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Computer communication and Japan's general public
Computer Communication and Japan's General Public Ken'ichiro H I R O T A Institute for Future Technology, Science Museum, 2-1 Kitanomaru- koen, Ch'tyoda- ku. Tokyo. Japan
Contrary to the wide and prosperous spread of computer communication in the business sector, only a very few terminals have been in use by the people in the home to have access to such a system as videotex. Firstly, this inactive home-use market of computer communication is analysed by examining social and cultural environments which are peculiar to Japan. Secondly, it is a recent trend in Japan that very large-scale computer communication networks are emerging to interconnect businesses of different firms and industries. These networks, when established, will give not only positive but also negative influences on the future society. Some such possible influences are pointed out and the necessity of studying counter-measures to them is stressed. Thirdly, it is also pointed out that 1SDN is advantageous in most aspects, but that from the viewpoint of telephony, the advent of telephone networks, if digitalized in different ways, may result in difficulties in telephone interconnection. The difficulties should be avoided by the carriers' cooperation.
Keywords: Home-Use Services, Social Backgrounds, CAPTAIN, Home-Banking, Home-Shopping, CATV, Inter-Industrial Computer Network, Social Influence, ISDN.
Mr. Ken'iehiro Hirota has been presiding the Institute for Future Technology, a non-profit foundation in Tokyo, since 1978. After graduated from Electrical Engineering Department, University of Tokyo, he joined the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications in 1947 and moved to Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Public Corporation (NTT) at the time of its inauguration in 1952. During his 25 year service at NTT, he was mainly engaged in its R & D activities in the area of switching and networking that included the developments of time-sharing systems of NTT for public use. From 1974 to 1978, he was Director of Musashino ECL, NTT. He is now working for standardization and other issues of computer communication, mainly through his institute's activities. Mr, Hirota has been a Governor of ICCC since 1977. North-Holland Computer Networks and ISDN Systems 10 (1985) 1-5
1. I n t r o d u c t i o n
Twenty years have passed since the first on-line computer system started operation in this country. As a result of the rapid technical developments during the two decades, the number of on-line systems in operation here reached approximately 8,500, of which 70% are used by manufacturing. constructing, distributing, and financial industries. In regard to their uses, the most significant growth in recent years has been in the production, inventory, and sales management areas, which cover over 60% of the total on-line system usages. The features of recent development trends in Japan are the advent of office-automation networks, and the evolution of large inter-industrial computer communication systems. Contrary to the development in the business sector, there have been very few home-terminals in use except those used by a limited number of scholars despite the fact that the suppliers concerned have endeavoured to develop new home-use services. On the other hand, the Japanese people are well aware of the benefits of computer communication in business not only indirectly but also in such direct ways as ticket-reservation, cash-dispensing and other daily services. At this moment, the general public are not widely aware of the possible risk of a society controlled and dominated by computer, although the year 1984 already passed. The author intends to discuss the above-mentioned situations in detail, by examining first the possibility of home-use services development, and second the possible social impact of computer communication of the future society, referring to Japan's peculiar conditions.
2. H o m e - U s e
Services - To be welcomed?
As in other countries, Japanese governmental agencies and manufacturers have been conducting feasibility-studies into a variety of computer corn-
0376-5075/85/$3.30 ~3 1985, Elsevier Science Publishers B.V. (North-Holland)
2
K. Hirota / Computer Communication and Japan's General Public
munication services for home-use such as information retrieval, surveillance, electronic banking or shopping, entertainment, and others. Practically no such service, however, has yet taken off. To examine the situation in detail, the author's institute conducted a survey in 1982, of the people's opinion of the twenty-one items of home-use telecommunication services that will be technically possible in the future. Although three years have passed since, its results are still considered worth citing here, because no similar survey has been heard of thereafter. All the twenty-one services in the survey were chosen from those that would be available by a telephone a n d / o r a television set with some adapters, because these types of terminals were considered familiar to the general public. Responses to the survey numbered 794. This survey was not just aimed at computer communication services, but its results seemed useful to make clear in part the relative importance of computer communication on the whole home-use telecommunication services in the future. As a part of the survey, the respondents were asked to say what they thought would be the most useful of the
Table 1 Preference of Future Home-Use Services Order
Service
1 1 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 17 19 20 20
X
X X
X X X X
X
Voice message (in absence of called party) Security Mobile telephone Telephone conference Daily-use information Movie-viewing Video-phone Telecontrol of home appliances Telephone with telewriting Dictation Cashless payment Multi-destination facsimile Electronic newspaper Facsimile Computer-aided learning Faircopy Video-shopping Video-game Hi-fi music High-definition TV Mail-box
Vote (%) 13.8 13.8 10.1 9.3 6.7 6.4 5.9 4.9 4.0 3.8 3.7 3.4 2.5 2.3 1.9 1.5 1.2 1.2 1.1 0.7 0.7
Notes: 1. The survey was made on a single-vote basis. 2. The service designated " X " collected 20.7% votes in all.
twenty-one services. The results are in Table 1, where the twenty-one services are shown in the order of the respondents' preference, and those designated " X " relate directly to computer communication. Table 1 suggests a very commonplace fact that the cost-benefit effect will be decisive for a future service to be welcomed by the public. In other words, a new telecommunication service can develop primarily if it meets any requirement of a realtime character and if it competes with practically no other alternative means. A good example is the "security" service that ranks highest in Table 1. As a matter of fact, this type of service has already been offered here by several companies, of which the largest one is serving at least one hundred thousand customers. The "security" also is a computer-aided service in a sense, but the services designated " X " in the Table are more closely related to computer communication. These services, however, seem to have attracted rather less attention of the respondents than other telecommunication services. Actually, only 20.7% of the respondents showed their preference to them as a whole.
3. Social Backgrounds to be Considered for HomeUse Services Development Of the computer-related services designated " X " in Table 1, "daily-use information" ranks highest. From this result, it was quite reasonable that the Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation (NTT) developed " C A P T A I N " , a Japanese Videotex, which was primarily aimed at a home-use information retrieval service and has been put into service since November, 1984, after a five year trial period. This type of service, however, has to compete with a variety of existing information media at least from the viewpoint of home-use. A typical example is the free-charge leaflets that are distributed with newspapers to households every morning. In the case of the author's house, they number about fifteen sheets a day. These leaflets, mostly for advertisements and partly for official announcements, are locally printed to provide the people with a variety of community information that cannot be covered by ordinary mass media. Meanwhile, to get national or regional informa-
K. Hirota / Computer Communication and Japan's General Public"
tion, Tokyo people, for example, are provided with seven channels of V H F TV programs in addition to radio programs, newspapers and magazines. Under these circumstances, it is very questionable if the people will be willing to pay a great deal for new electronic home-use information services. In fact, a survey one year before the cutover of C A P T A I N indicated that 80 to 90% of the experimental C A P T A I N users would pay only ¥ 1 0 (4 US. cents) or less for getting an item of information from the database. The actual charge, however, was fixed at ¥30 per three minutes. As of July, 1985, C A P T A I N terminals for home-use numbered about 870, which is only 11% of total subscribers. It is therefore reasonable that the authorities concerned with C A P T A I N are reportedly willing to change the primary purpose of the system from home-use to business-use. " H o m e - b a n k i n g " and "home-shopping" rank lower than the abovementioned information service in Table 1. The lack of interest in "home-banking" is considered to be attributed to the fact that the existing banking system has long been effective in this country. This means that bank transferaccounts are widely used by many people here, both for receiving salaries from their employers and for paying the bills of such public utility services as telephone, power, water, and TV subscription charges, by arrangement with their banks. Although no home-terminal is used, this cashless way of money transfer is equivalent to a part of the so-called home-banking functions. In some countries, home-shopping services are considered to be an effective way for people to purchase daily necessities. In this country, however, at least two things must be taken into consideration before approving this view. One is the relatively higher number of retail stores per inhabitant. As an example, on average, a retail store in Japan serves 72 people while that in the U.S.A. serves 129 people. The second factor is Japan's very high population density. Within the limits of habitable land-space excluding mountains, the density is approximately 1,270 inhabitants per square kilometer, which is clearly one of the highest figures in the world. These two facts result in the situation that most people in Japan have easy access to shopping facilities. At least from this viewpoint, the author thinks it difficult to expect that the future home-shopping services would be more popular here than in other countries.
3
Some people foresee that computer communication will develop by taking advantage of CATV facilities. This viewpoint is also questionable in Japan. The number of CATV subscribers here is about 12% of the households equipped with TV. This ratio ranks rather lower than in advanced countries. There are two reasons for this. Firstly, the service-area of N H K , the semi-governmental broadcasting corporation of Japan, has already covered over 98% of households in the country. Secondly, V H F frequency resource is so amply available for domestic use that five to seven channels are in operation in most areas. As a consequence, if CATV is demanded primarily to give " m o r e channels", it seems difficult to expect its rapid development in Japan. To summarise, it is the author's view that the computer communication services through a home terminal are not going to be universally welcomed by the general public, and that any of these services will not easily take off in the near future, contrary to the supplier's expectation.
4. Intellectuals' Views on Computer Communication
The Science and Technology Agency conducts every five years a Delphi survey of opinion leaders' views on the development of technology in future. As a part of the latest survey that was conducted about two years ago, eighty-five items of questions relating to electronics development were put to about 200 intellectuals. Five of these items dealt with home-use services. Asked whether each of the services are socially " v e r y important" or not, only one-fifth of the respondents or less answered yes. This figure was far lower than in the results obtained for the items of business-use services. This result seems to support the conclusions already drawn. On the other hand, the five issues shown in Table 2 were recognized as " v e r y important" by over 80% of the respondents. This result reflects the fact that contrary to the inactive market in home-use services, the business-use computer communication services are developing very rapidly in Japan, and that some of them may have a strong impact on people's daily life even if they are not always aware of it. These social impacts, if any, will form a far more important issue than any
4
K. Hirota / Computer Communication and Japan's General Public
Table 2 Five Important Issues Clarified in the Survey by the Science and Technology Agency Issue 1. Standardization for interconnecting different types of terminals 2. Safeguard against system outage 3. Protection of privacy 4. Formation of ISDN nationwidely 5. Networking of earthquake prediction sensors
"very important"
88% 87 85 84 84
home-use service does. The author therefore would like to discuss these five issues and some other possibilities of social impacts, in the following chapter.
5. Socially Important Issues The first three issues, 1, 2, and 3 in Table 2 are considered to reflect Japan's special situation at the time of the survey. Up to three years ago, the joint use of telecommunication circuits by two or more companies had been so severely regulated that the operation of a computer communication system could not have easily been extended to different companies or industries. In October 1982, however, the Public Telecommunications Law was revised to approve the joint use of circuits for computer communication, with practically no limitation. As a result, it came to be expected here that a number of large computer communication systems extending over different companies or even industries would soon emerge. Good examples of the systems that have been taking a definite shape are the firm-banking system between a bank and its client companies, and the distribution-information system covering wholesale dealers, retailers and carriers. This situation may have had an influence on the results shown in Table 2, because the Delphi survey. was conducted almost concurrently with the revision of the Law. The interconnection between different type terminals (Issue 1 in Table 2) is clearly necessary for establishing such a large system as those mentioned above. On the completion of these systems, however, although the general
public will benefit in some ways, they may be inconvenienced or even harmed if the systems are not stably operated and privacy cannot be guaranteed (Issues 2 and 3 in Table 2). To take such appropriate measures thereof should be the social duty of the owners of the large systems. Another important issue regarding the large systems is the possibility of their influences on industrial structure, although this issue does not appear in Table 2. An example relates to the extensive development of electronic banking systems in the future. In theory, this development will finally lead to the complete disappearance of any official being involved in monetary transfer activities, which may even result in difficulties in controlling the national money-flow. Another example relates to the large distribution-information systems whose development is being planned mainly by the very large companies. These types of systems may be a severe blow to the activities of smaller retailers and other companies that cannot afford similar computerization. As in the case of this latter example, the development of a computer communication system may lead to changes in the industrial structures concerned, particularly if the system extends over different industries. Further, these changes would have an influence on the labour market. This kind of indirect but serious affect of computer communication on society has not been deeply studied in this country so far. Issue 5 in Table 2 is peculiar to Japan where the people have suffered from many disastrous earthquakes in the past. The important role of computer communication, however, is not limited to this issue, and it is quite reasonable that an ad hoc committee was set up a few years ago as one of the ICCC activities, to study disaster prevention. Regarding Issue 4 in Table 2, the development of ISDN is expected to give far more profit to computer communication than to other communication areas. It is also difficult to imagine any ill effect of I S D N on computer communication. On the other hand, it is the author's view that for the telephone network, ISDN may have not only advantages but also disadvantages. The most important advantage will be the expected economization of the telephone network. I S D N will possibly be a further technical benefit. If the digitalized telephone network could be so designed as to temporarily reduce the normal bit rate of 6 4 k b / s
K. Hirota / Computer Communication and Japan's General Public
to 32 or 1 6 K b / s in cases of sudden increase in the volume of traffic in part of the network, the number of circuits available would be doubled or quadrupled to mitigate such congested conditions. On the other hand, this flexibility in voice-coding may also result in a disadvantage for telephone subscribers. If many types of digital telephones are used by the ISDN subscribers' own choices, this will lead to a serious difficulty that the telephones cannot be connected with each other. This is just an assumption for the present, but may come to be real in a few years. Because Japan will soon have other telephone companies and their networks than N T T and its network, as a result of the revision of telecommunication-related laws in April 1985. In this regard, the author hopes that any possibility which may jeopardize telephone service should be minimized through the cooperation of carriers concerned, since telephony will continue to be vital to the social infrastructure in the future.
Conclusion
In such a rapidly developing area as electronics, it may be said, in general, that "expected technology" tends to walk ahead of "required technology."
5
As a matter of fact, it is no exaggeration to say that practically no home-use computer communication service has yet to take off in Japan despite the fact that many experiments have already been made. Thus the most important task of suppliers is finding out what their customers really want. On the other hand, the business-use computer communication systems are developing very widely and rapidly, and they will also have a lot of influence, positive and negative, to the general public in future. An example of the systems that would be most influential may be the inter-industrial type large systems that are evolving quite recently. The influence of these large systems, however, has been neither a reality nor deeply assessed yet, as they are still at an early stage of development, partly because of technical difficulties in interccxnnection. Under these circumstances, the author thinks that from the standpoint of the general public, one of the important issues is to examine intensively the possible influence of computer communication, especially that of business-use large systems, rather than to develop a variety of home-use systems. It is considered highly desirable to give far more impetus to the socio-economic study of computer communication.
Contrary to the wide and prosperous spread of computer communication in the business sector, only a very few terminals have been in use by the people in the home to have access to such a system as videotex. Firstly, this inactive home-use market of computer communication is analysed by examining social and cultural environments which are peculiar to Japan. Secondly, it is a recent trend in Japan that very large-scale computer communication networks are emerging to interconnect businesses of different firms and industries. These networks, when established, will give not only positive but also negative influences on the future society. Some such possible influences are pointed out and the necessity of studying counter-measures to them is stressed. Thirdly, it is also pointed out that 1SDN is advantageous in most aspects, but that from the viewpoint of telephony, the advent of telephone networks, if digitalized in different ways, may result in difficulties in telephone interconnection. The difficulties should be avoided by the carriers' cooperation.
Keywords: Home-Use Services, Social Backgrounds, CAPTAIN, Home-Banking, Home-Shopping, CATV, Inter-Industrial Computer Network, Social Influence, ISDN.
Mr. Ken'iehiro Hirota has been presiding the Institute for Future Technology, a non-profit foundation in Tokyo, since 1978. After graduated from Electrical Engineering Department, University of Tokyo, he joined the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications in 1947 and moved to Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Public Corporation (NTT) at the time of its inauguration in 1952. During his 25 year service at NTT, he was mainly engaged in its R & D activities in the area of switching and networking that included the developments of time-sharing systems of NTT for public use. From 1974 to 1978, he was Director of Musashino ECL, NTT. He is now working for standardization and other issues of computer communication, mainly through his institute's activities. Mr, Hirota has been a Governor of ICCC since 1977. North-Holland Computer Networks and ISDN Systems 10 (1985) 1-5
1. I n t r o d u c t i o n
Twenty years have passed since the first on-line computer system started operation in this country. As a result of the rapid technical developments during the two decades, the number of on-line systems in operation here reached approximately 8,500, of which 70% are used by manufacturing. constructing, distributing, and financial industries. In regard to their uses, the most significant growth in recent years has been in the production, inventory, and sales management areas, which cover over 60% of the total on-line system usages. The features of recent development trends in Japan are the advent of office-automation networks, and the evolution of large inter-industrial computer communication systems. Contrary to the development in the business sector, there have been very few home-terminals in use except those used by a limited number of scholars despite the fact that the suppliers concerned have endeavoured to develop new home-use services. On the other hand, the Japanese people are well aware of the benefits of computer communication in business not only indirectly but also in such direct ways as ticket-reservation, cash-dispensing and other daily services. At this moment, the general public are not widely aware of the possible risk of a society controlled and dominated by computer, although the year 1984 already passed. The author intends to discuss the above-mentioned situations in detail, by examining first the possibility of home-use services development, and second the possible social impact of computer communication of the future society, referring to Japan's peculiar conditions.
2. H o m e - U s e
Services - To be welcomed?
As in other countries, Japanese governmental agencies and manufacturers have been conducting feasibility-studies into a variety of computer corn-
0376-5075/85/$3.30 ~3 1985, Elsevier Science Publishers B.V. (North-Holland)
2
K. Hirota / Computer Communication and Japan's General Public
munication services for home-use such as information retrieval, surveillance, electronic banking or shopping, entertainment, and others. Practically no such service, however, has yet taken off. To examine the situation in detail, the author's institute conducted a survey in 1982, of the people's opinion of the twenty-one items of home-use telecommunication services that will be technically possible in the future. Although three years have passed since, its results are still considered worth citing here, because no similar survey has been heard of thereafter. All the twenty-one services in the survey were chosen from those that would be available by a telephone a n d / o r a television set with some adapters, because these types of terminals were considered familiar to the general public. Responses to the survey numbered 794. This survey was not just aimed at computer communication services, but its results seemed useful to make clear in part the relative importance of computer communication on the whole home-use telecommunication services in the future. As a part of the survey, the respondents were asked to say what they thought would be the most useful of the
Table 1 Preference of Future Home-Use Services Order
Service
1 1 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 17 19 20 20
X
X X
X X X X
X
Voice message (in absence of called party) Security Mobile telephone Telephone conference Daily-use information Movie-viewing Video-phone Telecontrol of home appliances Telephone with telewriting Dictation Cashless payment Multi-destination facsimile Electronic newspaper Facsimile Computer-aided learning Faircopy Video-shopping Video-game Hi-fi music High-definition TV Mail-box
Vote (%) 13.8 13.8 10.1 9.3 6.7 6.4 5.9 4.9 4.0 3.8 3.7 3.4 2.5 2.3 1.9 1.5 1.2 1.2 1.1 0.7 0.7
Notes: 1. The survey was made on a single-vote basis. 2. The service designated " X " collected 20.7% votes in all.
twenty-one services. The results are in Table 1, where the twenty-one services are shown in the order of the respondents' preference, and those designated " X " relate directly to computer communication. Table 1 suggests a very commonplace fact that the cost-benefit effect will be decisive for a future service to be welcomed by the public. In other words, a new telecommunication service can develop primarily if it meets any requirement of a realtime character and if it competes with practically no other alternative means. A good example is the "security" service that ranks highest in Table 1. As a matter of fact, this type of service has already been offered here by several companies, of which the largest one is serving at least one hundred thousand customers. The "security" also is a computer-aided service in a sense, but the services designated " X " in the Table are more closely related to computer communication. These services, however, seem to have attracted rather less attention of the respondents than other telecommunication services. Actually, only 20.7% of the respondents showed their preference to them as a whole.
3. Social Backgrounds to be Considered for HomeUse Services Development Of the computer-related services designated " X " in Table 1, "daily-use information" ranks highest. From this result, it was quite reasonable that the Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation (NTT) developed " C A P T A I N " , a Japanese Videotex, which was primarily aimed at a home-use information retrieval service and has been put into service since November, 1984, after a five year trial period. This type of service, however, has to compete with a variety of existing information media at least from the viewpoint of home-use. A typical example is the free-charge leaflets that are distributed with newspapers to households every morning. In the case of the author's house, they number about fifteen sheets a day. These leaflets, mostly for advertisements and partly for official announcements, are locally printed to provide the people with a variety of community information that cannot be covered by ordinary mass media. Meanwhile, to get national or regional informa-
K. Hirota / Computer Communication and Japan's General Public"
tion, Tokyo people, for example, are provided with seven channels of V H F TV programs in addition to radio programs, newspapers and magazines. Under these circumstances, it is very questionable if the people will be willing to pay a great deal for new electronic home-use information services. In fact, a survey one year before the cutover of C A P T A I N indicated that 80 to 90% of the experimental C A P T A I N users would pay only ¥ 1 0 (4 US. cents) or less for getting an item of information from the database. The actual charge, however, was fixed at ¥30 per three minutes. As of July, 1985, C A P T A I N terminals for home-use numbered about 870, which is only 11% of total subscribers. It is therefore reasonable that the authorities concerned with C A P T A I N are reportedly willing to change the primary purpose of the system from home-use to business-use. " H o m e - b a n k i n g " and "home-shopping" rank lower than the abovementioned information service in Table 1. The lack of interest in "home-banking" is considered to be attributed to the fact that the existing banking system has long been effective in this country. This means that bank transferaccounts are widely used by many people here, both for receiving salaries from their employers and for paying the bills of such public utility services as telephone, power, water, and TV subscription charges, by arrangement with their banks. Although no home-terminal is used, this cashless way of money transfer is equivalent to a part of the so-called home-banking functions. In some countries, home-shopping services are considered to be an effective way for people to purchase daily necessities. In this country, however, at least two things must be taken into consideration before approving this view. One is the relatively higher number of retail stores per inhabitant. As an example, on average, a retail store in Japan serves 72 people while that in the U.S.A. serves 129 people. The second factor is Japan's very high population density. Within the limits of habitable land-space excluding mountains, the density is approximately 1,270 inhabitants per square kilometer, which is clearly one of the highest figures in the world. These two facts result in the situation that most people in Japan have easy access to shopping facilities. At least from this viewpoint, the author thinks it difficult to expect that the future home-shopping services would be more popular here than in other countries.
3
Some people foresee that computer communication will develop by taking advantage of CATV facilities. This viewpoint is also questionable in Japan. The number of CATV subscribers here is about 12% of the households equipped with TV. This ratio ranks rather lower than in advanced countries. There are two reasons for this. Firstly, the service-area of N H K , the semi-governmental broadcasting corporation of Japan, has already covered over 98% of households in the country. Secondly, V H F frequency resource is so amply available for domestic use that five to seven channels are in operation in most areas. As a consequence, if CATV is demanded primarily to give " m o r e channels", it seems difficult to expect its rapid development in Japan. To summarise, it is the author's view that the computer communication services through a home terminal are not going to be universally welcomed by the general public, and that any of these services will not easily take off in the near future, contrary to the supplier's expectation.
4. Intellectuals' Views on Computer Communication
The Science and Technology Agency conducts every five years a Delphi survey of opinion leaders' views on the development of technology in future. As a part of the latest survey that was conducted about two years ago, eighty-five items of questions relating to electronics development were put to about 200 intellectuals. Five of these items dealt with home-use services. Asked whether each of the services are socially " v e r y important" or not, only one-fifth of the respondents or less answered yes. This figure was far lower than in the results obtained for the items of business-use services. This result seems to support the conclusions already drawn. On the other hand, the five issues shown in Table 2 were recognized as " v e r y important" by over 80% of the respondents. This result reflects the fact that contrary to the inactive market in home-use services, the business-use computer communication services are developing very rapidly in Japan, and that some of them may have a strong impact on people's daily life even if they are not always aware of it. These social impacts, if any, will form a far more important issue than any
4
K. Hirota / Computer Communication and Japan's General Public
Table 2 Five Important Issues Clarified in the Survey by the Science and Technology Agency Issue 1. Standardization for interconnecting different types of terminals 2. Safeguard against system outage 3. Protection of privacy 4. Formation of ISDN nationwidely 5. Networking of earthquake prediction sensors
"very important"
88% 87 85 84 84
home-use service does. The author therefore would like to discuss these five issues and some other possibilities of social impacts, in the following chapter.
5. Socially Important Issues The first three issues, 1, 2, and 3 in Table 2 are considered to reflect Japan's special situation at the time of the survey. Up to three years ago, the joint use of telecommunication circuits by two or more companies had been so severely regulated that the operation of a computer communication system could not have easily been extended to different companies or industries. In October 1982, however, the Public Telecommunications Law was revised to approve the joint use of circuits for computer communication, with practically no limitation. As a result, it came to be expected here that a number of large computer communication systems extending over different companies or even industries would soon emerge. Good examples of the systems that have been taking a definite shape are the firm-banking system between a bank and its client companies, and the distribution-information system covering wholesale dealers, retailers and carriers. This situation may have had an influence on the results shown in Table 2, because the Delphi survey. was conducted almost concurrently with the revision of the Law. The interconnection between different type terminals (Issue 1 in Table 2) is clearly necessary for establishing such a large system as those mentioned above. On the completion of these systems, however, although the general
public will benefit in some ways, they may be inconvenienced or even harmed if the systems are not stably operated and privacy cannot be guaranteed (Issues 2 and 3 in Table 2). To take such appropriate measures thereof should be the social duty of the owners of the large systems. Another important issue regarding the large systems is the possibility of their influences on industrial structure, although this issue does not appear in Table 2. An example relates to the extensive development of electronic banking systems in the future. In theory, this development will finally lead to the complete disappearance of any official being involved in monetary transfer activities, which may even result in difficulties in controlling the national money-flow. Another example relates to the large distribution-information systems whose development is being planned mainly by the very large companies. These types of systems may be a severe blow to the activities of smaller retailers and other companies that cannot afford similar computerization. As in the case of this latter example, the development of a computer communication system may lead to changes in the industrial structures concerned, particularly if the system extends over different industries. Further, these changes would have an influence on the labour market. This kind of indirect but serious affect of computer communication on society has not been deeply studied in this country so far. Issue 5 in Table 2 is peculiar to Japan where the people have suffered from many disastrous earthquakes in the past. The important role of computer communication, however, is not limited to this issue, and it is quite reasonable that an ad hoc committee was set up a few years ago as one of the ICCC activities, to study disaster prevention. Regarding Issue 4 in Table 2, the development of ISDN is expected to give far more profit to computer communication than to other communication areas. It is also difficult to imagine any ill effect of I S D N on computer communication. On the other hand, it is the author's view that for the telephone network, ISDN may have not only advantages but also disadvantages. The most important advantage will be the expected economization of the telephone network. I S D N will possibly be a further technical benefit. If the digitalized telephone network could be so designed as to temporarily reduce the normal bit rate of 6 4 k b / s
K. Hirota / Computer Communication and Japan's General Public
to 32 or 1 6 K b / s in cases of sudden increase in the volume of traffic in part of the network, the number of circuits available would be doubled or quadrupled to mitigate such congested conditions. On the other hand, this flexibility in voice-coding may also result in a disadvantage for telephone subscribers. If many types of digital telephones are used by the ISDN subscribers' own choices, this will lead to a serious difficulty that the telephones cannot be connected with each other. This is just an assumption for the present, but may come to be real in a few years. Because Japan will soon have other telephone companies and their networks than N T T and its network, as a result of the revision of telecommunication-related laws in April 1985. In this regard, the author hopes that any possibility which may jeopardize telephone service should be minimized through the cooperation of carriers concerned, since telephony will continue to be vital to the social infrastructure in the future.
Conclusion
In such a rapidly developing area as electronics, it may be said, in general, that "expected technology" tends to walk ahead of "required technology."
5
As a matter of fact, it is no exaggeration to say that practically no home-use computer communication service has yet to take off in Japan despite the fact that many experiments have already been made. Thus the most important task of suppliers is finding out what their customers really want. On the other hand, the business-use computer communication systems are developing very widely and rapidly, and they will also have a lot of influence, positive and negative, to the general public in future. An example of the systems that would be most influential may be the inter-industrial type large systems that are evolving quite recently. The influence of these large systems, however, has been neither a reality nor deeply assessed yet, as they are still at an early stage of development, partly because of technical difficulties in interccxnnection. Under these circumstances, the author thinks that from the standpoint of the general public, one of the important issues is to examine intensively the possible influence of computer communication, especially that of business-use large systems, rather than to develop a variety of home-use systems. It is considered highly desirable to give far more impetus to the socio-economic study of computer communication.