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Page ContentsIntroduction The Information Society & The Sustainability Challenge The Information Highway (Mokhtarian) "Medical Industry Slow To Exploit Information Technology" Barriers to Telework Forthcoming Contributions Discussions
Introduction
Here is where submittals by colleagues from around the world, think pieces, working papers, etc. are being filed for review and comment. These of course may undertake to challenge, support or amplify the claims and vision of the Null Hypothesis - or they may set out a track of their own, bearing in mind of course the objectives of this conference (i.e., technology and organizational change and its impact on people in their daily lives, all within the framework of the critical importance of sustainable development.
One recommended presentational approach which we would like to encourage for future contributiosn to this forum will be that of providing provide a relatively short summary note setting out the main points of contention, etc. here, together with a link to a full paper or report. This last might be either on a detail page of its own, in the Conference's Electronic Library (ftp site), or available via link to somewhere else on the Web.
The Information Society & The Sustainability Challenge
See this brainstorming piece by this track's moderator which attempts to line up the arguments in terms of transport/telecoms trade-off potential, and what we need to do to accelerate their positive impacts, environmental and otherwise. Lodged here with the additional sub-title: "Experience, Contradictions, Myths, Propaganda, Possible Truths, Visions, and the Implications for Transport, Well-Being & Community". Completes and extends a number of the arguments set out in the Null Hypothesis.
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The Information Highway...
Just Because We're On It Doesn't Mean We Know Where We're Going
By Patricia L. Mokhtarian, University of California, Davis
The author writes: "Telecommunications, like many other technological advances, appears to be accompanied by a lot of hype, an optimistic overselling of its potential. Steve Finlay of BC Telephone in Vancouver, British Columbia coined the phrase Information SuperHYPEway -- an apt description of the current state of the much-vaunted Info Highway. I suggest that not only do the physical aspects of the Info Highway currently fall short of the ideal, but that the impacts of the Info Highway when it eventually is in place may also not be ideal. As a society, we have this touching but usually misguided faith in the ability of technology to solve problems that are essentially human whether individual or institutional in nature. The purpose of this paper is to remind us to look behind the hyperbole about what the Info Highway is and what it will do for us, to peel away the exaggeration and find the reality underneath. First, I will describe three attributes of "conventional wisdom" (CW). Then, I'll discuss three examples of the received wisdom regarding the urban impacts of telecommunications technology. I will briefly present some suggestions for future research into these impacts, and close with three cautionary observations."
Also see the article by Dr. Mohktarian that appeared in the Scientific American of Sept. 1997,
"Now That Travel Can Be Virtual, Will Congestion Virtually Disappear?", which takes up a number of these same themes and perspectives. She starts out... "The idea that telecommunications technology could substitute for travel dawned on people soon after the invention of the telephone..." Read Mohktarian's Scientific American article
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"Medical Industry Slow To Exploit Information Technology"
See the attached resume of a recent article from The Economist entitled, "Medical Industry Slow To Exploit Information Technology", for one explanation of why this transition is not as glitch-free or overnight as often advertised. But also why it is inevitable and why it will indeed eventually work to reduce physical movement and emissions (though clearly not in a frontal one on one manner). (Note: This is not to say that the article itself deals in any way with the broader problem of, namely, what the global implications of this will be, however this will be getting more attention elsewhere in this undertaking.)
Read summary of Economist article
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Barriers to Telework
Summary of a report prepared in support of the European Telework Development Initiative, by Ursula Huws (analytica), with F.E.K. Britton (EcoPlan International). "This presents our best analysis of these events and trends, something which we are able to do with confidence since we are both not only long time students of the telework field but also practitioners who for better or worse work with these technologies and constraints every day. What you have here is thus not a theoretical view. It should not, however, be treated as something which is or really can be final or definitive. It provides a snapshot of a dynamic, fast evolving process taken at one point in time. That said, this report points up a number of real problems, and a few opportunities, to which we hope the Commission, and perhaps our colleagues at the European Telework Development Initiative will choose to give their close attention in the weeks and months ahead. There is, as you will shortly see, quite a bit that needs to be done in order to permit this important new sector of economic activity to take its full and rightful place in what is increasingly an Information Society. And the people and the groups that are out there in the economy trying to do their best with these tools are deserving of this support."
Articles and reports by:
- Jack Nilles
- Jeremy Millard
- Robert Theobald
- ....
You are invited to go the WebBoard both to record your own remarks and suggestions, and to follow what others have put there. As commentaries , papers and reports are brought to our attention which fill out these discussions in a useful manner, they will be added here.
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