Technology’s Future?
Convergence, Bandwidth, and the Internet
By Alfred Giovetti, 11/15/96
Out waiting in the future are all sorts of fantastic technology for the internet. Right now the internet is far to slow for anything but a novelty an entertainment medium. But the future holds radical changes to the way we view and use computers, telephones, television, stereos and other home and buisness devices.
For one thing the internet is far too disjointed and disorganized in its present state to provide good and fast information. Simply use one of the major search services, such as Infoseek, Excite,The Electric Library, IBM infoMarket, Four11, GTE SuperPages, Lycos, Yahoo!, SHAREWARE.COM, HotBot, DisInformation, WhoWhere?, Bigfoot, Magellan, OpenText Index, AccuFind, 100hot Web Sites, BigBook, and ON'VILLAGE; and see the plethora of hits and misses on a variety of topics (http://home.netscape.com/home/internet-search.html)..
It is not unusual for a search to reveal over 500,000 entries which are ranked as to their relevance, but searching all of them is virtually impossible. And even after you find the site that you are looking for, there is no guarantee that what you want to find will be there.
Sites are as different as night and day. What goes on a site and where it goes is not standardized. The information you are seeking could require that you spend hours searching your favorite site before you realize that the site does not have the information that you wanted.
Most of the information is there, but you need the time to seek it out. Time that often can be saved by a simple email or phone call question.
Another problem that costs us precious time on the internet is "bandwidth." Loosely defined, bandwidth is the amount of signal that you can force down the telephone lines. Like the diameter of a pipe, which determines the amount of water you can move through it, the bandwidth limits the amount of information that can be transmitted in a certain period of time.
This is why messages take time to go from point A to point B and why internet pages take time before they load. The internet may be a news medium, but unlike pages in a magazine or newspaper, it takes time for them to come up on the screen, and if you want to get the sexy feel of paper, which most people like to take into the porcelain library to read, you need to print out the page once its loaded, which takes more time.
Currently, the bandwidth of modems over regular telephone lines, called
POTS (plain old telephone service) by the experts is at 56 Kbps (killo
An earlier technology which many felt was going to replace POTS lines
was ISDN (Integrated Services Digital Network) which has a limited speed
of 64 Kbps on a single line and 128 Kbps on a double ISDN line. Another
technology which may bring amazingly fast speeds to rival the speed of
turning a page in a book is Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line (or
ADSL), which is reported to have speeds up to 4 Mbps (mega The phone lines for computer communication need to be bi-directional
which means that signal must be carried back to the computer in order
for communication to happen. Television and radio waves that we use for
entertainment currently are uni-directional broadcast signals which
anyone can pick up. But the pipes needed for communication must have up
pipe and down pipe conduits at all times. Computers need the feedback
of bi-directional communication, and this requires even more bandwidth.
Currently there are several companies working on alternative solutions
like dual modems that use two POTS telephone lines to hook up giving
instantly double the bandwidth of the single POTS line at simply double
the cost of a regular telephone line, which is infinitely cheaper that
ISDN which charges a per minute or per second charge to each ISDN phone
call. Obviously solutions with more than one ordinary telephone line
(POTS) are attractive and are as simple as adding another telephone
line.
Regardless of the technology, one of the biggest problems is having the
ISP (internet service provider) or telephone company equipped to receive
your signal on this hardware. Many have found that ISDN is not workable
in their area simply because the local telephone company switching
equipment is not advanced enough or in other ways incompatible. These
new advanced devices require that those we phone or use to phone have
sufficient equipment to support the increased speed.
Other companies have been looking into disguising digital signal
information at telephone conversation to avoid any of the new data
surcharges that legislators and baby bells are considering levying
against the increasingly heavy digital traffic. If the phone company
and regulators cannot identify the signal as digital, they cannot levy a
tax or extra charge. Most computer communicators want the transfer of
electronic information to remain cheap and readily available, which
precluded taxation and surcharges which will only deter us from using
these methods of communication. Where is George Washington, with the 1
cent postage stamp when you need him?
Once the problem of bandwidth is solved what can we look forward to?
Phones, televisions, and computers are already coming packaged in the
same boxes, the phenomenon is called convergence in the trades. Making
or receiving a phone call, fax or data transmission over phone lines
logically is easier to do if all three items are contained on the
computer. Computers sport sound cards speakers, microphones, and other
multimedia tools that easily convert the computer to a telephone.
Some new models of computers are coming out from Gateway and others that
incorporate television in the computer. Perhaps game makers will come
up with games and devices like Microsoft’s game pad that will allow the
whole family to play together in the living room on these new computer
televisions. So that computers will actually unite families instead of
insulating each member of the family in their own computer cubicle.
Television programming is likely to develop an interactive element in
the future. Sitting in front of the computer we can vote for a
particular outcome of the show, or even better move and look around the
three dimensional show environment, watching what we want to. Even the
dream of being surrounded by a true three dimensional environment is not
too far off where members of the family can take part in the interactive
movie as individual players. This is not too far from interactive
movies like The Pandora Directive (http://www.accesssoftware.com/) or
Wing Commander IV (http://www.ea.com/origin/english/index.html).
Already devices like video conferencing computers where a simple digital
video camera is attached to the computer and video signal is fed down
the pipe to another computer. Video conferencing, such as that
developed and marketed by Intel (www.intel.com) as the ProShare, should
become more in vogue in the future as soon as the bandwidth opens up.
Video conferencing allows you to see the persons you are talking with
and hear their voices, something like the Jetson’s video phone.
Early attempts at the video phone were failures, because the expense and
trouble was just not worth the benefit of seeing who was calling you.
But the newer video conferencing units have the added dimension of
application sharing and file transfer protocol (FTP). Both parties can
actually work on the same document together, without the need for both
to own the application program, with interactive editing and problem
solving. At the end of the discussion, the documents can be shared with
copies distributed to each participant.
Video conferencing, when used with a multipoint device that allows many
people to be hooked up to the same conference, may be the distance
learning tool of the future. The video conferencing allows many people
to share the same interactive lecture and learning materials with a
single instructor who may be in a classroom half a world away.
Questions and learning materials can be sent back and forth by
satellite, internet, or phone lines making courses that would often not
have the enrollment to run now be accessible to anyone with a computer
and a phone line or internet connection.
Currently these multimedia distance learning facilities cost in the
hundreds of thousands of dollars. The technology is really not this
expensive. Most video conferencing units, which form the hardware of
distance learning facilities, cost less than $5,000 to install and
operate. They are composed of a simple pentium computer, a small
inexpensive digital camera, a simple modem, and a phone line.
Windows 95 now provides a platform for ease of use through its
multi-threading. Many applications can be run simultaneously, limited
only by the amount of RAM memory. The task bar at the bottom of the
Windows 95 screen is a convenient means of switching back and forth
among the applications. While writing this article I was on the
internet on one box, in the word processor on another, and I could send
email and other functions at the same time without appreciably slowing
down my computer.
Thanks goes out to those who asked about this topic. I was more than
happy to respond by explaining it in writing. Call or write if you have
questions or need explanations, or addresses.
--
Al Giovetti, The Computer Show, 1615 Frederick Road,
Catonsville, MD, 21228-5022, 410-747-0396
http://www.charm.net/~wizards/computershow/