P. Hughes / Communications: The Future
greatly in the past 40 years, the nature of a telephone call has hardly changed at all. The quality has improved a little, especially for an international call. The costs have fallen in real terms, especially for an international call. Going via a switchboard operator has become, in the developed world, the exception rather than the rule. Push buttons are replacing the dial. But a telephone call now is little different from one 40 years ago. Contrast this with computing. In this same period we have moved from the construction of the first ever computer to the era of the all pervasive microprocessor, Why this contrast? The answer lies in thefundamental nature of telecommunications. It is essentially a network that must work to common standards. Developments have to be built upon the superstructure already in place. The new has to be added carefully to the old. The strength of telecommunications is its universality. From almost any phone in the U K you can directly dial 140 countries and reach 450 million subscribers. You can send a message direct via telex to over a million other telex terminals around the world. In the most developed economies the telephone is considered almost essential. Not to have a phone is a sign of eccentricity or poverty. In the USA there are over 175 million telephones, 80 phones per 100 population. In Sweden the figures are similar. In the U K the installation of the telephone is at about 60 percent of the equivalent levels in the USA and Sweden and about the same level as countries like the Netherlands, Germany and Japan. For Eastern Europe the figures are much lower - 11 telephones per 100 population for Hungary and 9 per 100 for Poland and for Yugoslavia, But the real contrast comes when comparing with the less developed countries. Countries like China and India with their huge populations have fewer telephones than the smaller European countries. For example, India has 4 phones per 1000 population; one two hundredth of the level of Sweden. India has only 2.6 million telephones, in a country where there are an estimated 700,000 viilages. For a village to have a single phone is a privilege. In the Indian countryside making a call is a major undertaking; receiving a call almost impossible. We, who take the phone for granted,
and can dial around the world, too easily forget our privileged position.
" T h e Future" Let me turn again to the future. I believe, perhaps rashly, that the next 40 years will see much more dramatic change than the past 40 years. This springs from three fundamental developments in the underlying technology. First, optical fibres. The use of light as the carrier through fibres of glass is a truly dramatic step forward over the use of electricity as the carrier through copper wires. At present optical fibres are only being used in the trunk network for high capacity links. In this the UK, credited with their invention, leads the world. The dramatic possibilities lie ahead when their bandwidth, that is their capacity to carry huge volumes of data, is brought right to the subscriber - to the home, the office. Second, communications satellites. Their true potential is as yet hardly tapped. It lies in the simple fact that any one geostationary satellite can "see" one third of the world at any moment and can be "seen" by the same one third. It follows that, in principal, it can instantaneously switch information from anywhere to anywhere else within its view - the telephone exchange in the sky. The third fundamental development, more important even than the other two - for without it they could not exist - is micro electronics. The continuing shrinking in size, increase in power and reduction in cost in electronics pervades all technological development. Communications is no exception. What changes in service can these technologies bring about? I will suggest just a few. Electronic mail There will be complete interconnection via networks of message terminals in the home and office. Through this network personal computers will communicate with each other, and with huge information files. Video communications. The Picture Phone, so long delayed, will come at last. At its simplest this will allow the traditional two-way call to have full colour vision with vOice. It will also allow multiple calls, with three or more places communicating at o n c e - remote conferencing. Do not think of this as limited to us peering
P. Hughes / Communications: The Future
into screens. Holography will allow full three-dimensional remote conferencing. To quote Arthur Clarke again (writing 20 years ago) " . . . The busihess lunch of the future could be conducted perfectly well with the two halves of the table 10,000 miles apart; all that would be missing would be the handshakes and exchanging of cigars." I might add you could not within the foreseeable future pass the salt. Next, the Mobile Phone. Today we think of the mobile phone as a luxury, the requisite of the business tycoon, reclining in his Rolls or Mercedes, calling his office, always in touch. Today's idea of the mobile phone is the phone in the car. This is not the future that I have in mind. It is more like Dick Tracey and his famous two-way wrist watch, or the device that allows M to reach James Bond wherever he is. We shall each be able to have a unique code and be reached wherever we are. To quote Clarke again, " T h e time will come when we will be able to call a person anywhere on Earth, merely by dialling a number." He goes on to say, "This device alone may change the patterns of society and commerce as greatly as the telephone, its primitive ancestor, has already done." Perhaps you think these new services are in the realm of science fiction - after all I am quoting liberally from one of the great writers of science fiction. But no fundamental breakthroughs in technology are required. The essential components exist. British Telecom have a remote conferencing service going into limited trial, installed in clients' premises. A great expansion of cable television is planned, some of which could, with switching technology, bring two-way picture capability into the home. A new technique, cellular radio, has been developed and is in use in the USA. This overcomes the previous severe restriction on mobile phones due to the limits on the use of the radio spectrum. Such techniques are already planned for the UK. Direct Broadcasting Satellites are planned for various countries including the U K in 1987. Full two-way satellite communication to the end subscriber already exists in the USA. The ground stations are still expensive, but are rapidly falling in cost. When these new services come into widespread use, what effects would this have on our work and leisure environment?
51
Changes to Environment The key change will be telecommunications substituting for travel. In theory this should have happened already, but there is little evidence of it's having done so. International calls have increased very rapidly at 22 percent per annum compared to 7 percent per annum for inland calls. But then so has business travel increased. Perhaps this has been slower than it might have been. My personal experience is that a business phone call very seldom substitutes for a meeting. This will change, but only with the use of full video conferencing in the place of work. Visual contact is a very important part of communications - without it, much is lost. But with it we could move to an era when, to quote Clarke again, " T h e business of the future may be run by executives who are scarcely ever in each other's physical presence. It will not even have an address or a central office." The more exciting possibilities are not in the way that executives will change their work patterns, but in the way that communications, combined with computing, could change the work patterns of the whole community. The U K is clearly moving away from being an Industrial Society. Our future cannot lie in traditional manufacturing. It must lie initially with service industries and then with the knowledge based industries of the future. They will be characterized by an intense use of information technology. If we believe in this future - and I see no alternative - then this has many implications. We have to move from treating further education as a luxury, to treating it as a necessity. We have to recognize that the traditional pattern of employment, a 40 hour week for the majority, and unemployment for an increasing minority - is not the way ahead. We can and should look forward to a society with much less time spent in work as currently characterized. Work, and the associated wealth created at much higher levels of productivity, must be fairly shared. Much more of this work will be based in and around the home and the local community. And we shall have much more leisure. The vital infrastructure of this future is telecommunications, just as railways were the vital infrastructure of the industrial age. Through the telecommunications networks we
52
P. Hughes / Communications: The Future
shall buy and shall sell many commodities of the future. We shall learn and we shall teach. We shall debate and we shall meet. We shall receive and give advice, for example medical diagnosis. We shall receive and transmit entertainment. If you are a pessimist you believe that these trends move us to the nightmare world of Forster the individual cells from which we do not move. If you are, like me, an optimist you see the new telecommunications as a liberation. It will allow more and more of us to work in the country, in small communities. It will reduce the indignities of commuting, with its waste of time, and human wear and tear. It will reduce the centripetal pull of London, which drains the rest of the country, dominating Government, Business, the Arts and Entertainment. By allowing us to work from wherever we are, and get education for children and adults from wherever we are, it will allow us to choose more freely where we live. -
Social Questions This is the optimist's view. Is it too naive? Many completely new social questions are raised by this telecommunications future, For example - do we want a Picture Phone? It was not well accepted in early trials. We are very used to the voice only telephone. It gives us visual privacy, dressed as we like, making any expression we like, whilst carrying on a conversation. We would lose this privacy. The Picture Phone would no doubt have a facility for "vision o f f " - " s o u n d only." But will we tolerate calls that are vision one way only, being seen but not being able to see? Even more problems surround the individual Mobile Phone. In order for the cellular systems of the future to work, your whereabouts will have to be known to the system, perhaps to the nearest mile or so. Computers will keep track of you as you move around the city a n d the countryside, The potential for surveillance by the State or a similar authority is clear. Also would you want callers always knowing your whereabouts? Doubtful, I would say. Will the caller be able to get that information from the system? Will you be able to turn yourself off? Disappear? We could move to a situation where in certain circumstances the Law demanded that you not only always carried your receiver, but also that it was always switched on: lorry drivers, for example, as an extension to the
compulsory use of tachometer; drivers on motorways so that they could receive advanced warning of accidents; certain vital professions always on call. Orwell created the ultimate Big Brother concept - the extention of phone tapping to the permanent watch. In 1984 he wrote "... you had to live - did live, from the habit that became instinct - in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized." Already in 1983 we may laugh at this, but we can see more clearly a different danger. Through telecommunications, the cashless society of electronic transactions will be hastened on. These transactions will include social payments, unemployment benefits, health records, tax records as well as the commercial transactions of sale and purchase. The files kept and built up from these transactions could be linked and patterns of movement and behaviour deduced. The issue of privacy of data is increasingly vital. The technology, neutral in theory, can be used to great advantage by a centralized State wishing to control its citizens. The fears are real. In this context, it is deplorable that we do not have proper data privacy legislation in this country. An Act, so very long in preparation, was progressing through Parliament when the election was called. Another social issue is the possible alienation and separation that could flow from electronic communication increasingly substituting for face to face meetings. There will be no more contact with the bank cashier: it will all go through the electronic hole in the wall or via home banking. Tele-shopping will replace the visit to the local store. There will be less meeting at the traditional place of work. Forster gives this at its bleakest. So far I have mainly described a highly developed society with advanced telecommunications, though I have already shown the huge gulf that exists between the developed and less developed world in telecommunications. This gap could widen. The less developed countries see how important telecommunications is to their progress, but can ill afford the huge investments involved. Lacking as they do the transport infrastructure, and having long distances and difficult terrain to cross, they have a greater need for telecommunications than do the rich countries. Whilst we can develop our information networks, they cannot afford to.
P. Hughes / Communications: The Future
53
The contrast between the information rich and information poor is becoming increasingly marked.
Far Future
Furthermore the rich countries grab the available frequency bandwidths and the best positions for their geostationary satellites, hence making matters even more difficult for the poorer countries in future, In the developed countries there is an extremely marked contrast in availability between one-way and two-way communications. Above nearly every shanty in the huge sprawling suburbs of Mexico City there is a television antenna. But none has the phone. The information, the TV programmes mainly created in the USA, comes flowing in electronically, but none goes out. The social and cultural effects of saturation television watching are marked. But we are moving to an era of participative use of electronics in the home, initially home computing, and then electronic mail. Just as we get these potential cultural and social benefits, the less developed countries get the intense barrage of one-way communications, the homogeneous culture we produce for export, In doing so we swamp their indigenous culture.
To close let me look still further ahead. So far, all developments spoken of are within known technology. What guesses can we make about the unknown? Central is the suspected phenomenon of telepathy. The idea should not be dismissed as belonging to the idiot fringe. There is increasing evidence that the more intelligent animals, such as dolphins, uncluttered by our technology have natural ways of communication that we do not understand. Could we not just think the ideas and images that we wish to communicate and this act itself be enough to implant remotely that information in the mind of the recipient? In that future not only need I not be present to give a lecture, because of three-dimensional holography transporting my image, but neither need the audience be present. I would sit at home and think it and by mass telepathy others could receive wherever they like. Perhaps I could get the contents into a person's brains without him even knowing, when they are asleep. I leave it to you to work out how that communications future could be controlled!