Introductory note:  The following piece, a chapter from a book published
in 1970, is provided here not so much for its timeliness today (although,
on re-reading, there seems to be some) as for illustration of how long
some of today's issues and ideas have been kicking around, and how
technologically prescient it was possible to be a quarter-century ago. 
(Unfortunately, it was not then equally possible to predict the gender
neutral changes the English language would later undergo!) NJ, January
22, 1995

*** Copyright  c 1967, 1968, 1969, 1970 by Little, Brown and
Company.  Copyright  c 1995 by Nicholas Johnson.  Conditions:  This
material is copyright by Little, Brown and Company and Nicholas
Johnson.  However, permission is hereby granted by Nicholas Johnson to
download, copy and distribute the text to others if (1) the text is not
altered, and (2) there is no charge to the recipient, and (3) this copyright
notice and conditions are attached.  It is a copyright violation to distribute
this material altered, or without the copyright notice and conditions
attached, or to use the material in any way for which remuneration is
received without the prior permission of Little, Brown and Company and
Nicholas Johnson.  Contact Nicholas Johnson:   1035393@mcimail.com;
Box 1876 Iowa City IA 52244; 319-337-5555.  Permission should also be
obtained from Little, Brown and Company, 34 Beacon St., Boston MA
02106 ***

Communications and the Year 2000, chapter 6.  Nicholas Johnson, How
To Talk Back To Your Television Set.  Boston:  Little, Brown and
Company.  1970.  pp. 131-147.  Excerpted from the paperback edition. 
New York:  Bantam Books.  pp. 121-135.

Communications and the Year 2000

Communication touches every fiber of our lives. The American
communications mosaic includes a Defense Department hot line, a child
tranquilized before a TV set, a ringing telephone, a politician campaigning
by radio, a news service teletype, a fog-bound ship's radar, a hidden
microphone in a business meeting, satellites, and computerized airline
reservations.

When we speak of communications we often forget the social science
implications of these technological achievements. How do they relate to
all the other major characteristics and problems of our time (war,
overpopulation, increased leisure, congested cities, mounting popular
unrest)? How do they affect the life of an individual -- in an industrialized
modern city, or in a remote rural village? How do they affect the creation
and exercise of political power? How do they affect relations between
family members -- and nations? To understand where communications
technology is taking us, we need more than the insights of economists and
engineers. I think we need the vision of anthropologists, sociologists,
psychologists, educators, political scientists, general semanticists and a
poet or two.

I like to talk about trends rather than explosions or revolutions because
they can be more easily seen, believed, and dealt with. Here are a couple
of examples of what I mean. Before the transistor was invented it is
unlikely that anyone, outside of a few scientists experimenting with the
possibility, would have predicted it. Even then, however, one could detect
a trend toward smaller and smaller vacuum tubes. Before the launch
capability existed, few would have predicted the operation of space
communications satellites. Now that the satellites are operational,
however, it is easy to detect the trends toward greater satellite power,
longer life, increased channel capacity, and precision of transmission
beam. In short, I do not think it is useful for a layman to try to predict the
wholly new transmission scheme that will be to the 1990's what the
satellite has been to the 1960's. (How close could the communications
system of 1969 have been predicted in 1988?) I do think it is useful to try
to reflect upon the trends that are already visible.

The most significant trend in communications; today is probably the trend
toward instantaneous, ubiquitous, no-cost access to all information. I do
not for a moment suggest that we are going to reach that destination; I
only suggest that what is happening today, and will likely continue for
thirty years, can most easily be understood by navigating with that
landmark on the far horizon. If we are 0.01 percent of the way there by
1970, we may be 15 percent of the way there by the year 2000 -- for we
must also deal with a trend of acceleration in the rate of change. Now
what do I mean by "instantaneous, ubiquitous, no-cost access to all
information"?

First, "instantaneous." Not only can we now communicate faster than we
used to -- via telephone, telegraph, television -- but communications
channels (in cables and satellites) are capable of moving increasingly
more information, and thus more information per unit time. Computers
process information faster than ever and are being coupled with
communications networks. This is not a revolution, it is a trend that has
existed throughout the history of man. It's going on now, and will
continue. The only thing that is changing is the rate of acceleration in the
speed of transmission. We will not reach literal instantaneity by the year
2000. There are many delays in the system, and the ultimate barrier of
186,000 miles per second shows no signs of crumbling. But that at least
seems to be the direction of our journey.

By "ubiquitous" I simply mean that the number of points of access to a
communications network are continuing to increase at an accelerated rate,
even to the point of being personally mobile. You are never very far from
a telephone instrument in the United States, and more are being installed
every day. The ease of use of the system, even on a worldwide basis, and
the increasing amount of information that can be obtained by telephone, is
interacting with the increasing number of instruments to accelerate the
trend. The Bell System's touch tone push-button sets, the direct distance
dialing, and the relatively short period (approximately thirty seconds) that
is needed to reach another phone produce increased telephone usage. The
international telephone system is developing similar improvements. (These
factors are also, of course, related to instantaneity.) More information can
be accessed by telephone: library research desks, time and weather
reports, stock market reports, and, of course, the data-phone
interconnection of computers with the rapid increase in number, character
and simplicity of terminal devices for home and office. Personally
portable mobile communication devices are likewise increasing.
Communication on ships and airplanes is common. There is an increasing
number of mobile land vehicles with communications facilities, from earth
moving equipment and fork lift trucks in warehouses to police cars and
taxicabs. Mobile individuals are equipped with two-way radio equipment
or paging devices on their person. Mobile teleprinters and computer
access are just beginning what will probably be a trend that will include
other terminal devices. The instruments of mass communication are
undergoing the same trends. Television and radio sets are spreading
throughout the world. The pocket transistor radio makes personally mobile
mass communications possible everywhere, and the number of portable
television sets is also increasing.

I do not predict a day of free communications. I do believe, however, that
we can identify a trend of decreasing cost of communications that is likely
to continue. This is, in part, the result of an accelerating and interlocked
relationship between miniaturization, mass production and distribution,
and reduced cost. Earthbound microwave relay towers can provide
transmission facilities at about one percent of the cost of open wire
circuits. Satellites are even cheaper for long haul traffic. The capacity of
laser beams is reported to be so enormous that it is almost impossible
even to compute the low cost of providing a circuit. Television and radio
receiving sets continue to come down in price. Furthermore, it is
important to distinguish between cost and price. Obviously, the sum total
of prices paid for communications service must equal the sum total of the
cost of providing that service plus a profit. But that does not tell you
anything about either the costs to be allocated to a given service, or the
pricing system that will be used to regain those costs. Example: the U.S.
Congress has provided that the FCC may authorize free interconnection of
the educational television stations in the United States. As we do that, it
will not mean there will be no cost to the telephone company associated
with providing this service; it will mean there is no price to the
educational broadcasters. To the extent the service requires the telephone
company to incur additional costs they will be absorbed by the prices
charged for other services. Another example: local service and WATS
(wide area telephone service). Within most local exchanges the costs of
telephone service are assessed on a system-wide basis, and the prices
charged are on a flat-fee-for-unlimited-use basis. WATS is a similar
pricing scheme for "long distance" calls: for a flat fee a subscriber may
make an unlimited number of calls within a defined area outside of his
local exchange. Under such pricing schemes there is no additional cost to
the user for using the service. He will make an economic judgment in
deciding whether to get the service at all; once he gets it, however, he
will use it without regard to economic judgments. Note that such pricing
schemes have the same effect upon communications behavior as if they
were technological innovations that made communications equipment and
service available "free."

It is, of course, fanciful to suggest that by the year 2000 -- or any other
year for that matter -- we will have a world in which every human being
will have access literally to "all" information. Like the other end points on
our present trend lines, however, it seems a useful concept. Even today,
anyone who can pay the subscription rates, or can use a major library, has
access to -- if not all information -- at least considerably more information
than he wants or can possibly use. The world's professional people are
already at the point where they really have more desire for services that
will edit, summarize, process, and retrieve relevant information than for
services that merely give them access to more data. Yet that is really
more an emotional judgment born of frustration than a rational preference.
We need both. In any event, we have little choice -- we are going to have
access to more information with which to do our jobs whether we want it
or not. The number of telephones that can be reached from any other
telephone is increasing every year -- a function of the increase in the
absolute number of telephones and in the number of units that are
interconnected. With an increase in research activity, publishing, leisure
time, levels of education, and disposable income, the absolute amount of
information, and the number of people who will want it, is multiplying
rapidly. We have increased the number and sensitivity of apparatus for
recording various phenomena. The computer continues to increase our
capacity to receive, process and use this data. The international exchange
of printed matter and films is today being augmented by television.

The program One World in 1967 was an immensely successful effort to
interconnect television cameras around the world, via satellite, to TV
stations which broadcast to an international audience made up of the
largest number of viewers ever to watch simultaneously a single program
or performance. The widespread coverage of the moon walk achieved
similar ratings. I suspect we will share more such experiences. As
computers take on the data retrieval tasks now done by laborious manual
library searches, whole new worlds of information will be opened up to
more widespread use. There is no reason video and audio tape libraries
couldn't be made similarly accessible -- and all of them from remote
points if desired. (This is not to suggest the demise of pre-programmed
"network" television offerings -- there is the same desire for video
information packaging as for print -- only that the individual's
opportunities for individual choice will expand.) So we are rapidly
approaching the time -- if we have not already passed it -- when the
principal impediments to "access to all information" will not be
technological imperfections, the availability of circuits, or price, but the
man-made inhibitions: copyright, proprietary business data, national
security classifications, ignorance, inertia, and stubbornness.

Perhaps the single most important implication of "communications and the
year 2000" is the extent to which it will be something which we have
planned for, designed and built, rather than predicted. The space program
will be found to have had its greatest impact, in my view, in philosophy
and psychology -- not new technology and scientific data. The greatest
inhibitions to man's progress and happiness are those of his own making:
"it's scientifically impossible," "we can't afford it," "but that would be
socialistic," "it's illegal," "it's against our policy," "our church doesn't
believe in that," "it's just not done that way." To remove these shackles
from our minds required the preposterously expensive program necessary
to get us to the moon. Now that we have done it we are beginning to
change the way we talk about our opportunities: "if we can send a man to
the moon we can certainly do . . ." has become the opening line of some
very imaginative proposals. Political philosophy has become hopelessly
confused and almost irrelevant in the frantic search for pragmatic
solutions to common problems: the "socialist bureaucrats in Washington"
are trying to sell their Post Office Department to the highest bidder in the
marketplace; the "rugged individualists" of American business who cuss
the "fuzzy-headed do-gooder liberals" are now profiting as government
contractors in city building, job training and America's fifty-two-billion-
dollar education industry, and are coming up with very humane proposals
after sitting on commissions and task forces on civil disorders,
employment, crime, and violence. Barry Goldwater's "conservative"
economist, Dr. Milton Friedman, has proposed a guaranteed annual
income ("negative income tax") as an alternative to welfare; it is a
proposal that, in an earlier day, would have been rejected out of hand
because of its "communist" origins ("from each according to his ability, to
each according to his need").

Books like Brave New World and 1984 and much of our current writing
have stressed the oppressive potential of "instantaneous, ubiquitous, no
cost access to all information." There was even substantial public protest
when the telephone company in the United States wanted to take the
"dehumanizing" step of abolishing the exchange names from the telephone
numbers (that is, substituting 395-4321 for EXecutive 5-4321). Students at
Berkeley have carried picket signs saying, "I am a person. Do not bend,
fold, spindle or mutilate," as a protest to the faceless machines that
require cards carrying such instructions. For every one person who sees
advantage to a national data bank (for example, to more efficiently match
job opportunity to available workers), there are a dozen who fear its
power, and the impossibility of clearing error from one's record. The
efficiency of automatic video tape recorders in filming auto accidents, and
closed circuit television systems in doing the work of guards, must be
balanced against the very understandable human protest at such "invasions
of privacy." The wonders of powerful, miniaturized microphones and
transmitters have already succeeded in severely limiting the places where
one may confidently carry on a "private" conversation. Fears of
wiretapping have substantially impeded the telephone system as a
communications network.

We have moved from an age when political and economic power were
measured in land, or capital, or labor, to an age in which power is
measured largely by access to information and people. The man or
institution which has the greatest political, military or economic power
today is the one with access to the greatest amount of relevant information
in the most usable form in the quickest time; and, in institutions or
societies where popular understanding and support are relevant, the
greatest access to the mass media. Thus, the problem in creating national
or international satellite-direct-to-home radio and television is not
technological; it is getting those who now control the mass media to agree
on the individuals and procedures that will determine what is broadcast
over that satellite channel. The problem in establishing cable television
throughout the U.S. is not that of deciding where we will put all those
wires; it is deciding who gets to hold the switch. The argument is being
advanced that the mass media should be more like a common carrier; that
the First Amendment guarantees of free speech must, today, extend to
making the mass media available to those who want to use them. As cable
television and laser beams replace an economy and technology of scarcity
with one of abundance, that will be increasingly possible technologically.
Whether it will be socially and politically possible remains to be seen.

I recall a conversation with representatives from fire and police
departments in one of America's largest cities. Why, I asked, did they not
establish mobile radio systems that would enable fire, police and national
guardsmen at the scene of a particular incident to talk to each other? After
some stumbling around the answer became quite clear: each wanted to
retain power and control in his own organization. Within any
paper-shuffling bureaucracy (corporate or government) power lies with he
who controls the key to the filing cabinet. To make information that is
now someone's personal domain easily accessible threatens his status and
prestige -- perhaps the justification for his job. Government agencies
could very easily put their "public" information in computers that could be
operated by any member of the public. They probably will not do so --
but not because "it's scientifically impossible," or "it costs too much." The
education establishment has been very slow to accept educational
television -- it has been viewed as a threat by many classroom teachers.
They are unlikely to welcome with any greater enthusiasm programmed-
instruction teaching machines in the home that any member of the family
can
use to study any subject of his choosing at his leisure. As former
Secretary of Defense 
McNamara demonstrated at the Defense Department, the "management
information 
system" lies at the heart of management's power over any large
organization today. If 
access to that information is diffused, so is power. That is the reason --
not economic or 
technical feasibility -- it is unlikely there will be more than a handful of
visual display 
terminals with access to management information data in any large
organization.

We are witnessing on all sides today a revolution of "participatory
democracy." The people want, as we say, a "piece of the action." Every
candidate for President in 1968 advocated this concept in some form. It
finds its philosophical counterpart in most of the civilized nations of the
world today. It is, in my judgment, a function of increased
communications, education and standard of living. Nation states grow
obsolete, mass-appeal political leaders vanish, and the mass media in
effect become government, as education is substituted for mass illiteracy,
popular access to the mass media is substituted for dictatorial control over
information by a single leader, identity and loyalty to one's institutional
and professional affiliations are substituted for geographical relationships,
and internationally understood professional languages are substituted for
national languages and literature. I think those trends will accelerate
before they slow down. No segment of the various movements of social
protest has a very specific program at this point. But it is only a matter of
time before they grasp the "information-is-power" concept even more
fully.

We have already reached the point where the educational-social-economic-
professional elites of Tokyo, London, Moscow, Washington, New York,
and so forth, have much more in common with one another than they
have in common with their own countrymen back in the rural villages.
This is yet another trend. And the number being influenced by it is
expanding geographically and economically. Trade, transportation and
especially communication is the principal reason. The same music,
television shows, and movies are seen and heard around the world. Every
country loses a little of its individual character as it undergoes this
process. Americans are concerned about the possible relation between
violence in television shows and violence in our streets. But this is a
matter of international concern as well, because these television shows are
shown around the world. Finland, Spain and some other countries have
taken action to prohibit the importation of some American television. But
most countries have not, and the U.S. government makes no effort, so far
as I know, to exert any control over the content, and possible impact, of
our exported television product.

One of the principles to which America is dedicated, as an ideal, is that
every individual should have the opportunity to attain the maximum
growth and development of which he is capable. This is a revolutionary
philosophy, impossible of complete attainment, and it has created
considerable grief for our country, especially during the past few years.
But we keep striving to come closer to this ideal each year, and we are as
proud of our progress as we are determined to make up the remaining
gap. It is why we must make available at no cost recreational facilities to
develop the body, schools and libraries to develop the mind, and churches
and national parks to develop the spirit.

Our progress toward "instantaneous, ubiquitous, no-cost access to all
information" has important implications for our commitment to individual
opportunity. President Johnson's last nomination to the FCC was Mr. H.
Rex Lee, who, as a distinguished and imaginative Governor of Samoa,
established an educational television system for the islands that has shown
the world what our new communications techniques can mean in
improving the quantity and quality of education while reducing its cost.
At a time when the rate of illiteracy in the world is increasing rather than
decreasing with every passing year it is obvious that some dramatic
changes in educational techniques are called for. Governor Lee's electronic
schoolhouse may suggest a way. And I would remind you once again in
this context that we can make the informational resources of the world
available "free" to the user if we choose to do so. We are not just playing
with public-utility-rate- making metaphysics when we set telephone rates
-- we are affecting the individual opportunity of the world's people.

On signing the Public Broadcasting Corporation bill into law, President
Johnson said, "Today our problem is not making miracles -- but managing
them." The space program has impressed upon us the realization that we
have the human talent and economic resources to do anything worth doing
if we are fully committed to its achievement. This realization substantially
alters the task of the planner or forecaster. His task is no longer merely
one of predicting technological and economic phenomena. He must call
upon the resources of social scientists, philosophers and poets to assist
him in his search for a set of values, or the goals that he seeks to achieve.
For we are in the enviable if anomalous position of having capabilities
that exceed our aspirations. Whether we know it or not we are making
decisions today that will determine, irrevocably, the impact of
communications upon our society and economy in the year 2000.

Each technological innovation in communications raises a number of
questions. What will be its impact on our society? How can this new
force most effectively be channeled to human good? Are unrestrained
market forces or some form of government regulation most appropriate?
Are new or amended laws or regulations necessary? What is the most
economic and efficient way to achieve the ends sought? What are the
forces regulating the development and rate of introduction of the new
technology? Are they effective in serving interests beyond private
economic gain? How can government be most effectively structured and
administered to deal with the problem in question? What additional data,
analysis, or other research is called for? Whether we make wise decisions,
whether we mold our future intentionally, is up to us.

What will be the state of communications in the year 2000? Largely
whatever we choose to make it. Of course, we must do more than simply
utter the phrase, "The future is what we make of it." There is a limit to
the capacity of human society to preplan its course of evolution, and even
some question about the desirability of doing so. Our undertaking here,
and in those other countries with Commissions on the Year 2000, is
motivated in part by our fascination with the advent of a new century. But
we are also cognizant of the increasing desire on the part of post-
industrial societies to prevent impersonal and unforeseen chance to force
our society's evolution. At the same time we acknowledge that the natural
forces in a market economy often have the capacity to achieve the goals
that a society has set for itself. So what do we do? First, we should exert
every effort to maintain and improve open societies, where conflicting
information, interpretations and orthodoxies have an opportunity to be
heard and tested. For we have an ultimate commitment to the ideal that a
society must choose, through some form of the democratic process, what
course it wants to follow. That choice is made more meaningful,
especially in times of rapid change, when the alternatives are made clear
and their implications have been fully enunciated. Secondly, we should
endeavor to test all the change which is so surely to be part of the years
ahead. I would hope that the next three decades would be known for our
experimentation and pilot projects on a grand scale. And when we test, we
will try to develop better standards for measuring the achievement of the
human values so long cherished by all mankind.

*** Copyright  c 1967, 1968, 1969, 1970 by Little, Brown and
Company.  Copyright  c 1995 by Nicholas Johnson.  Conditions:  This
material is copyright by Little, Brown and Company and Nicholas
Johnson.  However, permission is hereby granted by Nicholas Johnson to
download, copy and distribute the text to others if (1) the text is not
altered, and (2) there is no charge to the recipient, and (3) this copyright
notice and conditions are attached.  It is a copyright violation to distribute
this material altered, or without the copyright notice and conditions
attached, or to use the material in any way for which remuneration is
received without the prior permission of Little, Brown and Company and
Nicholas Johnson.  Contact Nicholas Johnson:   1035393@mcimail.com;
Box 1876, Iowa City IA 52244; 319-337-5555.  Permission should also be
obtained from Little, Brown and Company, 34 Beacon St., Boston MA
02106 ***

END OF FILE