Section V
A New Form of communication
Blogs
The term Blog is a contraction of Web-log. A blog is a web message. Blogs are arranged in reverse cronological order in a website. A common form of a blog website is a personal diary or online journal. Besider personal blogs there are:
Blogging reached its peak in growth rate in 1999 and was consider mainstream in 2004. Over the past 3.5 years the number of people blogging and doubled every 6 months. The phenomonon has peaked and is consolidating. Americans are writing less online journals.
There is now a miniblogging form promoted by the software package Twitter.
Impact:
Blogs sites:
New form of Networking
What is a social network( Read first two paragraphs at site): Check out the video Social Networking in Plain English
A list of social networking sites. As you can see by the list there is a wide range of social networking sites organized by groups, countries, or topics. The membership of Facebook and MySpace now is over 200M, but there are tiny sites with few members.
Let us consider the services Facebook offers:
Benefits:
Risks
Some other networking sites:
How do they make money: The more members a site has the more money it makes in advertizing. Facebook makes money through gifts, its marketplace, and by allowing 3rd parties to create applications on Facebook. Appaholic.com rates these application.
With vast amounts of personal and corporate information in databases
being transmitted through communication systems, there is a pressing
need for security in computer-communication systems. However, the more
secure you make a computer-communication system from access by hackers,
the harder access becomes for legitimate users. Computer-communication
systems can never be made completely secure against unauthorized users.
Military style encryption, the translation of computer-communication
information into code, is a current trend in computing and
communication. Is all information being used by computers or
communicated between people or machines going to be encrypted?
Currently, there is a major battle between police organizations and
businesses concerning cryptography. The National Security
Administration and the FBI want to be able to tap into any
communications (with a warrant, of course) for the purpose of catching
criminals. They propose a cryptography system developed by the NSA
called a Clipper chip. Computer experts are opposed because they
believe the NSA has a backdoor to easily listen to any communication
message. Also, organized crime would have the resources to break such a
system and steal bank transfers. Businesses generally want unlimited
encryption to protect vital corporate secrets. Recently the Clinton
administration rejected the NSA encryption scheme.
Increasingly, many kinds of decisions will be made by analyzing alternatives using databases. This will include personal decisions as well as political-economic decisions. Man, as a decision maker, has limited cognitive skills. This limit has been called bounded rationality by the Nobel laureate H. Simon. Using decision aids humans can make better decisions in all aspects of life. Making computer aided decisions requires relevant databases. This raises a fundamental conflict between privacy and property rights versus the data needed for making better decisions. Computer based decisions make the information structure or what information should be available for each type of decision a fundamental policy issue. For example, credit data bases enable stores to determine a consumer's credit rating quickly at low cost. This is the basis for the credit oriented consumer market. Without such databases it would be much more difficult to obtain auto and home loans.
With the channel capacity expansion of the communication system, the
cost of transmitting a bit of a message will fall at a rapid rate.
Types of communication requiring higher baud (bits per second) rate,
for example, video, will gradually become more commonplace.
Technological advances may decrease the cost of transportation, but not
nearly as much as technological advances will decrease the cost of
communication. Thus, one would expect a substitution of communication
for travel. Modern society is organized around the automobile. Most
people live within a 20 minute commute from work. This means the auto
transportation system is built to handle the peak morning and evening
traffic loads. During the rest of the day, the system has considerable
wasted idle capacity. Moreover, autos are one of the principal sources
of pollution. In areas such as Denver and LA inversion layers create
social costs in the form health problems in the respiratory system.
Also, communication requires much less energy than transportation. For
these reasons, society would be better off with less commuting.
Prior to the first industrial revolution, most people worked out of
their homes. In industries such as cloth manufacturing, the merchant
took raw wool to farmers' cottages to be spun into thread. Then the
merchant picked up the thread and took it to the weavers cottage to be
woven into cloth. The merchant then took the cloth to another cottage
to be dyed. Work was brought to the home and artisans generally had
their homes attached to their shops. The custom of commuting to work
began very recently. As automation of manufacturing proceeds, work will
increasingly involve the manipulation of informational objects. As the
manipulation takes place through a terminal, the substitution of
communication for travel depends on how effective groups can be at
accomplishing tasks through communication networks.
How we physically locate people in an organization for effective
problem solving requires experiments to find out how people communicate
in problem solving. Currently in large organizations there is much
decentralization in location. The issue is: Given all our new
communication/computing equipment, what activities can be accomplished
effectively remotely?
In one experiment, two groups in separate rooms were tested in the
speed at which they could solve simple problems:
i. Assembly of a trash can carrier when one group had the parts and the
other the instructions.
ii. Find all the citations relevant to an article when one group has
the article and the other the index.
iii. Find the closest physician when one group has the address and the
map while the other group has the list of physicians.
The two groups could communicate:
i. Communication rich: voice and video.
Ii Voice.
Iii Hand written messages.
iv. Typing: inexperienced.
v. Typing: experienced.
The results indicated that to solve problems:
|
Message |
__Rich__ |
__Voice_ |
__Hand__ |
__Type__ |
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Ave Time |
29 |
33 |
53 |
69 |
|
No. Mess |
230 |
163 |
16 |
32 |
There are many types of teleconferencing. The oldest, simplest, and
cheapest type of teleconferencing is a conference phone call. Advances
in teleconferencing are proceeding in two directions. One approach is
in teleconferencing taking place in special teleconferencing rooms or
with special equipment and the other is in teleconferencing in computer
networks via desktop computers.
Let us first consider special teleconferencing rooms or equipment. In
this approach a more advanced type is voice and slides, and the most
advanced type is video teleconferencing with dynamic video, voice, and
data. In 1982, ARCO spent $20M for a teleconferencing system because
the chairman traveled 600 to 700 miles everyday for the past 35 years.
ARCO's system includes one TV screen for pictures and one for data
(Alaska to LA) and they also plan to expand network and transmit data
from seismic tests. Video teleconferencing is growing at 20 to 40% a
year. With increased long distance communication competition through
the creation of fiber optic networks with tremendous excess capacity
rates should continue a downward trend. As the demand for
teleconferencing services increases, producers obtain economies of
scale in production. For example, to reduce the cost of full video
conferences, one company has set up a video conference 'coop' to sell
the unused time at facilities set up by corporations. Later, Aetna set
up video conference rooms to link its corporate center with its data
processing center which were 15 miles away. It cost $250,000 to build
and cost $250/hr to operate. Before Aetna set up this system, 500
programmers met 3000 times a month with managers in the headquarters.
Aetna has installed video conference rooms in its Chicago, San
Francisco and Dallas offices. By 1986, a typical video conference rooms
center cost more than $200,000. A year later the cost fell to $120,000
and by 1989 to $60,000. The cost is projected to be below $15,000 by
the end of 1993. At the same time the cost of phone lines for video
conference rooms has fallen from $1600 to less than $20 per hour.
A form of teleconferencing in computer networks is called collaborative
computing. Lotus Notes is an example of software which allows groups to
work together. You should in the next few years expect a large number
of software packages which allow groups of people at remote personal
computer locations to exchange text, data and still images. PC
manufacturers are now creating PCs which incorporate a videocam for
videoconferencing through computer networks. Such videoconferencing
will become commonplace in LANs before WANs. This may not become
commonplace in WANs until the capacity of the phone system expands to
cheaply handle desktop videoconferencing.
Low cost video teleconferencing offers businesses many advantages.
Teleconferences generally can be set much more quickly than business
meetings involving people at large distances. In addition,
teleconferencing is cheaper than travel. Moreover, executives are more
effective not having to work in airplanes and hotel rooms. A success
story with teleconferencing is M/A Com. Teleconferencing is used to
manage 26 companies. Teleconferencing links small office in Boca Raton,
Fla to four M/A Con centers in San Diego,CA; Catawba, N.C.; Germantown,
MD; and Burlington, MA. The company is also a vendor of
teleconferencing systems that make use of its satellite link. Instead
of two to three days to arrange cross country meetings, thirty minutes
is required to arrange teleconference meetings. What this means is that
M/A Con can respond very quickly to changing market conditions. Yes,
not all businesses are jumping into teleconferencing. Many will wait
until substantial savings have been demonstrated by the leaders.
Various forms of teleconferencing are also being created in computer
networks. The simplest is the chat mode of information utilities. More
advanced versions of text teleconferencing are in widespread use. One
example is the US Army Missile command. Currently, communications
companies are creating video teleconferencing systems in computer
networks. For example, Northern Telecom has developed the Visit system
which is an $3899 addon to a PC or Mac. This system provides a separate
window for the image of both parties on both screens delivering 8-14
frames per second. In addition, both participants can bring up a
drawing or document in a shared workspace. As multimedia PCs become
commonplace video conference rooms will be accomplished with an
installed video camera and a board for transmission and reception for
less than a thousand.
Forecast: From 2005 to 2010 teleconferencing will explode because of advances in equipment, the desire of firms to reduce travel costs, and the threat of terrorists blowing up airplanes. Teleconferencing technology will integrate:
In the 70's a research group lead by J. Niles demonstrated that by
using existing technology, corporations such as insurance companies
could decentralize into a group of local offices connected by
communications and be just as effective. The major advantage to
decentralization is much less distance to commute by workers which
results in much less smog.
In London, Mrs. "Steve" Shirley organized F International Ltd., a
company where everyone works at home connected through terminals. This
software firm does $5M a year business and most of the workers are
women with children. Telecommuting enables F International to obtain
skilled workers who otherwise would not be able to participate in the
workforce.
Telecommuting does not bring positive benefits to all participants.
Generally, professionals benefit from telecommuting because they can
have a wider choice in lifestyles. For example, a couple of years ago
Business Week reported on a partner of a Chicago law firm who
telecommuted from Telluride, Colorado. Phone calls were automatically
rerouted to Telluride. If he was called before 10am, he could make a
business meeting in Chicago that evening. Towns in Colorado are so
interested in acquiring telecommuters they are installing better
communications to attract them. Compaq made its salespeople telecommute
with both corporate and personal success.
In contrast, clerical workers frequently do not benefit from
telecommuting. Business managers have used telecommuting as a device to
eliminate fringe benefits and place telecommuters on piecework wages
for typing and so on. There have been law suits against this practice.
Telecommuting will increase as automation displaces people from
manipulating physical objects and the channel capacity of the
communication system makes video communication inexpensive. With the TV
flat screen which is just coming online currently, you could have a
wall with multiscreens for each participant in a conference. Most
critics of telecommuting do not perceive the impact of the vast
increase in channel capacity. New social customs will evolve for
telecommuters, however, this will take time. The cottage workers who
did not want to work in the textile factories tried to destroy them.
There is generally a tremendous resistance to social change.
The major growth in telecommuting will not be in full time
telecommuting but in part time telecommuting. With the rapid advance in
wireless communication, notebook computers and other portable
electronic gear, individuals can link up with their offices from any
location. This means they only have to be in the office for face to
face meetings. Corporations are going to promote telecommuting in
cities with dirty air because of provisions in the Clean Air Act of
1990. Thirteen cities with dirty air must increase the average number
of riders per car from 1.3 to 1.5 to prevent 3.5 million tons of carbon
from polluting the air by the year 2000. Telecommuting satisfies the
requirement for increasing ridership.
What is fueling the growth of part time and full time telecommuting is the growth of broadband communications, such as DSL and RoadRummer into homes. A current estimate of the number of teleworkers is 20 million. My daughter when she worked for I2 in software sales could pick her home city. She did all her work through her laptop and meet with her sales team at client presentations.
There are numerous sites for teleconferencing and telecommuting. Check them out.
Evolving transnational organizations
As firms learn how to use teleconferencing and telecommuting to increase the effectiveness of groups coordinating their work from remote locatings, groups are being organized on an international scale. Two factors are driving this type of reorganization:
One of the leaders in international group organization is IBM.