Larry Press

The global diffusion of the Internet: patterns and problems

If the 1, be considered a market phenome- on, with sustained double-digit growth and no apparent end in sight to the upward spiral. Recent lnrernet numbers arc stunning. an impressive 69% increase j7]. Over 70 countries have full TCP/IP Internet connectivity, and about 150 have at least e-mail services through IP or via more limited forms of connectivity (e.g., LILJCP or Fidonet). Monthly traffic on the U.S. NSF backhonc alone is ahout IO terahytes [l]. But behind rhrse eatistics of overwhelming s~~ccesses there are some this aciting trchn&py. Surprisingly titttr is known ahout this diffusion beyond the basic macro-statistics. WC do know that ahout au-fifth 01. the worlds population, estimated only on the basis of the countries they live in, has access to far more capability ttnn the lest. There is H direct corrrlation between measwes of national drvcl-opment and the quality of network to many I.DCs is often only a Fidonet link to a few PCs with less than a dozen regular ose~s. Even within the mo*t advanced, well-connected countries the majority of the populations have little or no participation. For example, despite the much proclaimed connectivity of U.S. universities , where access is almost a free good, it appears that only a Tmall fraction of professors are users at most schools, and there mar he significant differences in levels of use across academic disciplines. In spite of the magnitude of thr phenomena, relatively little has hen

International perspectives: computing at the top of the world

M IC H A EL S C H R Ö TE R Starting near sea level in the tropical jungles along its southern border with India and moving northward, Nepal rises steeply to almost 30,000 feet in the Himalayas and contains eight of the 10 tallest mountains in the world, including Mt. Everest (Saragmatha). Beyond these it is downhill to the 15,000-foot Tibetan Plateau and the other Asian giant, China. Although Nepal’s landlocked position at the top of the world helped protect it from some of the worst impositions by foreigners elsewhere in Asia (but has not spared it from the troubles of others, as exemplified by refugee migrations from Tibet and Bhutan), isolation has deemed Nepal a Least Developed Country (LDC), as classified by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP). In the late 1990s, Nepal’s per capita GNP was U.S.

The Internet and interactive television

210; of the country’s roughly 21 million people, 80% were engaged in agriculture; 42% of the population was under 15 years of age. Only 39% of the population is literate, with large variations according to gender, region, and ethnic community. In what is potentially the “Saudi Arabia of hydroelectric power,” only 15% of Nepali households have electricity. Nepal is a parliamentary democracy under a constitutional monarchy (that for a short time had the peculiar distinction of electing a MarxistLeninist government). Some Maoist guerrilla activities and domestic police excesses aside, Nepal has been spared the massive internal bloodshed that too often characterizes other LDCs with internal ethnic divisions. It is not seriously threatened by its giant neighbors. Not many LDCs have a long history of such stability. Nepal is one of many historically poor and geographically isolated countries now looking to

Tracking the global diffusion on the Internet

The idea of a National Information Infrastructure (NII) is in the air. The Clinton ad? ministration feels the NII can transform the lives of the ~ > ; American people [5], and NII has made the covers of ; ~ v ~ j Time and Newsweek. 1 The NII is old hat to members of the computer science corn! munity. We have had the , Internet, a global information infrastructure, for many years. But Time is not focus| ing on the Internet. Time is ~ ~ 4 interested in home shopping and movies on demand, not • email and ftp. Two amorphous groups, lets call them the Internet communi ty and the interactive T V community, are work ing on in fo rma t ion infrastructure. While there is ! similarity in what they envii ~ .~o ~ , , ~ sion, there are also significant ~.-. differences in their world,., views. Later in this column ~ I will compare these two communities.

An Internet diffusion framework

Everyone knows the Internet is growing rapidly, but measuring that growth with a degree of precision is difficult. At first it was easy to follow network diffusion. The Arpanet Completion Report [2] contains maps, topology diagrams, and traffic and performance statistics beginning with a sparse 4-link map drawn in 1969 and running through 1975 when the network was turned over to the Department of Defense for production. The coming of the Internet made the task more difficult, but the U.S. regional networks and many international networks connected to the National Science Foundation (NSF) backbone, so NSF was able to track and report on traffic and geography [1]. Today, there are roughly 30 national backbones in the U.S. alone, and tracking the global diffusion of the Internet is a daunting, but increasingly important, task. This column surveys some of the organizations tracking that diffusion, and presents some of what they see. 1 Consider this entire column a positive review—

Personal computing

Over the years, we covered the globe with cities then linked them with railroads, highways, telephone lines, power grids, canals, and so forth. We are now deploying the Internet, and several organizations and projects are tracking this global diffusion [4]. This column describes one such project, the MOSAIC Group (www.agsd.com/ mosaicgroup.html) study of the global diffusion of the Internet. The global diffusion of the Internet is of interest to infrastructure planners and policy makers. As Ithiel de Sola Pool pointed out, telecommunication infrastructure planning is implicit social planning. Policy makers may see the Internet as an opportunity, a threat, or both, but none can ignore it— infrastructure and society are inextricably interdependent. While this is the case for all nations, we are particularly motivated by the hypothesis that a relatively small networking investment may have a significant impact in developing nations [1]. While support for policy makers is our primary motivation, we must also confess to a degree of unabashed curiosity in tracking the spread of the Internet around the world. In tracking the diffusion of the Internet, one must choose a balance between breadth and depth. One of the first chroniclers of

The role of computer networks in development

ACMs special interest group for computer-human interaction, SIGCHI, is closely tied to personal computing. The design, development , and study of computer-human interfaces has blossomed with the advent of personal computers and workstations. In the batch-processing days, the interface was simple: the statement label goes in column 2-8, the op-code in columns g-12. When time-sharing was developed, user-interface options broadened slightly. One could use menus or command lines, and on-line help was possible. Some terminals even had lowercase letters. With CRT-based displays, programs could move the cursor and display forms on the screen, but the interface was still slow and limited to characters. The number of CHI options exploded with the fast, bit-mapped displays of personal computers and workstations. The result is that CHI is our fastest growing SIG. Another reason it might be growing so fast is that it deals with a very wide range of topics including human-factors research, cognitive psychology, interface-usability testing , rapid prototyping, user-interface development tools, legal protection for user interfaces, help systems, exotic I/O devices, object-oriented programming, graphic design, intelligent agents, electronic mail, computer support of cooperative work, verbal and non-verbal sound I/O, natural language processing, hyper-text, and hypermedia. Perhaps it should be called SIGeverything. Each of these topics touches on personal computing and each was on the program at CHI 89, SIGCHIs 1989 National Conference. CHI 89 felt like a personal computing conference , trying to balance rigor and creativity. The conference theme was Wings for the Mind, and conference chairman Bill Curtis called it the wildest CHI ever. Attendees met colleagues, exchanged information , and came away with broadened vision and feeling a little inspired. The conference offered plenary sessions, technical sessions, panels, video presentations, lab reviews, commercial and research demonstrations , interactive posters, commercial exhibits, parties, SIG meetings and workshops, Mac-based information kiosks, industry tours, tutorials, a doctoral consortium, and more. Let me tell you a little about CHI 89. Plenary Sessions He admits that we have been hearing about the promise of computer based instruction for years, but assured the audience that we now have the ingredients necessary to make it work: education and learning theory, improved technology , high-level prototyping and development tools, and an emerging community of research and development people who are familiar with the first three items. In other words, At CHI 89, the most energetic, irre-we are in the …

The Internet in India: better times ahead?

T he good news is that the Inter-net has grown like a weed, and many welcome it as a tool for productivity and enlightenment; the bad news is that it is almost unknown in developing nations (see Table 1). This column offers the hypothesis that computer networks can improve life in developing nations at a relatively low cost. Dimensions of Development Development is an imprecise concept. Economists once equated it with economic productivity— GDP per capita—but that is too simple a formulation [22]. Rising GDP might be accompanied by environmental damage, anger over growing disparity in income distribution, disappointment when expectations rise faster than they are fulfilled, displacement of traditional values and customs, crowded cities, and so forth. 1 Furthermore, GDP counts many painful transactions as positive, for example , bypass surgery, buying a second home after a divorce, or the paycheck of a housewife who is forced into the labor market to make ends meet [3]. A broader conception of human development is used in the United Nations Development Program 1 See Simon [20] in which he suggests that peo-ples floating aspiration levels render economic fluctuations relatively unimportant. However, in times of rapid change, that is not the case.

The Net: progress and opportunity

ndia: The world’s largestdemocracy; focal point of com-petition between rivalempires—local and foreign—formore than 4,000 years; the world’ssecond most populous nation, afterthe People’s Republic of China. The number of English-speakingprofessionals, large middle class,and extensive community ofIndian expatriates workingand studying in NorthAmerica and Europe sug-gest India should be aswell-developed as a pro-ducer and user of infor-mation technology asChina. However, althoughIndia is world famous forsoftware exports, includingcode, finished products, andbrainpower (body-shopping),the country lags behind its largeneighbor in virtually every othersector, including Internet connec-tivity [4]. For example, India has hadInternet connectivity since 1989,but China, where connectivitybegan in 1993, already has twicethe number of hosts and threetimes the number of users. InIndia, per-capita use and the num-ber of network domains and hostshave developed slowly (Table 1).The Indian government andpeople expect this situation toimprove in the near future; weexamine the basis of this belief andprospects for growth success. Thecentral and some state governmentshave chosen a basic route to devel-opment: build the infrastructureand national wealth shall follow. Specifically, the central governmentrecently announced major initia-tives in the IT sector, based uponthe belief that IT at once forms anecessary base for most other formsof development and is one of India’snotable strengths. The IndianNational Task Force on IT andSoftware Development has singledout the Internet as fundamental tofuture IT development.

Cuba, communism, and computing

The personal computer has become my most important communication tool. I spend more time/ on the Net, a the Internet and the global network (to which it is connected, than I do on the phone, writing letters, sending faxes and watching television put together. The only medium where I may spend more time is print. In the last two or three years the Net has become an indispensable part of my professional life; it is where I work and meet with colleagues. I have had a network account for many years, so why the sudden change? The primary reason is the recent growth of the Net-nearly all of my colleagues have also moved their offices to Cyberspace. There are more services and databases today, and network access is certainly easier with a PC than it was using my Teletype with a built-in acoustical coupler, but the growing number of users is the main reason. History and Growth It seems to me the vision of the Net grew out of the realization that users of the first, experimental time-sharing systems formed communities3-Those systems had been conceived of o as a means of obtaining cheap interactive computing, but early email software, bulletin boards, and shared subroutine libraries made their community-building effect apparent. z ul 0 ~I will use the term Net in this article. Others .. have used terms like Matrix, Cyberspaee, z GNET, and Global Network. Since Net is o short, Ill use it here. Send me your suggestions-for the name-the-net contest. ~Academic computer centers exchanged jobs ~-long before networks. At the UCLA Western Data Processing Center, we received daily batches of jobs from universities in the 13 western states .a on 500 cps paper tape. But communities did not-form because the systems were not interactive. / / / ./ m nlnge/ S time-shar-experi-re funded by the Advanced Research Projects Agency of the Department of Defense, (originally ARPA, now DARPA), under the leadership of J.C.R. Licklider, who had championed interactive computing in an influential paper on man-machine symbiosis [6]. Licldider soon recognized the importance of electronic communities. He envisioned a galactic network, and under Robert Taylor and Larry Roberts, who followed him at ARPA, the initial ARPANET development was funded. While the ARPANET was being developed, Licklider and Robert Taylor, wrote on electronic communities: What will on-line interactive communities be like? In most fields they will consist of geographically separated members, …