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... e are
probably three or four that are not. Government agencies are only
now beginning to connect their storehouses of information to the
Net. Several commercial vendors, from database services to booksellers,
have made their services available through the Net.
Few people now use flash designer stamford one of the Net's more interesting
applications. new jersey flash designer A standard known as MIME lets one send audio and
graphics files in a message. Imagine opening your e-mail one day to hear
your granddaughter's first words, or a "photo" of your friend's new
house. Eventually, lincolnshire flash designer this standard could allow for distribution of even new jersey flash designer
small video displays over the Net.
All of this will require vast new amounts of Net power, to handle
both the millions of new people who will jump onto the Net and the new
applications they want.
Replicating a moving image on a computer screen
alone takes a phenomenal amount of computer bits, and computing power to
arrange them.
All of this combines into a National Information Infrastructure able
to move billions of bits of information in one second -- the kind of
power needed to hook information "hoses" into every business and house.
As these "superhighways" grow, so will the "on ramps," for a high-
speed road does you little good if you can't get to it. The costs of
modems seem to fall as fast as those of computers.
High-speed modems
(9600 baud and up) are becoming increasingly affordable. At 9600 baud,
you can download a satellite weather image of North America in less than flash designer stamford flash designer wisconsin
two minutes, a file that, with a slower modem could take up to 20
minutes to download. flash designer stamford Eventually, homes could be connected directly to a
national digital network. Most long-distance phone traffic is already
carried in flash designer stamford digital form, through high-volume optical fibers. Phone
companies are ever so slowly working to extend these fibers the "final
mile" to the home.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation is working to
ensure these links are affordable.
Beyond the technical questions are increasingly thorny social,
political and economic issues.
Who is to have access to these
services, and at what cost? If we live in an information age, are we
laying the seeds for a new information under class, unable to compete
with those fortunate enough to flash designer stamford have the money and skills needed to
manipulate new communications channels? Who, in fact, decides who has
access to what? As more companies realize the potential profits to be
made in the new information infrastructure, what flash lincolnshire flash designer designer stamford happens to such
systems as Usenet, possibly the world's first successful anarchistic
system, where everybody can say whatever they want?
What are the laws of the electronic frontier? When national and
state boundaries lose their meaning in cyberspace, the question might
even be: WHO is the law? What if a practice that is legal in one
country is "committed" in another country where it is illegal, over a
computer network that crosses through a third country? Who goes after
computer crackers?
What role will you play in the revolution? ... |
