Comments on the Future of Technology
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Held up two pieces of fiber cable that sat in his drawer for 5 or 6 years
fiber to the library would enable virtual presence, super videoconferencing on gigabyte throughputs
if every library had fiber optic facilities coming to it, then communities would understand what big bandwidth applications are all about

What’s a gigabit? Enough throughput to carry more than 10,000 conversations. In the busy hour in telephony, you engineer your plan so that 10% of your phones will be off-hook at any given time. So a gigabit serves a city of 100,000 people. On the fancier Macs, you get a gigabit interface.

Fiber technology has far outpaced demand. It can serve the conventional telephony of 1,600 cities of 100,000 people with less than two fibers. So we can win the scarcity argument. Imagine fiber cables instead of what we have in our neighborhoods now, and we could have infinite bandwidth. We’d all get 5 or 6 fibers, which could serve many cities. We have the technology today to never be bandwidth-limited again. We’ve heard of electricity too cheap to meter, cars that get hundreds of miles to the gallon, the perpetual motion machine, etc., but this one is real. We can do this.

We can blast these fibers 1500 meters without regeneration. Even without that, we could make the entire northeast into a single local area network meshed together without hubs. And it’s more reliable than copper.

The technology/research stopped in about 1998-99 when there wasn’t enough capacity. So why isn’t the telephone company selling it? See Mike’s presentation.

So then the question arises what kinds of applications we do on big bandwidth. That’s a harder one.

Did inventors of the book know it would be used in unintended ways? As a booster seat, to prop things up, to press flowers, to shade your eyes while you’re napping at the beach, etc.? It’s unlikely that they did. And in fact, sometimes applications you think might have a life don’t emerge. Google search for failed products – edible deodorant, ben-gay branded and flavored aspirin, webvan, apple newton, history of the picturephone.

His fantasy application is the wireless data transceiver for cars that is integrated with GPS and the car’s dashboard system. Networked cars that exchange data as they’re going down the road – traffic jams, speed of traffic, etc. Reasons why he doesn’t think this will happen – no business model, no standards, etc.

Talked about some history at AT&T when he tried to start new products that they didn’t pursue that become profitable services when others implemented them (“quick nickels versus slow dollars”)
- for example, AT&T actually had a precursor to the iPod, but didn’t do anything with it

What does AT&T’s experience teach us about anticipating new applications?
once an ecology of applications develop, a company can contribute, but one company cannot create that ecosystem
nevertheless, new applications are foreseeable on the horizon
for example, television
thinks the future of television will be similar to what audio podcasting is like today
the combination of user-generated content, automated syndication and downloading, faster than real time delivery, and a new device for playback has defined this new audio-on-demand environment that presages a new video-on-demand environment that has the potential to weaken or destroy the cable companies
new Vuze bittorrent client that may be a precursor
wants a better recommendation engine

What we won’t know until it’s too late is who the key players are and what part they’re going to play

Respondent panel: Carol Henderson, Bob Bocher

Bob:
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Seeing more capability on circuits
laptop sales have overtaken desktops
the reason public libraries have people lined up to use computers is because there is no physical space to meet the demand, nowhere to put them
most will be going to laptops to help alleviate this problem

this also has implications for the consumer market because more and more patrons are coming in with their laptops, which puts pressure on the library to offer wireless access (half of PLs don’t offer this yet?)
strong open records laws in most states, with complementary records retention laws

there’s a real issue on data retention, especially in regards to email (especially when you’re dealing with spam!)
how many hoops do you want teachers or librarians to go through when determining what email needs to be retained?
do we just archive *every* email for 7 years? That may be the direction we are heading in
agrees it will be difficult to predict which players will be around and play a part

some libraries have robust bandwidth, but their PCs are 6 or 7 years old – try running an interactive video on them – can’t do it

under No Child Left Behind, see the need to track student assessments, standardized scores, attendance. Most of these processes are being outsourced, which means you need to have a robust connection to the internet.

Carol:
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Is in an organization that is trying to make life better, especially intellectual life, for retirees. Hitting only about 1% of that population, so as they grow, they have to decentralize. In one place, they are using a church but it is a dead spot in terms of wifi

Have considered expanding to sites in 55+ retirement communities, but could also partner with libraries if they had this fiber connection David spoke of. Especially the video conferencing capabilities – could piggyback on this to transmit trainers’ services and contents, interactivity with materials
need robust, easy-to-use, more compatible hardware and software that doesn’t require having a technician on-site

upcoming paper suggests library as point-of-presence, which would help them as a lifelong learning institute partner with libraries
their own instructors use libraries a little, but run into barriers
get that older, archival material online, because you’d be amazed at the uses to which it could be put

she encourages her students to use the library for their background for stories
- these are casual users, so they have to know to go to “databases” rather than the online catalog, then do this, then do that
- you ought to be able to do a google-like search of everything

Adam: how long will it take for a standard 2-hour rich digital movie to go down that fiber pipe?
David: snapped his fingers

Howard: surprised that he heard little hints about some of these technologies, so if you could elaborate on that – handheld devices (cell phones, Blackberries, MP3 players, PDAs). Within the context of a library, there are huge possibilities here, particularly if you put them together with some of what David mentioned, like GPS. The ability to have someone in the library start an information query and then have a machine guide you (go to “databases” not catalog). Announcements of events, etc.

Bob: as the chips shrink smaller and smaller and you get more processing power, you’ll see much more integration on one device (iPhones). Form factor on physical size may be the bigger issue – can’t manipulate the buttons because they’re so small. Battery power will be an issue. But will keep packing in more features. So you can go home and continue that query you started at the library
Carol: with her audience, the ability to manipulate those little keys and see the screen, adaptations are going to have to be made
Bob: you see this in military and gaming, might see intelligent lenses/glasses. Could develop 3-dimensional views in the next few years
Howard: still baffles him to see people slightly younger than him reading large amounts of texts on these small devices
Adam: voice recognition technology
Nancy B.: loved Adam’s question because there is a disconnect between what the technology allows and what the telcos are willing to deploy. Whenever we talk about all of these great things that libraries can do, there are a huge number of libraries, particularly in rural areas, where the digital divide is libraries who can and cannot access information. A year ago when video streaming exploded, it killed library bandwidth. At 3pm, the bandwidth slows down, so libraries can’t do training, etc. in the afternoon. This has to be solved. Telcos say it isn’t profitable to put the bandwidth in small towns.
David: that’s true – they’re being honest

Nancy: so then how do we win the scarcity argument you made
David: there are two answers to that. One, we can subsidize these small libraries to buy the bandwidth, but the richer libraries are still incredibly impoverished in regards to bandwidth. Even they can’t get the services the technology offers. need a national policy discussion that goes so far beyond the issue of net neutrality, which is a come-from-behind compromise, we need to get out in front of the issue. The telcos aren’t even close to providing what the technology can do, so what do we as a nation need to do to fix this? The US invented the internet and we’re now piddling away whatever economic advantages that afforded us. We need to have a discussion beyond rich and poor libraries and have a discussion about what a telephone company is for and the public good.
Nancy: noted a comic that goes from “here” to “there” and in the middle panel, it says “a miracle occurs”
Bob: how many people knew Bush said every home would have broadband by January 1, 2007? It isn’t happening in rural areas because the revenue isn’t there.

David L.: I’m a systems geek, so I look for bottlenecks. I’m hearing storage, bandwidth, computing power are not bottlenecks. The electrical grid is a bottleneck, though. Ask.com CEO said the five major search engines have 2million computers working together. What we’re really going to run into is a lack of power. The policy – absolutely. But can’t ignore the power grid. Has seen schools blow out the transformers when trying to do things.

Jorge: the power grid is an important issue that falls within a larger context – how we think about what we deliver. As long as we are tied to asking questions like shouldn’t we have a TBA, we’ll be tired to the resources of the previous era. In the information age, the internet is a way to deliver services to just a few. Is that what we want? We’re spending money on other things (like Iraq), but we need to have a national discussion about this.
David: for under a $100 billion, we could fix this if we were willing to make this our national priority
Mike E.: it sounds like a bunch of library whining to me. There’s technology everywhere. Every student he knows has some device of some kind that they’re using in innovative ways. If libraries provide the valuable services, resources, etc., they’ll find a way to come and get there. If we wait for our federal government and our society to give us these things, it will never happen. Why are there 100 million Facebook accounts? We should stop whining and start doing compelling things. Library search sucks. Google search is okay. If library search improves, people would start to use it. None of the librarians he knows start with library search. They start with google.

Howard: there are two issues here. Simplicity of search and when they know that they’re going to get the full-text.
Mike: sure. Is this just another meeting where we say we need the government to give us more money? Yes, Iraq. But it’s not like if we stopped the war tomorrow all that money would come to us. We couldn’t even make a compelling argument to Gates to continue funding technology in libraries, let alone at a higher rate. Get the librarians out on the streets, use the technology and excitement around it.

Bob: looks forward to a LITA trends panel where most of the panelists don’t say “my OPAC sucks”
Adam: the issue is not whether the libraries should request help from the federal government if the real task is to build structures in the library and world universe. Telcos shouldn’t determine those structures. There is a macro message to be delivered by more than just librarians, although we can lead in crafting this message.
Nancy B.: we must get the infrastructure in place for all libraries now. The federal government is just one and we can’t wait for it or libraries will die.
Linda: Adam said what I was going to say but in a much better way. When we were talking earlier and Joe said it’s difficult to get librarians to coalesce around a single issue. She thinks it’s broadband. That’s the issue and it’s everywhere.

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