The total amount of information a computer would have to calculate to pipe senses into the tactel suit is somewhere between one and ten times the amount required for the video display on a current PC. This really isn’t a lot of computer power. I’m confident that as soon as someone makes the first tactel suit, PCs of that era will have no problem driving them.
Sound like science fiction? The best descriptions of VR actually come from so-called cyberpunk science fiction like that written by William Gibson. Rather than putting on a bodysuit, some of his characters “jack in” by plugging a computer cable directly into their central nervous systems. It will take scientists a while to figure out how this can be done, and when they do, it will be long after the highway is established. Some people are horrified by the notion, whereas others are intrigued. It will probably first be used to help people with physical disabilities.
Inevitably, there has been more speculation (and wishful thinking) about virtual sex than about any other use for VR. Sexually explicit content is as old as information itself. It never takes long to figure out how to apply any new technology to the oldest desire. The Babylonians left erotic poems in cuneiform on clay tablets, and pornography was one of the first things the printing press was used for. When VCRs became common home appliances, they provoked a surge in the sales and rentals of X-rated videos, and today pornographic CD-ROMs are popular. On-line bulletin boards such as the Internet and the French Minitel system have lots of subscribers for their sexually oriented services. If historical patterns are a guide, a big early market for advanced virtual-reality documents will be virtual sex. But again, historically, as each of these markets grew, explicit material became a smaller and smaller factor.
Imagination will be a key element for all new applications. It isn’t enough just to re-create the real world. Great movies are a lot more than just graphic depictions on film of real events. It took a decade or so for such innovators as D. W. Griffith and Sergei Eisenstein to take the Vitascope and the Lumièes’ Cinématographe and figure out that motion pictures could do more than record real life or even a play. Moving film was a new and dynamic art form and the way it could engage an audience was very different from the way the theater could. The pioneers saw this and invented movies as we know them today.
Will the next decade bring us the Griffiths and Eisensteins of multi-media? There is every reason to think they are already tinkering with the existing technology to see what it can do and what they can do with it.
I expect multi-media experimentation will continue into the decade after that, and the one after that, and so on indefinitely. At first, the multi-media components appearing in documents on the information highway will be a synthesis of current media—a clever way to enrich communication. But over time we will start to create new forms and formats that will go significantly beyond what we know now. The exponential expansion of computing power will keep changing the tools and opening new possibilities that will seem as remote and farfetched then as some of the things I’ve speculated on here might seem today. Talent and creativity have always shaped advances in unpredictable ways.
How many have the talent to become a Steven Spielberg, a Jane Austen, or an Albert Einstein? We know there was at least one of each, and maybe one is all we’re allotted. I cannot help but believe, though, that there are many talented people whose aspirations and potential have been thwarted by economics and their lack of tools. New technology will offer people a new means with which to express themselves. The information highway will open undreamed-of artistic and scientific opportunities to a new generation of geniuses.
7
IMPLICATIONS FOR BUSINESS
As documents become more flexible, richer in multi-media content, and less tethered to paper, the ways in which people collaborate and communicate will become richer and less tied to location. Almost every sphere of activity—business, education, and leisure—will be affected. The information highway will revolutionize communications even more than it will revolutionize computing. This is already starting in the workplace.
Because the most efficient businesses have an advantage over their competitors, companies have an incentive to embrace technologies that make them more productive. Electronic documents and networks offer businesses opportunities to improve their information management, service, and internal and external collaboration. The personal computer has already had a huge effect on business. But its greatest impact won’t be felt until the PCs inside and outside a company are intimately interconnected.
Over the next decade, businesses worldwide will be transformed. Software will become friendlier, and companies will base the nervous systems of their organizations on networks that reach every employee and beyond, into the world of suppliers, consultants, and customers. The result will be companies that are more effective and, often, smaller. In the longer run, as the information highway makes physical proximity to urban services less important, many businesses will decentralize and disperse their activities, and cities, like companies, may be downsized.
In just the next five years the communications bandwidth available in urban business areas will grow by a factor of 100, as network providers compete to connect concentrations of high-use customers. Businesses will be the first users of these high-speed networks. Every new computing technology was adopted first by businesses because the financial benefits of advanced information systems can be readily demonstrated.
Managers of both small and large businesses are going to be dazzled by the capabilities information technology has to offer. Before they invest they should remember that a computer is just a tool to help in solving identified problems. It isn’t, as people sometimes seem to expect, a magical universal panacea. If I heard a business owner say, “I’m losing money, I’d better get a computer,” I’d tell him to rethink his strategy before he invests. Technology will, at best, probably delay the need for more fundamental changes. The first rule of any technology used in a business is that automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify the efficiency. The second is that automation applied to an inefficient operation will magnify the inefficiency.
Instead of rushing out to buy the latest and greatest equipment for every employee, managers in a company of any size should first step back and think about how they would like their business to work. What are its essential processes, and its key databases? Ideally, how should information move?
For example, when a customer calls, does all the information about your dealings—the status of the account, any complaints, a history of who in your organization has worked with the customer—appear immediately on a screen? The technology for doing this is quite straightforward, and, increasingly, customers expect the level of service it affords. If your systems can’t provide product-availability information or quote a price immediately, you risk losing out to a competitor who is taking better advantage of technology. For example, some car companies are centralizing service information so that any dealer can easily check a vehicle’s entire service history and watch for recurring problems.
A company should also examine all of its internal processes, such as employee reviews, business planning, sales analysis, and product development, and determine how networks and other electronic information tools can make these operations more effective.
There has been quite a shift in the way we think about and use computers as business tools. When I was a kid, my image of computers was that they were very big and powerful. Banks had a bunch. Computers let big airlines keep track of reservations. They were the tools of large organizations and were part of the edge big businesses had over the small guys who used pencils and typewriters.