IT Myths

Teldok Q) IT myths —finally, an English-language version, with an addendum, of the widely popular TELDOK report (Rapport 94) Myter om IT Dr Bengt-Arne Vedin B FT Teldokl IT myths —finally, an English-language version, with an addendum, of the widely popular TELDOK report (Rapport 94) Myter om IT Dr Bengt-ArneVedin M • 1 1 H Teldok TELDOK was initiated in 1980 by the Board ofTelia, Sweden's largest telecommunications operator, to facilitate early and easy-to-read documentation on the use of telecommunications-based information systems. TELDOK aims at documenting. as early as possible, working appücations of new information systems and arranging study trips and seminars direcdy related to this task. TELDOK activities are coordinated by an Editorial Board with wide representation from the IT corporate user community, academia, trade unions, government authorities, suppliers, and Telia AB. The TELDOK Editorial Board welcomes new ideas concerning the study and documentation of working applications of new communications technology systems. The Editorial Board can best be reached by sending email to PG Holmlov,Telia, 100070.1724@compuserve.com. TELDOK has issued more than 150 publications, mosdy in Swedish, that are distributed regularly and at no cost to 5,000 professionals in Sweden and the Nordic countries. Other rcecent TELDO K publications in English include... TELDOK Report 101E: 20 seconds to work. Home-based telework. October 1995. TELDOK Report 90E: Telecottages, telework and distance education. June 1994. TELDOK Report 89: Office Information Systems. May 1994. TELDOK Report 86E: The THLDOKYearbook 1994. February 1994. Via TELDOK 21 : Information Technology, Social Fabric. May 1993. These and other publications from TELDOK may be ordered, free of charge in single copies, from an independent grocery store, "Linde Livs", in northern Sweden, FAX +46-650 800 08; h t t p : // www.framfab.se/teldok; or order_teldok@fr.se. Reports are stored in Ture's cowshed. • ©TELDOK and the author, 1995 and 1996 • Dr Bengt-Arne Vedin Metamatic«+46 8 661 2818, FAX+46 8 661 2800, e-mail I00634.323l@compuserve.com • Translation © 1996 by Jonas Gunnarsson (+46 8 736 9562) • Äsa Gunnarsson »Thérèse Laanela • Monica Beme • Helena Hasselberg • http://www.framfab.se/teldok IT Myths i Table of Contents FOREWORD I THE AUTHOR'S PREFACE V IT MYTHS REVISITED VI EXECUTIVE SUMMARY X A SUMMARY OF THE MYTHS 1 THE SYSTEM BEHIND THE MYTHS 7 MORE PICTURES, DEFINITIONS IN CONFLICT? THE MYTHICAL DAGOBERT is FAR FROM THE TRUTH THE NEEDS OF POWER HOLDERS—AND OTHER MECHANISMS? SEVERAL LEVELS, DIFFERENT COMPLEXITIES O F MEMES AND MEN "DISTANCE" is "GOOD" 7 8 9 10 10 11 MYTH« 13 MYTH #2 17 MYTH« 22 MYTH #4 25 MYTH #5 30 MYTH #6 34 MYTH #7 39 MYTH #8 43 MYTH #9 47 MYTH #10 51 MYTH #11 55 MYTH #12 62 MYTH #13 65 MYTH #14 70 MYTH #15 76 MYTHS, MEMES—HOW T O VIEW HUMANS? 81 UNDERLYING CIRCLES OF MOTIVES? MEMOMES ARE FEW AND GENERAL IN WHOSE INTEREST? CONCLUSIONS—ABOUT THE IMAGE OF MAN? TELDOK PUBLICATIONS SINCE 1993 81 83 84 85 89 IT Myths iii Foreword What do chaos and the Swedish King Oscar the Second have in common? And what do longhaired Merovingians have in common with optical fibres? Or Les Misérables with factory robots and the pink pages of the Minitel? And what do all of these have to do with myths? All this—and more!—will become evident in this report which is a literary and entertaining expos, that aims to destroy, or at least critically examine, fifteen myths about teleconnected information systems and the new information society. Such as the paperless society in which everyone is well-informed and no-one needs to physically transport themselves to an office in order to work. Bengt-Ame Vedin, the author of the report, is, as you will discover, sceptical to the notion that all his fellow citizens and colleagues should now have entered into an information and knowledge-based society. Technological means do exist, but not for every purpose; and technological solutions are used in given situations. For example, even a teleworker must at times meet flesh and blood people, as real meetings are integral to the contact structure in the managing of projects in real time and space. And then there is the matter of being 'always reachable' with a •23*3* 1200#, another myth that Bengt-Ame Vedin elegantly exposes for public scrutiny to TELDOK's 3,200 readers. Throughout its fifteen-year existence, the ambition of TELDOK has been to attempt to document 'how things are'—in reality, in practice, and in a timely and readable manner. That has led to TELDOK poking holes in false notions, prejudices, false stories, propaganda exercises, and advertising exaggerations, along the way. In this case, however, the main purpose is just that, to poke holes in the myths. We would like to thank Bengt-Ame Vedin, who really is a member of the information society compared to those of us who are still on the periphery, for having so consistently and competently carried through an idea that for so long has been stumblingly close to what TELDOK has stood for. We wish you pleasant reading! Chairman Secretary The TELDOK Board of Editors h- IT Myths /•:;; |-.r'--r- j, i . - J ; • - ' : : • - : : - • . ; ] • . ' . ' : > M - : A ^ î O C I . K J • ' i o u - j i ' : - ! ; : ^ - l à - . .•;; M . •;•;•.'/ -.v;) ::-J\.:I :ivrj.;- •n'r'.-i'Al •'••• .'y-jâiiïw M no !;- • •.--<:. •>...: IT Myths v The Author's Preface This report originated from a discussion that I had with Bertil Thomgren, the Chairman of TELDOK, on our way home from a meeting of the TELDOK Editorial Board at the end of the 80's. The idea emerged from afrustrationover the fact that a number of misconceptions, or 'myths,' about what was happening in the world ofinformation and telematics (that's what we called it then, see Myth # 14) seemed to have a long-lasting life of their own, regardless of their inaccuracy and even if they had been disproved many times in forums such as the TELDOK reports. Is there a structure, a mechanism behind the tenacious staying power of these myths? The idea for a somewhat unusual TELDOK-report was bom. Bertil reminded me now and again that the idea should not be forgotten, that it should not just stay at the 'amusing conversation topic' stage. Finally an application was filed with TELDOK who set the parameters for the project: short time, small budget—while the Editorial Board added a critical seminar prior to the publication of the report. Throughout 1993, Bertil and I discussed—by e-mail of course—different ideas for myths worthy of inclusion (for a discussion on the concept of myth, see the first and last chapters). For a while the number of myths amounted to nearly twenty, which Bertil found unwieldy, so I slimmed them down to ten. During the first half of 1994 a draft manuscript took shape. A preliminary draft that is, as it was to be reviewed and scrutinised by the seminar. The seminar was eventually scheduled for the beginning of November. The seminar provided an impressive number of worthwhile viewpoints. One result was that the number of myths again increased, to fifteen. Another was that the discussion of myths, mêmes (see below!), legends and tales was refined. I gratefully acknowledge the valuable inputs received from Bertil Thomgren, the TELDOK Editorial Board, Gull-May Hoist, and the seminar participants. Vinça in January 1995 Setift-s4i*eVedùt v; ITMyths IT Myths revisited This book was originally published in Swedish in the Spring of 1995. Some of the myths identified may have grown more distant and less topical since. We tend, for example, to forget the hype surrounding the French Minitel system, and the #27 # phenomenon is, as I have pointed out, doomed to be substituted by some other expression of the engineer's drive to push the frontier, causing the user some awkwardness while technology is catching up and costs are going down. Had I written the mythreporta decade earlier, the Japanese information society, their 5th generation computers, and their interactive optical fibre cable systems would have been among governing myths. Few of my books have met with such interest, so much comment, and so positive reviews. I have, honestly, mixed feelings about thisreception.In so far as my attempt at a deeper analysis and understanding of more profound phenomena than hype and surface has been appreciated, I am grateful. Some comments, however, are rather slanted in the direction of my regarding everything related to information technology, to IT, as hype and oversell. I am still of the conviction that IT is an important development but I also believe that it is people and their behaviour, needs and desires that should be the focus, not technology itself. Many of the myths I explore are based upon the implicit assumption that technology is the driving force, and even sometimes, within the realms of some myths, as their underlying causes are analysed, man is regarded as a machine. There is another point to be made here. Especially in connection with my dissection of the so called information society, I claim that the list of suggestions for conceptualising our society—as a knowledge society, an information society, a post-industrial society, a service society—comes out of a genuine need, a deep desire to understand society and one's place in it. Thus this particular myth, that ours is an information society, tells us that there is a profound lack of comprehension as to how society works, a helplessness, a wish for guidance. Several of the other myths may also, in fact, beregardedas expressions of this same desire to find a new foothold—or the continuation of earlier world views that provided such a solid basis. Thus artificial intelligence early onreflecteda mechanistic view of thinking and also the idea that conscience was located in one place, that the brain and the body were under central and conscious control, perceptions that are now highly contested—to say the least. Like with another such development into a world less transparent and less characterised by common sense, one instead governed by chaos, fuzzy logic, and the counter-intuitive behaviour of, e.g., systems dynamics, precisely the distance to the intuitive and the common sense world causes deep uneasiness and a creed for comprehension. A number of people, and rather often journalists, have posed me the question: are there some other myths that you have observed, some which have emerged in your thinking, some which would seem equally or even more important now than when you perhaps discarded them from your book? As is evident from my analysis, several of the myths or their underlying suppositions may be reorganised to be formulated differently, with slightly changing foci and borders. There are three more that I would venture to offer now, two for which the evidence is appearing only as I formulate them, one that might have qualified from the beginning. I would like to call them: • the convergence myth • the generation gap myth • the myth of knowledge as the driving force ITMyths vü As with the previous fifteen myths, there is a solid basis also for these three, but I suggest that conclusions from this basis have been blown up out of proportion, resulting in misleading conclusions. The convergence myth tells that since different technologies get integrated, companies, industries, markets also merge. An early version of this was the famous drawing of two steam locomotives moving at full speed along railway tracks that merged from two into one line, the steamcars carrying the logos of AT&T and IBM. And IBM acquired Rolm, a once successful maker of private telephone exchanges, and AT&T succeeded in a drawn-out hostile take-over bid for NCR. Bless the memory of Rolm, and when AT&T recently told of its decision to demerge, creating three different companies out of the previous integrated giant, share values positively jumped in anticipation. The convergence myth furthermore says that hardware follows but also leads software. Sony and Matsushita thus made costly forays into Hollywood from which the retreat has been cumbersome and financially draining. These adventures have both highlighted the general doubts about such business conclusions from the existence of superficial technical links and, more particularly, the fact that different industries, formally regarded as one—the most comprehensive notion is of course that of the experience industry—follow different business logics and display entirely different cultures. The list could be made much longer, incorporating also the various forays of the Baby Bells and other telephone operators into businesses that certainly offer both opportunities and threats, such as cable and satellite TV. Acquisitions is one route and we might ask why not networking and virtual corporations might better serve the need for a certain dimension of integration, caused by technologies transcending borders, allowing enough of freedom to avoid cultural and other roadblocks, one being different dynamics, different development speeds. On the next myth: there is, for a fact, a generation gap, and also a gender gap. So why is this a myth? The myth is the proposition that this must be so, that the generation gap is something like a law of nature, that girls will always be less prone to play computer games. Anthony Burgess claims that every revolution is the revolt of one generation against its forebears. In this sense, any new generation is looking for something that is different from what is dominant. Almost every day, new information technology offers something that is different. Every child discovers the world for herself and himself. It is a world of animals and people, a world of language and colours. It is also a world of inanimate objects, of tools, and of media, the extensions of man. That discovery is directed toward what exists, it is less hampered by a daily established discipline, by patterns of behaviour, since the child is now establishing its own patterns. Video games, television, computers and computer games are but some of the ingredients in the repertoire of tools existing, and they are absorbed in the same way as earlier generations absorbed reading or schooling or the wireless. In this sense, there is an obvious generation gap, which may be claimed to be trivial: each new generation has always built upon the integrated knowledge established by its forebears. This provides for a head start, but the myth says that the older generation stands no chance, has to give in, will be locked out of some mysterious direct link between the new technology and the young generation. It has been demonstrated that girls take to computers with the same interest and dedication as boys once there is software that is more attuned to them, and that is not war games. It then tums out that many boys that were uninterested of war games also get involved. V/Il ITMyths Likewise, there is quite another generation than the youngest that gets into computers in a big way, and that is retired or semi-retired people. They have time to spare, they often find the world of information technology more enticing than that of television. They may be a bit slow in the beginning, but that is mostly because they start out believing in the myth, believing that they should be at a disadvantage. This is one more example of some myths having built into them a certain amount of selffulfilment. People believe that they are at a disadvantage; consequently, they accept problems that every computer user encounters, even the youngest, as impossible obstacles instead of taking them in the stride of someone who has been told that he or she should meet no real problem—and who, because ofthat, encounters no difficulty either. The experience that also older people, as well as girls, take to computers is more recent than the early observations, causing concerns that various gaps existed. It takes time for this new information to sink in. If we in connection with the "#2I#" myth concluded that there is a sequence somewhat like the following so that a) engineers always try to push the frontier and thus have to contend with clumsy solutions early on, solutions that are rendered more elegant later on, and that, b) engineers are more interested to move to the next frontier than to develop tools for conviviality which, to them, are technologically trivial, which leads to c) that the very first applications reflect the concerns and taste of engineers or nerds—then we might expect a certain over-representation of "nerd-oriented" applications almost always for the most recent novelties. Again, each time this is an evanescent phenomenon caused by this more permanent underlying mechanism. If I now suggest that the current quest for knowledge is misdirected, I can safely claim to offer a controversial proposition. The point here is not, however, to deny the importance of knowledge. And please observe that I am here not at all concerned with knowledge for its own sake, knowledge for fun, for an individual's understanding of his or her world, as a personal quest. My goal is rather to question the seemingly evident conclusion that knowledge is what counts for business and, not least, personal competitiveness now and in the future. The myth about thinking machines—artificial intelligence—substituting human thinking, and the one about machines substituting human labour—automation, robots, unmanned factories—both raised the question of what makes man, in fact, very difficult to substitute. The answer was not knowledge as we normally describe what knowledge is: information understood in a larger context. Knowledge is something we can learn, can acquire, often with difficulty, but still absorb. In discussing yet another myth, the one having to do with infrastructure as something of huge importance, we broached one more aspect having to do with future competitiveness, the one calling for another concept, that of ultrastructure, which is something of collective importance like infrastructure, but acquired individually: equipment, the ability to use new systems, skills. Are these, then, apartfromthe equipment part, not knowledge? Ultrastructure is sometimes less than knowledge—machinery forming nodes in a network, software and standards allowing for joint efforts. It is also knowledge in the sense that these resources must be operated, the skills justreferredto. But there is more than knowledge when trust is required for organisations and people, people forming organisations, for them to collaborate, to communicate, to understand each other, and to act upon this understanding. What, then, about substituting the word competence for the word knowledge? This is in fact a better phrase since it underlines that the knowledge has to be operated on, has to be translated into action. Competence is a slightly vague term, however. It is sometimes described as consisting of knowledge, the ability to apply this knowledge, but also the will to do something with that knowledge, and the ability to do so together with other people that might ITMyths IX offer complementary competencies. This description comprehends a motivational part that is essential, and the communicative part that is also essential. Recalling the discussion on artificial intelligence and robot factories, we may state the competitive factors a little bit differently. Man isflexible.Man is body and not just brain. We have a lot of experiences that are available more or less unconsciously, we have a repertoire of physical skills that are indistinguishable from intelligence. Are we really to include all this in the concept of knowledge? Man is also feeling. The motivational aspect included in the four-pronged description of competence might be strengthened to be described as "entrepreneurial," "driving," "engaged," "empowered." When describing why services are of increasing importance and why networks are too, precisely such concepts asflexibility,trust, and entrepreneurship are cited to describe why "people is the most important resource" or how customer relations and patterns of competition are changing. To this we might add yet another factor that some would include in the dimension of flexibility—creativity, the ability to develop new approaches, possibly discovering or assembling new knowledge in the process. Is this not just playing with words? Would not the word "knowledge" with all its positive connotations do anyhow? No! The problem with myths is that they guide our thinking, and they guide our actions. If we believe in knowledge but forget about the other perhaps more important factors or driving forces, like willingness to really do something, flexibility and creativity, or if we stress theoretical or computer knowledge at the expense of experience, physical skills, and people knowledge, not to speak of trust, we may be committing serious mis-investments. Thus we see again, in these three myths, various examples of misdirected efforts that may tum out to be costly. The idea of convergence has already caused firms to make serious mistakes. The "truth" of the generation gap risks becoming self-fulfilling, thus causing unnecessary obstacles. And the thrust for knowledge may cause sad disappointment if it is not complemented with a balanced view of what may be needed to translate knowledge into results. October 1996 GeMct-dwel/educ X ITMyths Executive Summary There are many preconceptions about the applications and limitations of IT and telecommunication technology that persist despite that they no longer are true—or even if they never were true. Truth can also be specific to a particular time or place. At times there is an exaggerated faith in certain phenomena, resulting in drastic conclusions, or apparently evident conclusions based on these exaggerated precepts. There is, in addition, a sense of the exotic: what is done far away and in a different culture gets enlarged and distorted. A feather becomes a hen, sometimes even the opposite happens. A common example of exoticism is the perception of the French Minitel system and its successes. The success was actually to a large degree due to the French telecommunication system having been so outdated when the Minitel was introduced, and it is debatable whether it is a real success economically for the French state, who paid for the investment. Sometimes it is the technology that is the focus in the creation of myths. There are preconceptions that optical fibres are a miracle cure which no region, city or company can do without. The technicians have also with temporary and somewhat unwise solutions, such as the #21# function on the telephone, built up the idea that technology has to be unfriendly to the user, although it may just be that it is in a transitional stage. When it comes to transitional, that is certainly the case for the need for large and expensive bandwidths to transmit pictures, for example with video-phones. An example of 'extended thinking,' of extrapolation, is the idea that it is possible to replace commuting with electronic communication. Of course it is possible, but it does not necessarily follow that increased electronic communication results in a decrease in travel. To the contrary, travel increases! Another 'extended thinking' example concerns bookkeeping and the usage of terms that are perhaps becoming outdated. The obvious examples concern what is usually labelled 'infrastructure.' Infrastructure is 'heavy,' expensive, collective in its character—and at the same time necessary. And the expansion of infrastructure generates jobs. The same applies to investments on the company level. It is just that the new brand of infrastructure, while still being collective and important, no longer is as slow-moving or as costly. This leads to a complementary concept, that of the ultrastructure, which is everything around that makes an infrastructure and a heavy investment have any worth at all. We are thus into a special kind of myth, that of trying to redefine the economy, for example by saying that industrial society is being replaced by an information society. There is a certain truth to this in the sense that the work tasks, and certainly their content, are systematically being displaced. But at the same time, many of the descriptions are optical illusions, in which the optics in this case equal statistics. The economy is more like an onion, with agriculture and mining in its centre, industry lying atop, thereafter a layer of know-how and information, and maybe a final level for the service sector. Even the perception of agriculture having diminished in importance is an error ofjudgement. Information here has a connection both with knowledge, and with other activities and phenomena that have an economic value. This connection means that even the idea about more information, and faster information, always being of the good—that that idea is also an error ofjudgement. What is of importance is therelevantinformation, the optimal information. It is thus necessary to choose information wisely, and to present it in such a way as to be useful. A special kind of 'extension' is that one can handle electronic transactions in the same way as other monetary transactions, and control them within national boundaries. Another kind is ITMyths xi the assumption on strictly economic grounds that paper will bereplacedby electronics since it is cheaper. However, that disregards our fondness for simplification and comfort! On the whole it is too easy in the realm of myths to disregard the versatile ability of humankind. Ideas such as that it would be possible to construct fully automatic factories or artificial intelligence (AI) fall flat when confronted with the fact that we as yet know very little of how clever humans in fact are, and how little we know of his different abilities. As it turns out, it is problematic to interpret such apparently self-evident concepts such as consciousness and intelligence. Finally, there is an old perception that everything should be able to be calculated. AI is one of the things that falls on this point. Fundamentally it is also true—and this is now confirmed by the chaos theory that the computers have helped us calculate—that in many types of problems the initial values mean a great deal, everything in fact, and however frequent points of measuring or infinitely precise measurement test results are not enough; it only becomes possible to make calculations within certain boundaries, possibly with a limited and 'deterministic' chaos. It is important to have terms of reference, simplified guidelines, simple and clear goals and visions. But if they in fact do not simplify and provide guidance, but rather point in the wrong direction or into a blind alley—then it is necessary to make a counter-move. More than creating counter-myths, this report seeks to lay the foundations for a critical examination of preconceived notions and ideas that might be or might have been valid in some specific time or place. Or, in some cases, never valid at all. *// ITMyths yiiy--. i.-.,: ITMyths I A summary of the myths Wyttnt 7{/e cent àavc Urne, wc ccut Moe mottety. wc CM MM t6c e*wùio*uuMt—wc can teicwonâ ùtàtead «£ coMMuttùtçf The myth: Travel electronically, speak via telephone, use video transmissions, invest in email, fax, and computer-aided teleconferences. Then of course travelling will considerably decrease. And there will be no need for people to gather in offices and city centres. The reality: It tums out that increased electronic communication actually increases travel. With this kind of communication you reach so many more people, and thus have to maintain many more contacts—mostly electronically. Nonetheless now and then you have to meet in person, physically. lue monc ùtfanmattot. t6e êetCmf The myth: The well-informed person has more power, can choose and be in command, and runs less risk of being manipulated. A democratic, just society presumes equal and full access to information for all. Information for the people, each and everyone! The reality: The uninformed person risks drowning in large quantities of unsorted, irrelevant, stress-creating information. An effective way of manipulation might very well be to drown a person without information tools with an overwhelming flood ofinformation. TfuftUKS OftUcal yêneA one «, mmC The myth: The development has beenrapidfromordinary telephone wires to optical fibres with enormous capacity, from signal-carrying electrons to photons, light that fills the same function that electrons used to. Consequently, everybody everywhere needs access to optical fibres to be on top, to be competitive. The reality: There are many different ways of transmitting signals, of sending information. Sometimes it is better to send through the airratherthan through either an electronic or optical cable. Furthermore, the quantity ofinformation to be transmitted can be reduced by coding the signals. What then is gained in smaller quantities ofinformation transmission is compensated for by more computer power at both ends of the connection. The reality is that there are many 2 ITMyths technical solutions complementing each other. With too much concentration on only one possible solution, a region, a company, or an organisation risks becoming less competitive rather than more. It U fioMtéie t» cM&iol i6c fMmaqc o^ 6iU at t&c faufatA The myth: Just as we can control other official monetary transactions, it is possible to control the flow of money over borders. The fact that it is now handled electronically makes no difference except that the tool of the transfer has changed, and thereby the equivalent tool for currency control. The reality: The transfer of economic means, currency and trade transactions is only one part of a gigantic electronic traffic over the borders. The global currency stream itself is in turn several tenfold larger than the actual trade volume. Data can be concealed in ways impossible to detect. Only superficially is it possible to maintain a pretence of control. l^oec'ic ttueA wiiA *#2t# The myth: Technology is never user-friendly. Just look at those unmanageable video controls, just look at the telephones and their instruction manuals for new and at times clever functions with... was it *#21# or #*12*...? Only complex apparatus can be made that nobody except a computer enthusiast or a certified engineer can handle. The reality: It is true that much technology is difficult, complicated and inaccessible for the amateur and first-time user. But this is only a transition phase, partly because the technology in the initial stage is expensive, and partly because it needs to find its way, to discover what the user actually wants and how the user reacts, and lastly also because the technicians themselves need to be trained to take the user into consideration. WtftAm 70e «but 16aoc t» tfait&, /W Md exfreni iyàiemA one taÂûtç oven. T h e myth: People think like computers, and consequently computers are learning to think like people. But faster, with larger memory capacity. It is only a matter of time before Man is beaten. In many special areas this has already happened, to economic benefit. The reality: Human thinking turned out to be complex in an entirely different way than was initially thought at the introduction of AI, artificial intelligence. What are feelings? What ITMyths 3 does the interaction between body and mind involve? New computers and program systems take as a starting point new discoveries of how people see, perceive and think. But if this will make for thinking computers is much more a matter of debate today than it was before. Just as the more modest expert systems in many cases have turned out to be media stunts rather than real killer applications. 7^4 #7 l/ide* cMfan&tceA am aiwcufA exp&tAwc. eU^Utdt to awuutçc — dettuutd åuqe é<utctwieU& The myth: Many ambitious and costly attempts were made, beginning in the 1970's, to introduce videophony. None have succeeded. The technology is simply too expensive and too complicated and doesn't answer to a demand that would motivate the costs even in the future. The reality: As happens with everything else in information technology videophony costs are declining. Or you could say that comfort and quality increase without additional cost. Just as was the case with telephones and fax machines a certain critical mass must be reached before videophony can have mass appeal. Just like personal computers it could be a mass product in a cheap version with limited quality. In a high-quality version it could be run on closed networks within organisations, waiting for that critical mass to build up—which gains support from people getting used to the cheaper version. Wcft&KZ 'JdeMmmuUeatuut Ufatcmt one éùeççiaû <xtteC mc6a*tqeaêlc The myth: Telecommunication systemsrepresentlarge, heavy, long-term investments. They take decades to write-off. Systems take time to build up and they are expensive to renew, i.e., progress will be sluggish and slow. The reality: What was once the ultimate truth is no longer so. Telecommunication systems are no longer necessarily electrical wiring, but can be light-waves and radio. Telephone stations do not have to be connected buildings with big obvious machines, but can be decentralised hardware located where appropriate. A local telephone exchange can be virtual, functions can be spread out and allocated in the distributed, decentralised "system" even though it appears to be in the hands of the person operating it. Software is the key to the various functions. 4 ITMyths Society wtti 6c ffaficnleM T h e myth: The mechanical calculator was swept away by the electronic one, the cash register, as was the electromechanical telephone station by electronic competitors. Now, when it is cheaper to store information electronically than on paper, and easier to search using computer search tools, paper will disappear. The office will be paperless, school will be paperless—society will be paperless. T h e reality: Development of computers and electronics has brought with it a deluge of paper. Paper seems to have certain qualities that suit people, which we perceive as comfortable. And paper is still cheap enough, so it doesn't matter that it costs a bit more than electronic memories. yuftumo 'PattvUet wtit 6c fcäfy automated, comfttetdtf without 4tafä The myth: Technology replaces people. Robots are cheaper, more efficient, more precise, more obedient, more predictable in the long run. The natural extension of the increasingly roboticised factories is that they become fully automated. This has already happened with a few factories and some warehouses. (The myth can be generalised even fürther, to include for example the retail trade.) T h e reality: Technology can do more and more, and is becoming more robust and generally programmable—that's true. But its target is moving; new technology makes for new possibilities and for this reason demands more not only from technology itself but also from people. The point is that people, unlike robots, are unpredictable, flexible and creative! The goal isn't to get rid of people but to produce things with a function, that can be sold and used. 0(we<it(n€titafautedectùted cotuUderudfy T h e myth: We can see clear and worrying declines in corporate investments. It means an unsure financial future, and weakened power to compete internationally. T h e reality: It is true that investments have declined considerably—the way they are measured. However, the problem is that the measuring methods, the way investments are defined, lags behind reality. Because today a large and growing portion of investments goes to knowledge and information, to market communication and branding, to IT software and ITMyths 5 hardware, to training and development of the organisation. These costs are not counted as investments—but they are investments. Çwc Tttc /tAot oj, VMM Vata, and rfßfWfftC ßa* Sc Calutlatedf The myth: Given computers that are big enough, fast enough, have enough memory and are furnished with data dense enough—well, then anything can be calculated. It is just a matter of time before we have reached that point. The reality: Something happened on the road to the perfect calculation. This something was called chaos mathematics. The very equations which apply to physical reality are insoluble without the simplifications of practical calculus. The results are also entirely dependent on infinitesimal—yes, actually infinitesimal—changes in the starting-point, in the initial starting conditions. 70c Wave Sutened tAe Oa^yuHatum Society f The myth: If we merely calculate the employment and turnover statistics correctly, we will see that our economy is an information economy. Our society is an information society, where information and information technology are the completely basic activities—those that have replaced the industrial society. The reality: Everything is a matter of statistics. Information will not survive on its own, it is dependent on other activities and structures. Using the term information runs the risk of putting the focus on information technology. Information is an unclear concept—what differentiates it from knowledge or data? What is common for amusement parks for entertainment and information about bank accounts, or the weather. TKùtiteliaA (ken attdttiiliA a, qneat totcceM The myth: Minitel, the French computer terminal and its system, has become an enormous success. Millions of terminals, tens of thousands of different kinds of services, large usage, profitability. The reality: The terminals have been distributed free of charge, there are a few services which areresponsiblefor the major part of the traffic. The services do pay off for those who sell them and for France Telecom. The questions is whether the investment itself will ever pay 6 ITMyths off. The fact that the figures are darkened suggests that there is something wrong. It's a whole different matter that the Minitel perhaps was a good idea—for its time. However, today's basic demand for services is carried out through other terminals and networks, simply because technology has moved ahead. y/te in^iaåtnuettnc o£ utfamatiott u U&c n«aeU and laiinoadA T h e myth: Information technology such as mainframe computers and telephone systems is today's equivalence of yesterday's ports, canals, railroads, highways. Therefore the same characteristics apply: slow-moving, big investments, conditions for society's competition and success. T h e reality: Ports and roads are needed so that the means of transportation, ships and cars, can do some good. Lots of ships create a line, lots of cars create traffic jams. It is the reverse with information systems—the benefit increases with more telephones, faxes, PCs. That makes program development and education more important. Focus is moved from the heavy visible infrastructure to the invisible human and cultural ultrastructure. ITMyths 7 The system behind the myths What associations does the word "myth" give us? First we perhaps elicit a few examples. The Prometheus myth, Prometheus who stole fire from the gods and was punished by having his liver torn out daily; a symbol of man trying to tame nature by technology, trying to surpass the gods and the limitations of nature. Or the Sisyphus myth, to roll a rock up a hill only to have it roll down again as it nears the top and have to start all over. How many experiences in daily life are not of the same nature? More pictures, definitions in conflict? The psychoanalysts say that myths have contact with our subconscious. The Oedipus myth corresponds to Freud's Oedipus complex—baser instincts, psychical motive powers. Jung, Freud's disciple and adversary, talks about archetypes, general human symbols and mythical texts, mirroring deep intuitive human inclinations and instincts. When Emin Tengström writes a book on "The myth about the information society" or a philosopher tries to describe 'the myth of the 20th century,' the myths they are referring to are more connected with time determined phenomena. The term myth is practical to use for describing a system of dogmas and truisms, not necessarily religious or philosophical but rather historical and political, political in a general sense. It may be appropriate to define what we mean by myth. James Robertson gives the following definition in "American Myth, American Reality": Myths describe how 'things really are' according to the conception that people in a certain society naturally have; the myths are the models that people refer to when they try to understand their world and how it behaves. Myths are patterns that may contain behaviour, conceptions, or dogmas that people have in common. They are not consciously factitious or freely constructed. The Swedish Encyclopaedia (1937) gives two definitions, two applications of the term myth: 1. "Believed tale about gods and heroes... that in form and content is close to the folk tradition. The myth is different to the legend in that the latter is time-specific andrefersto historical persons, while the myth, as well as the folk tale, is timeless. But while the tale is consciously fictitious, the myth is regarded as a true story about something actually existing. The myth... is to be regarded as an artistic manifestation ofritualand social institutions. 2. Fictitious and improbable story." A culture or a civilisation is marked by its myths. This is a truism valid for a small tribe as much as for large civilisations. The question is if we can see myths develop, change, disappear, getting new interpretations and emphasis. If myths are one with their culture, they must also exist in relation to the bearers and power-holders ofthat culture. In the book "Myths" published in 1983 in connection with an exhibition at The Swedish National Museum, Madeleine von Heland gives three contradictory definitions: "Something invented. Orfictitious.A lie" (most would probably answer, von Heland adds). "A myth is rather a tale of the gods that reflect our deepest, most revered truths. And it is the myths that contain precisely the information we need to understand what life is really all 8 ITMyths about." (This is, von Heland says, the answer wereceivefromanthropologists and theologists that follow in the heels of Claude Lévi-Strauss and Mircea Eliades.) "Wrong again," say those from the school of Roland Barthes. "The myth is a communication system with a language that is above and beyond ordinary language. A meta language that must be disguised." Madeleine von Heland summarises: The three definitions have in common that they want to tell us something or give us a message. (In the same book, von Heland also gives a detailed account of the complete Prometheus myth and connects it to among other things just technology, to Daedalus trying to fly and to Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.) The mythical Dagobert is far from the truth Let us take an example of the origin of a myth and its functions. It is not about a myth of the Greek kind that disappears in a mist but of a historical kind, a legend according to the first definition in The Swedish Encyclopaedia but a myth according to the second. If you look up Dagobert I in an encyclopaedia, the Merovingian king of France (the last Merovingian to actually rule), bom c. 609 A.D., dead c. 639 A.D., you get a positive picture of a wise and pious state father. The very fact that many different sources, all coming from a later date, give this picture of him makes it difficult to penetrate behind the historical description and access the real truth. But if enough source material exists, then hidden but still in existence, it is possible. And this forgotten material that actually exists, has these days been revealing an exciting story and a falsification of history to the researchers who acted as detectives (see Laurent Theis' book "Dagobert," published by Fayard in 1982). Not so long after the death of the Merovingian king Dagobert in 639, the phrase "in good old King Dagobert's time" started to be used. The king was now described in reverential terms as unusually pious, devout, and holy—and this is what faithfully is reflected in the encyclopaedias of today. The St Denis monastery was founded more or less around his remains and became for many centuries the cult centre and holy burial grounds of the French kings. Dagobert was in fact an unusually uncivilised fellow. The difference between myth and underlying reality is seldom seen so clearly. If he was a Christian it was only out of opportunism—because it served him well in his different transactions. He would murder without mercy or political motive, or for that matter any other motive that could excuse or explain the crimes; he was an adulterer and rapist, he used lies and deceit as means to his ends. Why then this rapid idealisation, this groundless saint's image, this quick and effective myth—that have made it so difficult for the historians to reveal the true and terrible Dagobert? Probably because important powers had a need for a myth. It was important to secure Christianity in the land of the Francs. Dagobert had represented the time of change, the establishment of a permanent royal power and lineage after the German Incursion, the transition to a new faith after the Germanic heathendom. Now that he was dead, the brutal Germanic leader was forcibly attached to the newreligion,to facilitate its legitimacy. To make St Denis into a holy place of course strengthened the process. The rest of the historical falsification now had a life of its own. A holy king could not possibly have had the traits that Dagobert actually had. Instead qualities from others were gathered. The idealised picture of Dagobert was simply borrowed from legends of the saints and general descriptions of holy men and prophets, from Gallic France as well as from the history of the Franks in Ancient Germany but perhaps above all from the Bible and saints of the Roman church. ITMyths 9 The needs of power holders—and other mechanisms? The legend, the new myth of Dagobert, must furthermore have filled a need for the people. Perhaps they wanted to associate the known stories with a king, a king of the same lineage as the ruling one. While the Swedish king Gustav Vasa for example wrote his own history, his own hagiography and his own chronicles, it seems that Dagobert's posthumous report was a result of a general need for a symbol by the later generations. A symbol he became, with numerous good qualities attributed to him totally lacking historical base. He enters history as a figure of light, unearned. And looking at his behaviour he probably did not strive for it either. It is difficult to see how the Oedipus myth would be useful to the rulers, neither the Sisyphus one. It is easier to see how parts of the Old Testament, that also could be called mythical, would be of interest. The Flood is a myth that can be traced in many cultures, for example in the Gilgamesh Epic from Babylonia. One aspect of myth-making is that there are, powers, concrete actors, who have an interest in creating and anchoring a myth. In the case of Dagobert it was a kind of alliance of the royalty and the church. They thought of their position at the time, the effects on present-day encyclopaedias probably never entering their minds. It is common that myths are created about historical heroes in retrospect, or maybe we should rather call them legends: George Washington and the cherry tree. Benjamin Franklin never launched a kite, he only described that it should be possible. Others then did it afterwards. Certain well-known historical quotations are difficult, sometimes impossible, to trace to the correct source. Then the source of the locution or the act sometimes ends up being a German to the Germans, an Englishman to the English and an American to the Americans. We seem to have a need for myths, legends, traditions, locutions and we give them added credibility by attributing them to a famous person. We can thus see some other mechanisms apart from the self-interest of a few actors. There are conceptions that are important to us and that we want to secure by making them more authoritative, which is done through associations to Moses in Sinai, to a statement by Goethe or Einstein. There are also tales that support certain preconceptions, or what others would call prejudices. What does all this have to do with thefifteenmyths about information technology? We see that at least some of the mechanisms seem general: there is a need for a myth, and it spreads. In the extreme case the source is unimportant, in the case of Dagobert only the name and the fact that he actually existed, in the case of Franklin a concrete basis that has been exaggerated. At least some distance is needed for reality to be transformed into an effective myth—it is rather obvious if reality and myth are in direct conflict, since reality generally has a tendency to be more convincing. (Not completely obvious though: during the many years that Ken Olsen was heading the company he had started. Digital Equipment, he walked around showing curiosity about the different research and development projects going on. One day he asked a newly employed technician who did not know who the inquisitive visitor was. Olsen was informed about the project the young man was working on and gave him a suggestion for solving a technical problem. The technician dismissed it directly. Olsen kept arguing only to get the crushing reply: "That's no idea—this is the way KEN wants it." Somewhat frustrated by being told what he was believed to want without being asked Ken Olsen protested: "But I am Ken Olsen" -Whereby the indifferent reply followed: "That doesn't matter, this is the way KEN wants it." One does not even like Dagobert have to die first to become a myth that controls behaviour.) We have also seen how common conceptions about the behaviour of a holy person were attributed to Dagobert. Myths build on contemporary preconceptions. It is not surprising that 10 ITMyths certain qualities and behaviour appear and become associated with several different mythical figures or legends of saints. Several levels, different complexities I have here alternated between the words myths, legends, tales. There is, as the Swedish Encyclopaedia suggests, a sliding scale from the archetypal character of the Greek myths to the more rustic and one-dimensional urban myths that confirm prejudices about laziness, foreigners, youth, journalists or any other group. While the myth is a complex phenomenon with several dogmas and possibilities of interpretation, the modem-day myth is usually less complex and much more clear in its statement and interpretation. In the above quoted book "Myths"fromThe National Museum, 1983, Bengt af Klintberg, however, makes direct links between creation myths, popular magic and traditions of popular medicine, that are broken down into simple, burlesque common sayings and tales. The modem tales have, af Klintberg says, much in common with the old myths, not least the symbolic dimension. A central theme in the modem tales is that something foreign and dangerous appears in modem, orderly society. The legends are somewhere in between. There are legends about saints, to use the original association of the word, that are simple and one-dimensional, like the urban myth, a direct description of what the saint in question did to become canonised. There are also considerably more elaborate, well developed and complex legends that reach the character of myths—if only they are spread and obtain a firm foothold as myths do. Of mêmes and men Let us therefore introduce a collective concept, the même. Richard Dawkins, author of a number of elegant descriptions, elaborations and analyses of Darwin's theory of evolution, has written about the development mechanism in "The Selfish Gene." Our genes are selfish, they want only to survive and it is we living creatures that are their carriers. They will use any trick that betters their chances for survival and propagation, such as mutating. Dawkins has in the above mentioned book launched an equivalent to genes in the area ofinformation and knowledge, mêmes. The word même originates from English's 'memory' or the French 'même' meaning equal or same. Mêmes are melodies, proverbs, expressions, rules of thumb—all survivors in the world ofinformation, analogous to the genes. Like genes, mêmes are transformable and adaptable. Like genes it is not easy to get rid of mêmes: a melody that will not leave our inner ear, a proverb that survives even if it is mistranslated, a political slogan. We accept strong mêmes as they are without investigating their truth, as long as they are applicable in a given situation. With Dawkin's concept we might be able to sort among the myths and tales. Proverbs are short and effective mêmes that we gratefully use as support. Myths are more complex mêmes that require interpretation and in return contain overtones and multiple meanings, reflecting the wide diversification of life. Without knowing the concept of mêmes, politicians and advertising experts are working to create them, as do song writers and poets. When we tell a funny story or cite an urban myth or a proverb we contribute to the survival of the mêmes. Without asking ourselves if they are contradictory, consistent, or particularly relevant in a given situation. In Sweden the Norwegian jokes are brilliant examples of mêmes. In France they are about Belgians, in England about the Irish, in the US about Poles. ITMyths II There is an increasing interest in the ecology of the mêmes; for competition, connections and changes in the field ofinformation. There are those who purposely try to create and implant mêmes—and have succeeded, seen them spread and transformed. When I have mentioned simple rules of thumb and their connection with more complex myths the span between a simple même, a seducing melody and the complex myth becomes perhaps too wide. Following Dawkin—with an obvious analogy to biology and genetics—the expression "memomes" has been invented to express the more complex, the developed and many-faceted myth. It is thus memology's correspondence to the genomes, the larger complex of genes that form a species, like for example humans. Just as we talk about genotypes we might in analogy create the concept of memotype—and we will examine memomes in the final chapter. The mêmes do not require formal evidence. Their ecology does not require logic. Amitai Etzioni has pointed out that if we collect a number of vigorous proverbs we will find many of them contradictory. That does not mean that two contradictory proverbs cannot be used to kill the ideas and arguments of an opponent in a debate. The proverbs are like myths, effective mêmes—we accept them as the full truth that does not need to be discussed or require any foundation or argumentation. Which in itself is a reason to scrutinise them. In other words, a motive for this report is not only to examine fifteen myths or mêmes, but rather in the discussions around them create a vigilance against seductive analogies, clever but unmotivated arguments, lurking misunderstandings, and twisted frames of reference. "D/stence"is"good" We can twist and tum our fifteen myths in the light of these general ideas of how myths are formed—what we are talking about here is not divine or archaic myths but more the kind that clearly fill a social function. The extrapolation, or that one is basing one's idea on a special experience, is clear for example when we look at the myth that it would be impossible to drive with a picture phone. A temporal experience is generalised. Distance in time is not considered of any importance. Distance not only in time but also in space can also contribute to a distortion—and it is here that one may talk about our need for myths. In some way Japanese initiatives generally, but even the French Minitel-development, gets magnified and exaggerated with distance. It is easier to ascribe the Japanese or the French certain characteristics as long as they are distant and as long as there is no possibility to check the level of truth. In that way experiences and effects becomereinforcedand exaggerated that might in fact be rather limited. That several Japanese experiments with IT have had few participants, so few that the results are almost meaningless, is a fact that somehow disappears on the way. As is the fact that the Japanese persons and households involved in the testing usually get so enthusiastic being pioneers that the results for thisreasonare questionable. In the case of France and its Minitel it is not so surprising that abroad we have been caught in the enthusiasm, since the distorted account of results also were given to the French. Strong interests have been geared to forgetting the costs and directing the attention to social benefits and service development—Dagobert again. The distance might also be a matter of concept. This applies to the myths about reduced investments and telecommunication as infrastructure in line with how infrastructures looked before. We hardly identify it as a myth—and we should not either according to Robertson's definition above. We need new concepts, new mêmes, new ways of thinking to understand these 12 ITMyths completely different things. "Horseless wagon" was a good way of describing what later became a car, in the sense that we were given some idea what it was. A great deal of cars were required for the acceptance of the terminology. Kurt Katzeff, development director of telephone stations at L M Ericsson in the sixties, has amusedly stated that it was a lot easier to sell the need for CAD, computer aided design, to company executives once the term was created. But of course computers for design and drawing were used already before. In that way 'electronic highway' is at the same time a good and a bad metaphor. Good because it is a way to describe a rather incomprehensible concept, incomprehensible when one does not have any experience from something similar. Not so good because "horseless wagon"—taste the words—focuses on the absent horse, and electronic highways encourage a vision of wide expensive roads and a very visible infrastructure. Many of the myths in the area ofinformation technology are dependent on this very distance between what really is and how we see it, because we have become used to seeing something in a certain way and furthermore become used to a certain terminology and certain metaphors, concepts and ways of thinking. Telephone stations were once enormous electromechanical monsters and at the same time works of exactitude; today digital technology can be spread over the whole net and no connecting stations are needed, unless it happens to be the most economical way. Digital technology allows us to remake the signals in new ways and thereby also send them in new ways. Apart from the cost effectiveness of electronics there are also possibilities of indirect effects. Signals can be digitised and electronic functions spread out in space in a way that the electromechanical system did not allow. The signal to be transmitted—it may be a moving picture—can for example now be taken apart and coded and then reassembled and decoded, a very effective way of "saving" functions and costs, increasing reliability and reducing the risks of interference. It might be said that the information technology with its abstract characteristics, its invisibility, with its incomprehensibly small microcircuits and the invisible chopping up of signals is in very big need of analogies and their interwoven, self-evident equivalents: the myths. Myths, metaphors and proverbs have power. We need myths, metaphors, ways of thinking, professional cultures to bring order intoreality,to understand, describe and communicate. The balancing act is to discover and fight, or at leastrefrainfromthe use of, false, misleading or even manipulative pictures, myths,framesof reference and language. ITMyths 13 Myth#1 Ttfe ca» Mvc time, wc ca*t MM moH&f, wc ca» taoe t6c awùuMmetti—we ca» teiewoné ùtàtead o^ commutùtff T h e myth: Travel electronically, speak via telephone, use video transmissions, invest in email, fax, and computer-aided teleconferences. Then of course travelling will considerably decrease. And there will be no needfor people to gather in offices and city centres. The reality: /f turns out that increased electronic communication actually increases travel. With this kind of communication you reach so many more people, and thus have to maintain many more contacts—mostly electronically. Nonetheless now and then you have to meet in person, physically. Above all: you get an instrument to access so many more. Contacts are established to a much higher degree. Let u s look a t t h e c o n c e p t of communication. It has two meanings, well actually three. Firstly it is a question of travelling, of movmg oneself, by car, by train, by bicycle, by boat, by air or walking. Secondly it is a question of TELEcommunication: to transmit and exchange—two ways, interactively, in both directions, it is important to note—information. Even if radio and TV mostly communicate one way. Thirdly it is a question of making oneself understood, to transmit a message and then in a more qualitative sense. One may for example talk about marketing communication and thereby include marketingresearchand public opinion surveys, press releases, the text on packages, advertising, meetings with salesmen and even trade fairs. When looking at all the savings listed in the title of the chapter, the idea is to replace movement and transport with tele-connections. As to the third form proponents of different ways of using tele-media for marketing can convincingly argue that marketing becomes more effective, even from the customer's point of view, with more effective media. One of the questions that may then be asked is on the other hand if new media are more open to subliminal perception and spontaneous persuasion, another if our visual and mental environment is not already too polluted by different advertising messages that for example cut up a film on TV just when it gets exciting, telephone sales calls that interrupt dinners or family gatherings. But it does contribute to the merchandise becoming cheaper!, says the proponent. That question is however outside the myth placed under this heading. Why then is it not possible to replace travelling with electronic communication? Well, it is possible—in the abstract. It is rather obvious—I can order a trip by telephone or computer without having to walk or drive to the travel agency. We can arrange a telephone meeting, with or without video, without having to gather in the same conference room. L e s s travelling per contact—but many more c o n t a c t s . A large American insurance company spent millions to save money. They wanted to decrease the travelling costs and invested in a satellite communication system in order to more easily arrange picture 14 ITMyths phone Conferences at a lesser cost. A tailor-made system for e-mail and computer-aided teleconferences was installed. Above all investments were made into training the personnel to use these different new media above mentioned and a couple more. If the employees did not dare to use them the investments in computers and telecommunications satellites would be lost. Did the employees not use the new facilities? Was that the problem? No, on the contrary! They used computer-aided conferences with video and all the other things to a much higher degree than expected and planned for. Electronic communication became a much larger success than foreseen. So what was the hitch? What made the idea of replacing travel a MYTH? The answer is that the savings from decreased travelling costs did not materialise. The travelling costs, the travel itself instead turned out to very much INCREASE! There might have been profits anyway, or losses, but not by simply replacing travelling and transportation costs with telecommunication as had been calculated. Simply put. When it was possible via computer aids to get to know so many more people, well, then there also arose the necessity of meeting now and then. Especially in the beginning of an electronic acquaintance. There was no need to meet them asfrequentlyas before, it turned out that it worked very well to maintain contact by telecommunication, by electronic bulletin boards and messages, by video conferences and picture phones. Just that now and then there was a need to meet, especially, as mentioned, a first time, in order for the electronic communication to later work in a smooth and effective way without too large barriers. But the number of contacts had now exponentially increased. The person who wants to defend the idea to save on travelling may argue that travelling per contact, per person in the network, decreases. That is very true, that particular kind of travel decreases significantly. But it is the overall travelling that increases. It might be suggested that there is an equivalent to Parkinson's law that says that the frequency of communication remains constant, if we think that "physical" meetings in some regards are more intensive: you take part of body language, scents, and other things contributing to what we perceive with our 15-50 bits per second limited information input. The unconscious on the other hand receives more than ten million bits per second, as it tums out, and part of this is visual impressions, such as body language, gestures, mimes, three dimensional impressions; things that a video has difficulty handling, and electronic mail even more difficulty. Who w i n s , w h o l o s e s ? The myth may also be saved because of another factor. It is not because it is fun to travel (especially not with lower travel allowances, and considering that the tax-free alcohol system will soon disappear in Europe) that the amount of travel is the same or increases. No, it is due to the perception that it is productive to meet these other people in one's extended circle. It seems somehow that the quality and productivity of what we are doing increase considerably. This thing about alcohol shows that there are hidden factors that affect our decisions that do not show up in more 'technocratic' calculations. An insurance company in Los Angeles chose to split up its large head office into a number of smaller satellites. The placement of staff was such that everyone considerably reduced their commuting time, making for cheaper travel and less lost time. The traffic environment and the cleanliness of the air were beneficiaries. But it was the society, the citizens, the motorists that got a relief from traffic and pollution. It was the employees who gained. Meanwhile, it was the company bearing the costs. The ITMyths 15 company could only motivate the cost by alluding to community responsibility and greater possibilities of recruiting and maintaining good staff—positive factors that are nonetheless difficult to include in the balance sheets. A different structure i s emerging. Once said that travelling does not decrease due to telecommunication it does not follow that everything remains the same or that this is not true for certain groups. It is by no means certain that the statement, the counter-evidence to the myth will hold true forever. The quality of the telecommunication contacts might increase so much—what with virtual reality, long-distance presence, scentophones, who knows?—that it will be possible in the future to lower thefrequencyof travel. But in that case, it will be lower in relation to a then higher travellingfrequency,and not in relation to, say, that of 1980. The entire structure of work and thereby the contacts, telecommunication, and travel is changing so rapidly and soradicallythat all such comparisons become more and more difficult to make—and to meaningfully make. First of all there are always good examples and exceptions in the form of persons who know how to fully take advantage of telecommunication. Well-known examples are the publishers of exclusive newsletters and specialised magazines as well as specialised consultants— the futurologist John Naisbitt is a self-proclaimed trend—who can live anywhere, and preferably in Telluride or Fort Collins in Colorado or wherever the skiing is good and the air clean. These people have the tools of their trade at theirfingertips,namely access to information and even impersonal human contacts, via telecommunication. They produce and distribute their products through the same means. If they, like Naisbitt, travel around the world holding well-paid lectures, the airport of departure nonetheless becomes of lesser importance, especially if you yourself can decide when to appear where... A n e w g e o g r a p h y of b u s i n e s s ? The second point is that it is also true that banks and other companies in the area of what is called heavy but routine data-entry can be located anywhere; American banks started in the American South, then in the West Indies, British banks in Scotland, Swedish insurance companies in exotic locations such as Möja in the archipelago of Stockholm, and Östersund and Kramfors in the north. But this is not telecommuting and it does not replace any commuting except possibly in terms of a reduction of the traffic in Stockholm, and an increase in Kramfors that better can bear it. Thirdly, most of the telecommuting does not become permanent but rather is staccato. What is meant by that is that yes, it is possible to work from home, or preferably from a neighbourhood teleworking centre with more resources and socialising—but it is still necessary to go to the head office once a week or so. Therefore we are talking of two workplaces instead of one even if the one can be shared by several people. There are several companies who have introduced flexible work areas: docking stations and a rolling set of drawers with personal files and material to be used during the limited time spent at the office. The salesmen at IBM in Tokyo have them, as do all employees, including the senior executives, at the hearing aid company Oticon in Copenhagen. This staccato rhythm obviously does not need to be once a week. It might be that a researcher prepares a final report or an important article at home, meanwhile telecommuting, a 'meanwhile' that can last anywhere from a week to a couple of months. Visits may perhaps not be so frequent during this period. Then it is back to the ordinary workplace that is needed both for contacts with others and for necessary physical resources. 16 ITMyths What i s a c o m p a n y , an organisation? A fourth and larger change in structures that makes comparisons over a longer time difficult or impossible is the development of hollow companies that complement each other in networks. Hollow companies are those who no longer themselves work with what used to be seen as the core of the operation, the physical production. They concentrate on marketing and sales, often in combination with research and development. Production can be placed anywhere in the world. And therefore telecommunication is a must. Boeing has a number of Japanese suppliers, Apple relies on among others Japanese manufacturers for entire computers and other units. Components and systems are thus developed in close co-operation between the American companies and their Japanese counterparts. During the Gulf War when attacks on civil aviation were feared, Apple among others severely restricted meetings that required air transport, and consequently thefrequencyof meetings decreased substantially. They were forced to use video conferences and increase electronic communication instead. Theresultswere so good that they have continued in this vein. Boeing shares design tables—electronic ones, known as CAD—with their Japanese friends (and not only with them but also even with their clients). This fourth type of behaviour points to structural changes that cannot easily be described in terms of telecommunication replacing travel. The division ofresponsibilityin terms of place simply becomes different. Finally, commuting and telecommunication may be integrated in new ways. There are those who have their office if not in their pocket then at least in the car. With a cellular telephone, lap-top, fax and beeper, the car becomes a well-equipped office. It is cheaper to pay for a parking space between customer meetings in London than to rent a seldom-used office. In these cases travel and telecommumcation have notreplacedeach other but rather entered into a symbiosis. ITMyths 17 Myth # 2 "îde mme. utftuttatioa. t&e éctten./ T h e myth: The well-informed person has more power, can choose and be in command, and runs less risk of being manipulated. A democratic, just society presumes equal andfallaccess to information for all. Information for the people, each and everyone! The reality: The uninformed person risks drowning in large quantities of unsorted, irrelevant, stress-creating information. An effective manner of manipulation might very well be to drown a person without information tools with an overwhelmingfloodof information. Knowledge is power, Francis Bacon once said. Information for the people makes for a better democracy. The more information to one and all, the better opportunity to understand; to understand in time, to influence, and to participate in decision-making. This idea, that more is better when it comes to information, is found in many organisations and in many forms. It is closely related to the idea that more communication between people also is better. It can be reformed to the thought that all information should be received when it is new, within seconds. Of course, would it not be good to receive information on time? Timely information is not always the same thing as instant information. Bacon spoke of knowledge, not ofinformation. There is a difference. Information is not a l w a y s k n o w l e d g e . That is the first important objection to the idea that information automatically is something good. Because you can, even if it is in rather vague terms, talk about a hierarchy on the basis of data. Data are loose figures or letters, say 38§. It becomes information if I say that it is the outside air temperature, or the temperature of a person. I add knowledge if 1 state that a person with this temperature probably has an infection, or that if it is the outside temperature in Sundsvall it must be close to a record high. It is difficult to give sharp contours to this hierarchy, from data to information to knowledge. As a matter of fact, it is impossible, because what to one person is data is at least information to another; and what is information to someone might be knowledge for someone else. All depends on the context and frames of reference. The definitions become even more difficult when we approach what is usually described as the top of this hierarchy, namely wisdom, the ability to sensibly use knowledge. "Where is the wisdom we lost in knowledge, the knowledge we lost in information," wrote T.S. Eliot. The only thing we can measure is information, or properly speaking, data, in relation to the capacity of a computer, in bits, or in communication, bits per second. As a matter of fact, there is an enormous amount of information that falls through the mail slot onto the floor when the morning newspaper arrives, and if I would like to conjure up an information speed I might debate whether it falls to the floor in a microsecond or in a shorter or longer time. Time i s a relevant m e a s u r e . It is not at all that kind of time that is decisive or interesting, but rather the time 1 can spend benefiting from the contents in the newspaper, how useful and entertaining I think it is, and how quickly it can be absorbed. Homo Mensura, man is the measure of everything, as the Greek saying goes. 18 ITMyths Man is of course also the measure of everything when it comes to context and frame of reference. It is said that when Victor Hugo hadfinishedthe writing of his epic novel Les Misérables he felt wom out andretiredto a village in the French countryside. Despite his selfcreated isolation he was nonetheless curious to see how his laboriously written novel had been received. He wrote in a postcard to his publisher a laconic: "?". Most recipients would have missed the connection and frame of reference, but the publisher had no difficulties in understanding what Hugo might want to know with a postcard to himself in particular, so he replied with a likewise laconic "!", since the novel had turned out to be a success. And Hugo did not have any trouble interpreting the response. Measured in bits this was an extremely effective communication. But it was effective because the communicators were on the same wave-length. The morning newspaper is an example of a greater amount ofinformation than I could ever properly utilise, or even aspire to. Its great advantage is that it feels familiar and relatively easy to survey so it is no trouble to tum the pages and skip what is not of interest to me. At the same time surprises pop up in the form of news or articles or pictures or ads that I did not know or plan to look for. An important reason that information is not all to the good is that it is just that, information, and not knowledge. An increasing amount ofinformation that tears reality apart only makes us less able, and not more, to make therightdecisions and act wisely. The flood of information—should it b e limited? One of the common complaints of today is: I was not informed, I did not know. Another is just as common: I am staggering beneath too much information, I am drowning in a flood ofinformation. If the latter is the case it shows the risk in a too intensive and comprehensive flow ofinformation. An overload of information can in fact be used for manipulation. One can hide important information in a bigger flood, and it taxes thereader'sknowledge for him or her to be able to make use of the information. Then the person who has let out the flood of information has an alibi and can claim "you got the information and did not react." We learn in different ways, we perceive in different ways, with differences between individuals and between different media. To read is not always particularly effective, but it is improved by reading aloud, and even more effective when accompanied by pictures, preferably moving. The most effective way of learning is by doing. The development of virtual reality and animated CD-ROM discs can assist these kinds of experiences. What we perceive is something else—and what we become conscious of. Research into our consciousness, cognition science, is painting a new picture, or maybe several competing pictures, of how we think. Man's brain has a large and associative memory, able to take in pictures and focus on certain phenomena, but compared to the fast computers man is slow. T h e h u m a n being s e e s more than h e r e a l i s e s . The human being also has an extremely effective sorting mechanism. It is estimated that around 11 million bits per second reach us through our senses, most of it visually as pictorial information. The sense of smell and not least the sense of touch, the tactile, are other contributors we do not usually think of, besides hearing and taste. But what consciously can be perceived is, highly counted, 50 bits per second, i.e. a reduction by a factor of 200,000! Where does the information go, the information that is so effectively sorted out? It remains somewhere in the unconscious and still affects us. An old study shows that what we perceive of a speaker is 93 percent partly body language and gestures, partly prosody (i.e. accentuation ITMyths 19 and pronunciation), whereas the content which we speakers consider the most important only represents 7 percent. A lot of influences, a lot of information is thus unconscious but nevertheless important, and exists in the background. It is not as conscious a frame of reference as the one Victory Hugo and his publisher used. To just supply more information without thinking of its content or meaning is therefore an error ofjudgement. By so doing it only leads us to forget what is much more important, the refinement of information to knowledge, the development of common frames ofreferenceand contexts, the understanding of the unconscious effects following a conscious message, a conscious information. Much remains to be done and understood here. Albert Engström! What number of pictures are not conjured up by a Swedish person when his name is mentioned. Burlesque drawings, crayfish and spirits, the archipelago. Imagine associating to Albert Engström in a group of foreigners, to laugh at the association and then try to explain it. Is it at all possible? Albert Engström is a Swedish même, the term we introduced in the beginning of the report. We then stated that there are mêmes on different levels. Some are simple and basic, others more complex and representing an entireframeof reference, a whole context Since Richard Dawkins introduced the concept of these melodies ofinformation and knowledge, shortened expressions, self-generating genes, they must also apply to pictures and living things that are rich in associations. M ê m e s c a n help—and hinder? Mêmesrepresentexisting images and pictures, preconceived ideas and patterns. Therefore they risk forming our perception in a particular mould. On the other hand they help to interpret the world around us, to sort the enormous flood ofinformation. With an ever increasing quantity ofinformation, with an ever increasing quantity of stimulus of several senses and in several "languages," an increasing need for mêmes follows, new mêmes that conclude and mterpret whole chunks of phenomena. Is the flood ofinformation a transitory phenomenon while we search for new helping mêmes? The mêmes are one way to help us sort theflood.Methods to tum information into knowledge is another way. It might be by way of simulations, virtual realities, hypertext structures. Much remains to be invented. How does knowledge come into existence, how is it created? Just as we do not know how we think, we do not know how we learn either. There are a half dozen pictures, theories, models for this. All explain some part of learning in a way that none of the other theories manages to do, and all have some part of the theory that completely contradicts how we learn in reality. With a better picture of how we learn, we might also better understand how knowledge is developed. There are tragic cases of blind people who have got their sight back at a relatively mature age. It is not always possible for them to sort out the impressions that the brain suddenly has to handle—the tragedy comes when as a consequence of this confusion and deep disappointment they go so far as to even commit suicide. Is there a window for a certain type of learning during childhood and youth? Should we expect a different information behaviour, a different knowledge acquisition with the new generations who have grown up with faxes and computers? H o w t o m e a s u r e if not in bits? Information can be described in terms of how profound and detailed it is, how fast it can reach us, how exact, trustworthy and complete it is. The determining factor is, however, howrelevantit is. Relevant in relation to what? Since it is usually connected to a decision or an action it is in this context that the speed matters: the information should be available before decisions are made or actions carried out; but on the 20 ITMyths other hand fast information should not tempt a premature action. Information often has a value relating to another value, the one that is determined by decision and by action. Reliability is a special aspect. There are usually not any measures of reliability given. It is possible to get the impression that a certain information is "more true" or more trustworthy than it actually is. A good number of outdated mêmes keep surviving, that in fact lack proper foundation or that would be better used in another area than where they are applied. Reliability also plays a role together with the speed that might be seen as an undivided advantage. Imagine getting signals early enough if something is about to go wrong! The problem is that all signals are not reliable just because they are correct. In all reality there is a considerable randomness factor. It might be necessary to even out the signals over a certain period of time in order that they become meaningful and to even out the randomness factor. To then react on an isolated deviation might lead to decisions and actions that in tum seem to have the wanted effect. That effect, resulting from a reaction that turned out to be unnecessary, can then be seen in a negative result and again new actions are taken. The mechanism is known from automatic engineering, you get afreerunning system, the free running being the result of a random signal. Among what risks to be hidden in large quantities of information, dense, full of details, apparently exact, are the gaps that might exist in otherrespects.It is a question of seeing the forest, not just the trees. With a lot of trees that is sometimes difficult. The exactitude and rich details in one comer are contagious, although not always to the good. Creativity out of m a n y i m p u l s e s ? The blessed information—a blessing that we are in the process of questioning—becomes more extensive also because it becomes global. Even this globalisation and its blessing, that everybody communicates and exchanges information with everybody else, can be questioned. Creativity and multiplicity presuppose precisely versatility and a wealth of variation, i.e. real dissimilarities and different strains of outlooks and world-views. Uniform information, uniform mêmes, a homogenous world culture everywhere on earth would diminish and harm the potential for cultural contrasts from which radical creativity, really new and surprising combinations, can arise. But here we might have a possibly positive effect of the information excess! Since nobody can benefit from all of it, there might in the quantity ofinformation itself lie possibilities for unceasing new combinations, contrasts and even creativeness. Chaos and chance, not law and order. Information is never completely free from its context, from its background, from its source. It is thus not separate from values,fromthe mêmes and from the frames of reference in which it was created, from actors and power centres. These are not necessarily formal but might be professional or expert—even if these could be purely physical and material sources, what is possible to read and what is read are anyway thefruitof data availability and conscious choices. On the other hand the wish for context and frames ofreference,might lead to demand for precisely subjective and not objective judgements, with the help of a kind of a 'consumer's guide.' The problem with the amount ofinformation therefore has many aspects. It is necessary to see therelevanceof the information. It may cost more or less, and it may as much be a problem as a possibility that it costs next to nothing to copy information or that I do not loose information when I give it to somebody else. The problem isratherthe lack of time and attention of the receiver, an attention that can be said to be the desire and ability to learn as much as to make the information useful. On the other hand information can be refined by creating ITMyths 21 what we in shorthand could call "?-!" clubs, closed associations with the same frames of reference. But learning is not arectilinearprocess. Effective mêmes within a frame of reference might lead to the fact that information that does not fit into it effectively gets discarded and never even consciously noticed. It is a big and difficult step, sometimes so difficult that it is impossible to change frames of reference and entirely re-sort among the information from which it is necessary to discern what is relevant. What effect does the même or myth have that "more information always is better"? 22 ITMyths Myth #3 Optical fténeà one a, muât T h e myth: The development has been rapidfromordinary telephone wires to optical fibres with enormous capacity,fromsignal-carrying electrons to photons, light that stands for the samefanction that electrons used to. Consequently, everybody everywhere needs access to opticalfibresto be on top, to be competitive. T h e reality: There are many different ways of transmitting signals, of sending information. Sometimes it is better to send through the air rather than through either an electronic or optical cable. Furthermore, the quantity ofinformation to be transmitted can be reduced by coding the signals. What then is gained in smaller quantities ofinformation transmission is compensatedfor by more computer power at both ends of the connection. The reality is that there are many technical solutions complementing each other. With too much concentration on only one possible solution, a region, a company, or an organisation risks becoming less competitive rather than more. Optical fibres have an enormous, almost unlimited, bandwidth. Therefore it is of course important that all companies and regions have access to this enormous capacity. Now that it is so important with electronic highways with giant capacity, only optical fibres can provide the competitive edge and survival to these companies and countryside. Optical fibres are the railways of today and tomorrow! Optical fibres for growth! Optical fibres to the people! A g o o d t o o l but not universal. There is absolutely no doubt that optical fibres play an important role in a national and global telecommunication system, in an information-based economy. Undoubtedly they open possibilities for lower prices and rapid expansion of necessary capacity—just where highways are needed, i.e. where there is traffic to fill these transport routes. At the moment optical fibres have their given role because of their technical and economical qualities. But they are not inherently magic, they are only tools—one kind of tool in a whole toolkit. And they are tools of no use in themselves except when they are made use of to do something—practical. Therefore it is dangerous to overly concentrate on only optical fibres. It is dangerous to think they suffice, or that they constitute the one and only miracle cure, the universal medicine. The important thing is not that such electromc and digital highways exist but also that they should provide accesses and exits, that there is a local road system as well, just as there was for cars and other motor vehicles before the highways came, and that there are ramps to enter and exit them. The same goes for the much talked about optical fibres. It is very vital not to overly concentrate on only one component or function in a larger system. In Sweden, for example, and in the US for that matter, you can claim that the highways already exist. Unlike the road system, the highways of telecommumcation already existed before the local networks, local and access roads were built. S a m e kind of field, y e t different—frequency. A small technical parenthesis explains what optical fibres are. In the ordinary telephone wires, varying electrical signals are ITMyths 23 transmitted, electrical currents, that is, flows of electrons. In a strict scientific and technical sense there is an upper limit to the capacity this technology allows. This limit can be extended if one switches to electromagnetic fields, that is wireless signals, and extended yet again the higher their frequency. Microwaves, used in coaxial cables and radio links, are thus pressing the capacity limits upwards. So far we have not even touched optical fibres. The signals pass through them by way of light. Even light is an electromagnetic wave movement of the same kind as microwaves and wireless signals, but with an even higherfrequencyand thus even higher capacity. Just as with the microwaves transmission is possible by air—beacons and optical telegraphs are making use of this—but there are problems with fog and rain and other absorbing matter in the atmosphere. The alternative therefore is to enclose the light signals, and that is just what is done in optical fibres where the light forges its way through without too much dissipating. Light or photons are utilised rather than electricity or electrons. The most important function of the optical fibres is in fact to stimulate, to act as a catalyst to both development and investments in order to make the whole system work. No chain, no system is stronger than its weakest link. Optical fibres are highways and they do exist—but do the ramps? First of all, what is needed is, precisely, local roads and connections. Here the optical fibres in combination with the development of computer technology have created a multitude of different alternatives that partly compete with each other, partly complement each other. Not so long ago it was the microwave links and coaxial cables plus tools such as the TV-satellites that were seen as the most central communication links. They are still interesting, maybe in other forms than before. Other tools, new tools, new qualities, and improvements reshape what is practical and economical. Innovators ofinformation technology keep discovering new opportunities. It is now possible to send TV-programs via ordinary telephone wires. How? By coding the signals. This is a new such possibility. It is a radically different way than to choose between electrons and photons—namely to transmit fewer signals. Since the computer power is so cheap, has become so cheap, one can actually get by sending considerably less information. Sending considerably less by compressing what is to be sent, since so much otherwise of what we transmit, both in sound and picture, is redundant, it contains the same information not only once but many times, it is sensitive to interference, and unnecessarily occupies space. When it comes to pictures it might be enough to transmit the changes from one picture to another in a TV-program or a picture phone call, all that remains the same—most —does not need to be resent, as long as there is some unit that recalls what remains unchanged at the receiving end. That is computer power. As far as telephone calls go it is possible to take advantage of the fact that the ear makes up for what is missing in a signal, or that the telephone does it, if what is missing looks a certain way, i.e. if the signal coding is designed to conform with the attributes of the telephone or ear. Computer power again. Another possibility, of interest also in other connections, is radio transmission. The most well known example is of course cellular telephones, something that many owners of summer cottages subscribe to instead of paying for a permanent installation. There are situations where radio links to a company or a settlement are sufficient to guarantee enough capacity, without the need for optical fibres. Besides, the installation is a lot faster. Several of the new market economies in the East, Poland and Hungary for example, have been able to build up functioning telecommunication systems a lot faster on the basis of radio 24 ITMyths communication, often cellular phone systems, than would have been possible by laying out cable whether in the form of wires, coaxial cables or optical fibres. It might be worth mentioning that even in satellite communication, another cable-less option there are experiments under way with methods to make two-way communication possible. The TV-cable already e x i s t s ! There is in fact already an alternative cable net with a larger capacity than the ordinary for telephones, namely the cable-TV net. Even this can be used, even if it would require a lot when it comes to switchboard equipment for telephone functions. But d o t h e c a r s e x i s t , t h e drivers? If it is foolish to overly concentrate on optical fibres already when it comes to infrastructure of such vital importance, then it is even more so, since it is not the fixed infrastructure as much as what it allows you to do, everything around it, let us call it the "ultrastmcture," that is central (see also Myth #15). Of what use are the electronic highways—even with ramps to enter and exit—if there are no cars and no drivers that know how to use them? Training is needed or the ability, will and interest to make full use of the possibilities. Besides these fundamental abilities, plus a comfortable and fearless attitude, it is imperative to create useful utilities. In other words there have to be software, information, message functions, products and services, entertainment, and discovery trips that will motivate utilising local nets, optical fibres and own knowledge. And talking about messages, there have to be like-minded colleagues. The computer net operators more and more find that what they charge for is offering contact possibilities between individuals on the net. Individuals who can find each other and who can find common interests. This is a new function, an ultrastmcture that reminds you of the telephone book, but a telephone book that contains self-organising yellow pages! ITMyths 25 Myth #4 Ot cd poOAiêtc to contnal t&c poMoyc o£ éiU at t&c eondetå The myth: Just as we can control other official monetary transactions, it is possible to control the flow of money over borders. The fact that it is now handled electronically makes no difference except that the tool of the transfer has changed, and thereby the equivalent tool for currency control. The reality: The transfer of economic means, currency and trade transactions is only one part of a gigantic electronic traffic over the borders. The global currency stream itself is in turn several tenfold larger than the actual trade volume. Data can be concealed in ways impossible to detect. Only superficially is it possible to maintain a pretence of control. There has been attunultuousdevelopment in currencies and international trade during the last couple of years. The international flow of currencies is in fact at least twenty times larger than the flow of goods and services that the currency flow is based on. Investments and actually exchanged goods and services only explain a very small part of this large and fast-moving amount of money. How could the money exceed the underlying trade to such an ext e n t ? What kind of money is it? A large part consists of what could be considered as currency speculation. Speculation gives a bad connotation. Another word would be arbitrage: if there are interest or other cost and income discrepancies in time and place then the agile person with means and knowledge can benefit from it. You could also name it insurance business: creating baskets of currencies that are protected against losses from exchange rate swings when you do business that in itself is sound. With transactions that only take microseconds, it follows that fast and frequent transactions are necessary in order not to lose. This is what leads to intense currency fluctuations, at times solely for speculation, such as against the Crown, the Peseta, the Franc, the Lira, and the Pound a couple of years ago. It took a few months until at least the Franc jumped back to its old level after it had been speculated downwards. But only temporarily. The speculation actually made it lose against its "natural" level. Speculation can be a very strong force. So why not moderate this flow of currency, lessen speculation and the disturbances that follow, by for example reintroducing currency regulations? Bits a r e bit s are bits... Because money flows in form of bits, or data. It is simply not possible to control these at the border. Suggestions have been made to forcibly slow down this flow since the speed itself seems to create instabilities or at least unnecessarily large fluctuations (compare also with what has already been mentioned about fast signals that may cause too quick decisions. Myth #2 "The more information, the better"). Torestrainthe possibilities of technology is, however, a risky method since it in tum creates new possibilities to make money for somebody who knows how to bypass the technicalrestrictions.A kind of technical arbitrage. A parenthesis apart from money transactions shows the problems. It caused a stir in the US when it turned out that pornographic pictures could be picked up on the state-supported com- 26 ITMyths puter network Internet. Just imagine the hot water the decision makers in Washington, D.C., would be in when it was discovered that they were supporting such misuse of government means! Maybe they would close down the whole usefiil computer network? Overnight it turned out that the pictures had disappeared from the database in Texas. And appeared in a database in Finland. At least the telephone bills got another structure... and the Finnish telephone company a largerflowof invoices. In the US it has actually happened that one state has got the person responsible for a site containing pornographic material extradited from another state. In California it was not illegal to handle "indecent" material in this manner, to make it available on an open computer network like Internet, but the state of California could not do otherwise but to extradite the person to more "moral" states. What international laws will be applied, what will happen to thefreedomof speech, supporters ofradicalinformation freedom wonder, especially in the U.S. And what about the idealistic programmer who made his ciphering program available for free on Internet! It was a program made to protect data from being read, to cipher code them. This type of program, however, is considered secret material not only in the US but also in many other countries. Even if a private person has developed something, he or she cannot freely export it if it can have applications in the military defence. The point is that the young American had not actively exported anything, he had placed the program in a database in the U.S., and then it so happened that a great many foreigners had downloaded it via Internet. Is he thereby guilty of an offence by having made his program available on the net in the way he did? A n e w s e r i e s of crucial q u e s t i o n s t h u s e m e r g e s . There are not only economic, statistical or moral questions involved but also legal ones. Imagine a program or data you would normally pay for being available for free from some obscure databank in a remote country, bearing only a possibly false copyright. A databank that changes site every day or that is impossible to trace. More and more of economic value is not of a material kind but is found in the dataflow itself, the flow of bits. It could be different types of confidential business material, early information on decisions in the making and important orders as well as patents and other technological and knowledge based tricks and possibilities. An important "secret" or advantage of this kind lies in databanks, another is found on the next level, computer programs. If certain data and certain competence of individuals or organisations exist in one country, others in another, it is again a question of synergy, that I plus I make 3 when they are joined. So how is it possible to put a value on this new dataflow compared to one that isredundant,that does not add anything new, i.e. one that implies that 1 + 1 make I? H o w i s b o o k k e e p i n g done—and h o w i s it controlled ? Economic units, such as companies, certainly can be forced to present accounts of the formal flow of means between units, i.e. transactions through banks and that have beenregistered.If the price level, however, is misleading, if services, goods or expertise have been exchanged within a company or even in a network of independent companies, without showing in the books, well, then accounting has been avoided, if this happens to be an economic advantage. In other words, would not a border control of data berecommendablelAll the more necessary since the Swedish Data Act includes regulations that other countries do not follow. The creation of data free ports should be avoided! \ ITMyths 27 But it just is not possible. Telephone calls are data, fax is data, data flows are data. Most deals with trivialities in an economic context, and much is of a nature that correctly is protected: wiretapping requires a court order. It is furthermore fully possible to work with practically indecipherable ciphers and codes. What s e c r e t d a t a p o l i c e force could handle t h e e n o r m o u s quantity? The worst hindrance to such a border control of data-traffic is the sheer amount. All telecommunication traffic, all data-traffic. It can travel on ordinary wires or on rented. It can be sent by radio waves or via telephone stations. Satellites can be used. But data can of course also be sent by mail—viafloppy-disksor small computer-chips. If they do not go in way of paper, coded to later be scanned into the computer. And it is possible to divide the information sending it in different ways, different signal routes, or part of it on diskette, another via telecommunication. The amount of data in itself plus a certain kind of ciphering can be used to hide, to conceal, to smuggle information to be transmitted. Today there is technology for transmitting data in a picture. The data does not show in the picture. An extensive amount ofinformation is needed for a picture and here and there data can be inserted. The person controlling the bits traffic only sees an innocent photo. Only the person with the proper deciphering algorithms, the key to pick up the concealed information, is at all able to see something more than the picture. Talk about puzzle pictures! A k e y function for t h e future will b e t o verify l e g i t i m a c y. Transferring money through a network demands, of course, certain finesses. A credit card transaction can be verified over the net but is usually confirmed with a signature. The substitution for a signature in a cash dispenser for example is the personal code, a so called PIN-code, usually consisting of four numbers. Not a very safe system, especially not on a computer network where computers can go through so many number combinations in no time at all. A four-digit number only represent 10,000 combinations. A development of creating digital cash is on the way. One possibility is to ask the person whose account is to be charged to confirm his order within a short time. An American company. First Virtual, is working on this idea. For Internet, where the users regularly and frequently log in, this is a functional method. To guarantee the authenticity of digital cash—since the copy is identical to the original—a kind of watermark is needed, a hidden signature. One possibility is then to have given money units, bills but in digital form, something that resembles the money units in magnetic strip cards and in smart cards where money is loaded and then deducted as it is used. A Dutch company, DigiCash, as well as the American CyberCash, are working on these lines. The money is completely anonymous; only if someone tries to use the same bill twice, will a search start to trace the owner. DigiCash works towards making it impossible to trace the person who pays. Digital c a s h reintroduce s coins—a great a d v a n t a g e ! Digital cash can be as small as one cent and less. It is economical to receive payment in cents or parts of cents for, for example, information on the Internet or any other electromc channel. These small amounts might seem of no interest but of course they become of importance when large volumes are handled. Think of the analogy with newspapers—where they try to sell subscriptions, i.e. package deals or package prices for an unknown product. 28 ITMyths Electronics and computers have already facilitated starting and running companies. A company can be run from the car, telephone answering machines, faxes, cellular phones and personal computers haveresultedin many of the large companies' functions being replaced by digital technology. It is now a lot easier to handle marketing, sales, delivery and payment. Internet and its future siblings lack national borders. In the same way the digital company on the net meets an international market just as easily as a national—which is otherwise an advantage large companies with many subsidiaries and agents round the world have had. Cyberspace is in other words not just a metaphor or an advertising slogan. It is a reality without national borders. Certainly we can see where a businessman or networker physically sits, but where are his or her money, products, or business? They might be anywhere in the world. And where is his or her digital cash? Global transportation of digital cash will cause the tax authorities new problems. How can assets moved from one computer to another in a new country every day be estimated? How can you estimate the information available in a synergetic economy, where my knowledge gets a multiple value only when combined with the knowledge of others, maybe in other countries? Money h a s t w o f u n c t i o n s. What happens to the national currency if digital cash takes over? The value of an electronic currency unit might have to be fixed to a large international currency, or the "cyber-dollar" might become a currency of its own. Maybe the discussion of Sweden's and other countries' participation in a common European currency is a pseudodebate where the European currency reflects yesterday's thinking—it might be better developed in cyberspace with a power of its own without the involvement of governments. But without their influence over the currency that they are used to and believe they need. | How do we know what digital cash is worth? How can it be included in the flow of currencies? Is it going to increase inflation and will it become internationally homogenous rather than determined on a national level? Money can be said to have two functions. It serves as a base for economic exchange, for transactions, and it represents a determined value. Digital cash is ideal for transactions, the first function. Since it can be transferred in microseconds, it solves several problems that today lead to increased complications in contracts and transactions in not only international but also national trade. In terms of the value of money, bills used to be printed with a guarantee of exchange in gold. Nowadays it is instead the bank assets that determines the amount of bills issued. In the digital world every cyber-dollar should equal a reserve or a possibility to get "real" money. That is how for example CyberCash mentioned above works. If the cyber-dollarrepresentsliquid means, the balance does not give any interest and there is no virtual loan activity since it would increase the amount of digital cash without any corresponding increase in real money. The virtual economy would be free from interest revenue. A s e n s i t i v e , problematic transition. Governments are concerned about their currencies. Transactions over borders that involve a transition from digital cash to real money at the same time include a currency exchange. As long as we deal with real money, issued by the government or in general its central bank, national bodies can also makeregulationsand restrictions and charge fees. It can be expected that the national governments will consider it a common interest to keep things as they are to enable a certain control until digital cash has taken over completely. ITMyths 29 That, in tum, could be the result of another development where also loan activities can be carried out with digital cash. A guarantee in real money would then be required from somebody. It could very well be given by companies, as much as by national governments—and it is fully possible that in the future these private guarantors will have a larger credibility and charge less risk premium than many governments or central banks. In short, the development of telecommunication and computer technology has made currency exchange and certain types of export controls lessrelevantand more difficult to follow. You might like it or not, as well as you might like or dislike the instability in currency exchanges or stock values that change in microseconds. Probably only time is needed to leam to live with it and produce new instruments to handle it. But new perspectives open up, new structural questions that involve the development of true digital cash. What will be the cyberspace equivalents to nations, to border passages between them and to the central banks? 30 ITMyths Myth #5 fyo« 'te otaeA wOA *#2f# T h e myth: Technology is never user-friendly. Just look at those unmanageable video controls, just look at the telephones and their instruction manuals for new and at times clever fanctions with... was it *#2I# or #*}2*...? Only complex apparatus can be made that nobody except a computer enthusiast or a certified engineer can handle. The reality: It is true that much technology is difficult, complicated, and inaccessible for the amateur andfirst-timeuser. But this is only a transition phase, partly because the technology in the initial stage is expensive, and partly because it needs to find its way, to discover what the user actually wants and how the user reacts, and lastly also because the technicians themselves need to be trained to take the user into consideration. We have to live on the conditions of technology. Just think of "*#21#." And what does the technician say? It is a new service, one of many, that is offered through an elegant solution, because it consists of an international standard. All these fantastic new possibilities... too many? Of course digital telephone stations open possibilities: switching between calls, wake-up service, transferring calls, automatic redialing etc. But all these instructions, they are barbarous. Impossible to remember. A telephone is a telephone is a telephone. First with a round dial and ten figures. Then a big leap to the push-buttons with tenfigures,then with twelve buttons with the addition of * and #. These simple symbols and the ten figures allow for many combinations—almost too many. And because there are too many they are just about impossible to remember. It i s not a myth, only a condition? Even we, the technicians, have to agree there is something in this—it probably is no myth. No myth that technology puts demands on the user who in turn demands too much. Especially in the infancy of a new technology. However, if the telephone did get twelve push-buttons with the addition of • and # instead of the ten, why not give it more? A telephone with twenty-four buttons with the messages clearly written on them, like "repeat," "transfer," "back," etc. In other words make the technology fit the person. The 24-button telephone would only cost very slightly more than one with 12 buttons. What is needed is already in the system— electronics, the digital. Good t e c h n o l o g y i s not n e c e s s a r i l y g o o d for everything. There are other examples of bad adaptation between technology and man, yes, lots of examples. Newspapers with self-respect allow the subscribers to change address, to temporarily stop the subscription, complain that the newspaper did not arrive in the morning, and so on, and this via automatic answering machines. It is a good instrument—but only with a limited assortment of choices. I, who listen to the human voice in the computerised system, cannot cope with too many choices at the same time ITMyths 31 and every choice takes several seconds to make. In order for the procedure not to be too timeconsuming the "decision steps" should be moderately big. To find out the possibilities to fly between different destinations and find out the choices, different routes, different airlines to shorten the waiting and travelling times, etc.—is an example with too many choices and therefore too time-consuming. The technology for the next step is almost always round the comer. But soon it will be all right anyway. Just as my twelve text-printed extra push-buttons will help me, of course there will be telephones with windows—they already exist—small, small TV-screens or figure and letter tableaux. Such a tableau together with the spoken message gives totally different possibilities. And the telephone does not cost much more. And the call is not at all more expensive. The classic example, or rather "classic" since it is not very old, is of course the remote control to program the video. It is incomprehensible, unwieldy, the buttons impossible to remember or understand for most people. Remains to look for the instruction book. It might partly be a generation thing. Children try fearlessly among the buttons—until it works. And even here technology can come to the rescue... A few years ago the great Christmas gift success in the US was an apparatus for $50, promising with its two or three buttons total control of the video. In other words an especially easy-to-use interface between the user and the video! A general business idea? The pioneers have a hard time—but having the user in mind can be very profitable. Technicians can too often show thoughtlessness and lack of understanding of the user's situation—lack of empathy, perhaps we can say. Above all Doug Engelbart but even others had ideas around the mouse and a graphic user interface, with icons, such as the ones Macintosh was the first to introduce in the beginning of the sixties. It took Xerox Pare, the laboratory in California fifteen years to use it. All in all it took 25 years before it was commonly used. The computers worked for a long time with a white text on a black background, which has long been commonly known to be both difficult and tiring to read, and resulted in many reading errors, easily making anybody give up. Furthermore it only used capitals, "CAPITAL LETTERS," which also is very tiring and difficult to read and thus ineffective. By whom was this commonly known since a long time? Well, it was known to those working with graphic arts, with a history dating back to Gutenberg in the 15th century. But the engineers of electronics never thought about that. Another in a way more spectacular example is the contrast between the black in the letters and their white background. For a technician it is obvious that the best readability and the best effectiveness will be obtained with as sharp a contrast as possible. That is the case for a machine. That means at the same time something technically very difficult, an abrupt leap from the white to the black, a maximal contrast. Such a transition is in other words technically very demanding and thusrequiresgood electronic skills. A stimulating challenge for an engineer! At long last the radically experimenting and inquisitive MIT Media Lab did experiments with the opposite, a gradual transition from white to black with a small, barely microscopically visible field of grey. Cheating, says the orthodox engineer, to make it in such a way would make it easier to solve constraction problems in for example the TV-receiver or computer screen. The fact is, however, that this has been done for a long time in the graphic arts and it has been shown that the human brain actually perceives and appreciates the contrast 32 ITMyths better in this way. It is now possible to get a higher resolution and to read more comfortably than with the abrupt transition from white to black! Ambitions a s a stumbling block—not all have the same level of ambition! Yet another example would be different software, for example for word processing. They get increasingly more refined, with lots of new features. At the same time they take a lot more space in the computer, making it slower. And increasingly more difficult to leam to use. One feature that one now can build in is to take away some of the features that anyway are not used (but paid for), another feature is to create help-functions. A third alternative is to offer slimmed down, simplified programs of the more advanced ones. Commercially this alternative entails a balancing act, they should not be so "good" that they threaten to steal the market from the advanced software... You might say here that the technician is not able to differentiate between the 'seldomuser' and the 'often-user,' between the person who professionally needs the many features and the person who only needs a few. The ambitions of the technician to do the difficult things stand in the way of the wishes of the user to get the easy and the effective—these wishes do not seem to give the technicians enough challenge! It is here, however, that the economic gains often can be made. Features create uniqueness, and too many software program critics and reviewers are themselves experts to such an extent that they appreciate something more exciting, unusual and difficult than a few straightforward functions. T h e h e n or t h e egg—or both? Inventiveness is thus required from those who provide different services. Obviously a stop to the vicious hen-egg circle is needed, since, if we return to the push-button telephone, services requiring a telephone display window also need enough people having them to make it worthwhile for the airline or the subscription department to create a service making use of this new function. Or else the phone becomes something generally more self-explanatory. What other ways to communicate could it offer apart from push-buttons and a display window? Voice, of course. Vibration? Different tone levels? Colours? Scent? But the telephone might be connected to the home computer, and then the "display window" will of course be big enough. Anyway it also requires of us subscribers that we accept a non-traditional telephone with ten or twelve holes or push-buttons... maybe that it will be connected to a computer? Or that it will be combined with the TV. But that is another story, if the TV-cable by chance would transmit the telephone calls as well. New examples are built on to memos when the old ones becomes unjust! One conclusion though about the opinion that technicians unnecessarily complicate things have a certain truth to it. It is this more general même that lies behind the swearing over "#2I#." It is not only an unjust myth, but new ones have been built on it with new examples while the old ones might disappear because complicated functions despite all slowly becomes user friendly. This in tum is due to the fact that the technicians sometimes have to continue in the direction of technology's own movement, such as therequirementto at least for a start make use of available telephones. Available technology offers in other words limitations in a transition period, such as the telephone with twelve push-buttons or the white letters on a dark background. The technician does not further question the given situation—he or she is stuck in a ITMyths 33 certain way of thinking, in a professional culture. The examples with the knowledge from the graphic arts that the electronic engineers missed are speaking for themselves. This way of thinking also makes the technician choose to do the difficult and advanced rather than the user-friendly and uncomplicated. It is a way of thinking that has to be stopped and maybe exchanged with one that will emphasise the elegant and user-friendly, the direct and less expensive. An equivalence to the industrial designer when it comes to designing hardware. An o c c a s i o n t o m o c k t h e fine m a c h i n e s t o o . As a footnote we can say that even the technical machines get criticised for their rigidity, for their technocracy. In a book by Karla Jennings, The Devouring Fungus, there are several stories, legends and myths about computers (the book is among other things a mythology according to the back page text). One that would fit in here is about Marvin Minsky, the genius who started MIT's AI-laboratory. A student cannot get the computer to work and kicks it but nothing happens. Minsky shouts: "You idiot. You have to understand what happens inside the computer to get it to work again." Whereupon Minsky gets up and kicks the computer. At exactly the same place. And the computer of course starts working. Another story is about the investment of the U.S. Defence in a translation program. The proverb "The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak" gets translated into Russian. After which it again is translated back—with the result "Booze is OK but the meat has gone bad." The proverb "Out of sight, out of mind" becomes "Invisible idiot." These stories give a certain ridicule to the technicians' trust in their creations. Is it not a question of mutual learning? Or is the technician forever lost and the user left to his fate of forever complicated engineering solutions? A car is in fact not a particularly easy thing—not even a bicycle or a swimming human body? Even so we leam to tie shoelaces or to co-ordinate arms and legs, eyes and feet in driving a car. The car has become what it is after a long evolution that in the beginning included vehicles with only forward and back and a lever instead of a steering wheel. A long period of a trial and error seems to be required, before the technology finally finds its form, partly in form of a common standard that only is one of many possible. Just as it is with the keyboard QWERTY—that got its shape to slow down the writing so the typehammers did not tangle up (the letterfrequenciesin the English language were used in the beginning). When the mechanics rapidly improved and allowed for a much faster writing if only the keyboard was replaced by a better one—then it was too late. Too many had already invested in learning the QWERTY standard. The technical development is dependent on its history. The "best" solution is not always the winner—not if it comes too late and meets with an already dominating standard or a too powerful way of thinking. In other words, part of thereputationof technology being too difficult and inhuman comes from being stuck in older technology. Part of it comes from the need for a "Sturm und Drangperiod" where different technical solutions are tried out. However, part of it comes from the slowness of changing ways of thinking emanating from lack of imagination or too rigid lines of thinking. At least the last fact can be remedied. But the myth of the inaccessibility is hardly a myth but a même that we have to live with and use as a point of departure for a more conscious work of change. 34 ITMyths Myth #6 7(/e do not 6avc to. t&iM&, rf) cutd exftcnt otfStemA one ta6iM$ oven. T h e myth: People think like computers, and consequently computers are learning to think like people. But faster, with larger memory capacity. It is only a matter of time before man is beaten. In many special areas this has already happened, to economic benefit. T h e reality: Human thinking turned out to be complex in an entirely different way than was initially thought at the introduction of AI, artificial intelligence. What are feelings? What does the interaction between body and mind involve? New computers andprogram systems lake as a starting point new discoveries of how people see, perceive and think But if this will make for thinking computers is much more a matter of debate today than it was before. Just as the more modest expert systems in many cases have turned out to be media stunts rather than real killer applications. Computers think for you. Computers are quicker, more precise, and can contain more information. Computers are logical. They can leam to play chess, solve problems, run important apparatus and instruments, diagnose diseases. Expert systems repair computers and copiers, direct trains, advise on construction problems. Nowadays, they beat chess grandmasters. So? Initial s u c c e s s e s — a n d overly bold p r o m i s e s. No, things did not turn out according to the visions. Computers, expert systems and artificial intelligence are only adequate up to a certain level, even if that level is being continually raised. The program was otherwise ambitious. Computers have a larger memory capacity and are much faster than people are. For example for mathematical problems, or for large address files, these are obvious advantages. The concept "artificial intelligence" was created in the mid-fifties. If you study what was hoped to be achieved at the time, much has indeed been accomplished. An example is the development of spreadsheets. However, no-one today considers this as having anything to do with intelligence. Perhaps the chase for artificial intelligence is going for a moving target. Early on the "general problem solver" was constructed. Of this it has been said that it was not general and it did not solve any problems. But the general problem solver was useful when it came to creating a structure for thinking about thinking. A powerful argument is therefore that just as airplanes can fly without mimicking the way birds flap their wings, computers can be made to think even if they do not imitate human thinking on the micro-level. If this is an important argument we shall see how it has been turned upside down in some ways. Over and over, actually. Man turned out to be the Joker, "the ghost in the machine." As so often is the case, the question of what constitutes artificial intelligence raises another question, namely what is natural or human intelligence. Psychologists have included intuition and creativity in the concept of intelligence, which does not exactly make it easier to work with as it introduces new problems. Some researchers in the field of artificial intelligence solve these problems by ex- ITMyths 35 eluding them in their definition: creativity does not exist, at least not separate from ordinary logic. However, there exists a definition to lean on, and that is Turing's attempt to describe how we can decide if a machine is acting like a human being. Imagine that we by way of a mailbox or a telex machine feed questions to "someone" in the other end, on the other side of the door with the mailbox, someone who answers the telexes. If the answers are precisely what could be expected from a human being, the machine has managed to disguise itself and can be said to have artificial intelligence. The first issue is whether this is a good test for human intelligence. That is a philosophical debate. The second question is if it is possible to answer without having any significant intelligence and without understanding questions and answers, i.e. by manipulating them through use of a language program. The third and larger issue concerns the extent to which intelligence is implied to be human, belonging to body and feelings. A frightening p s y c h o l o g i c a l Pygmalion. A computer researcher, Joseph Weizenbaum, scared himself and others with a simple program designed to manipulate language. The program was called Eliza and provided psychological comfort by rephrasing statements into meaningful questions. What scared Weizenbaum was that people were comforted by this mechanical bouncing back of their own words, except when it became bizarre. The people who used the computer felt that it was like a human being, and enjoyed not having to take up anyone else's time. But Weizenbaum's Eliza would not have passed the Turing test. It would have been easy to devise questionsrevealingthat the respondent was not a human being, unless one with a bizarre sense of humour. How can we include humour in artificial intelligence? Can humour be defined enough? When computers beat chess grandmasters they play a special kind of quick chess. In ordinary chess, with time for consideration, there are so many options that creativity, experience and ability to take in the situation allow Man to win. Moreover, the computer has difficulties managing some endgame situations that even a mediocre human player could handle. Rules-of-thumb, t e a c h i n g materials and m a n u a l s c a n certainly b e ins t a l l e d in a c o m p u t e r ! Expert systems are the programs of practical life, and use part of theresearchdealing with artificial intelligence to employ human knowledge and experience, like checklists and teaching materials, in interactive programs. You ask what you need to ask about in a specific situation. Especially in complex situations this can be useful. The chess program is actually an expert system playing against people. If they know the design of the program they can perhaps beat the machine by making moves the programmer had not foreseen; moves which would not have fooled a human being. Expert systems are good for what the expertreallycan define within a certain area. What is dangerous is when the expert system unwittingly goes beyond that area. Man would not do that as easily or automatically, because he has common sense, something which is the most difficult thing of all for computers to acquire, even though computer experts are trying. Again, research raises questions about what is a matter of course. What is humour, what is common sense? We learnt s o m e t h i n g about w h a t w e thought w e k n e w but did not. The research in the field of artificial intelligence has had the spin-off effect that we have reached an understanding that human intelligence is something else than we thought. Some- 36 ITMyths thing more complex than can be described through a formula. Something that does not at all work along the principles of traditional computers. Something that may for example lead to "fuzzy logic," logic with expressions such as "just right" and "maybe." Logic that admits that not only brain but also heart and hand must take part. That was the third issue discussed above. Is not our intelligence corporal as well? Do not our feelings and actions emanate from the fact that we are human beings, with muscle sensations and the sense of smell? To what degree can these sensations be transferred to computers linked to robots? The hand, directed by the brain, and the tenderness needed to tend for a sick person. The hand, which has a memory of how to behave, a memory of careful movements which can not be programmed. The heart, which of course is the consideration that, among other things, makes it possible to perceive the signals from people around us individually, signals such as changes in coloration, vibrations of the voice, body smells which we may not even be aware of but which are a factor in personal chemistry and emotions. Different languages, other functions than what we confess to. When the Japanese were making expert systems for medicine it transpired that the same concepts and measures did not hold the same meaning for all disciplines. With a drastic example: the temperature 38 degrees centigrade did not mean the same to all doctors. If skin coloration is such an important signal that transmission via videophone did not work between people, in this case experts who are doctors, how could the computer be able to interpret a colour signal? When an attempt was made to understand how service engineers repair broken things the convincing answer was given that they employed instmction handbooks and service manuals. The respondents themselves wholeheartedly believed this answer to be true. But when their actual behaviour was observed, instruction handbooks turned out to play a very small part. The basis for fault-detection and repair was instead individual experiences and above all the complementary experiences of others, stuff you learnt by sitting around the coffee-table. The recipe for faster sharing of experiences was obviously not better instmction manuals, perhaps with multimedia, but more coffee-table talk. The experiences of doctors and repairmen are nothing but social factors that the wise designer of an expert system will naturally pay attention to. That something is considerably more difficult and multifaceted than was initially assumed is no reason why it could not be done. Perhaps the challenge will on the contrary give richer returns—in the form of knowledge and experience. There i s still h o p e for Al. There will always be? This goes for the ideas surrounding artificial intelligence as well. First, they raise questions concerning the nature of intelligence and what a human being is. In this context it may be mentioned that there exists a related phenomenon which has yet to reach cult status, and that is the development of artificial life. In a corresponding manner it raises questions concerning how we define life and what should be included in such definitions. Second, we humans do not seem to think like computers, at least not like the classical kind of computers operating along the principles established by von Neumann in the 1940's. If we function in any other way we may after all—in spite of the objection with airplanes and birds which both can fly—leam something about human thinking on the micro-level and reach conclusions about computers which help us make better ones. And consequently, perhaps, develop more thinking computers? Evidently, we think in different ways on different levels or for different types of signals and tasks, and the AI computer must also be able to do so. If you construct computer models ITMyths 37 of thinking along these lines you get promising clues to how you can examine and treat people with brain damage and similar afflictions caused by physical defects. It tums out that the bird analogy does not really stick. Yet, in some way you have to reproduce the brain and its way of functioning. A revolution of mind and thinking? Many people claim, and rightly so, that we are experiencing a cognitive revolution. This means that we are learning radically much more about how people really think, in contrast to earlier misconceptions, which could well be termed myths but may long survive. It appears that we do not think in the way we intuitively believe, and that there are peculiarities in thinking, or rather in the cognitive processes, which seem to contradict common sense or actually—yes, indeed—the image the mind has of itself. There is no central point in the mind where everything converges, where control and rule take place. There are only a number of specialised cells interacting according to rules of division of work. At the moment this is the dominant view, but there are people who do not agree, and other views will perhaps be developed in the future. An important point is that parallel computers different from the von Neumann kind operate in the same way. Data are not processed in a serial manner but divided and processed parallel, simultaneously. This is especially suited to image processing where human vision in some way takes in the whole image and not the systematically scanned pattem of lines of a TVscreen or a TV camera. Computers like this can be designed to leam. Just like the repairmen by the coffee machine they leam from experience, without establishing precise and distinct logical rules. Intuition is more important. Perhaps they use concepts which are not as crystal clear as yes or no, black or white, but rather perhaps, just right, grey, in-between, in that direction. There is a special logic for this, "fuzzy logic," which is a powerful tool not least to register experiences. The practical results of one or more persons can be entered without being abstracted to rules. This is instead performed by the machine. A myth with o b v i o u s traditions, well-known roots. The myth of artificial intelligence contains several elements. In a way it goes back to the myths of Pygmalion and Homunculus, the man made from clay, from artificial matter. As such it will stay with us; the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey will have successors. At the same time the impressive statements about computers thinking independently live on, even if they have been proven false. They are bold enough and sofrighteningto many people that they seem to have a life of their own. They may gain new power when parallel computers and self-learning systems are more successful. It should also be pointed out that the vast sector expert systems—applied artificial intelligence—in itself is full of myths. Many researchers have undertaken the task of examining the truth behind expert systems with great economic potential made public in books and articles and at conferences. In most cases it tums out that a few experiments were made but came to nothing. In this fashion we could find a number of myths of the type "the myth, the story of the locomotive program." The t a r g e t is moving, like t h e c r o ck of gold a t t h e e n d of t h e rainbow. However, we should be aware that just as spreadsheets and word-processing programs (or parts of these) today are not thought of as artificial intelligence, neither is a self-instructing copier nor a repair manual. Artificial intelligence is a moving target. Perhaps this contributes 38 ITMyths to making it an effective myth, with great vitality? And if it is killed from time to time it only adds to its strength if it leads to successful attempts at resuscitation... ITMyths 39 Myth #7 Vcdeo cottfanMceA one alwayà expcmùfc, «UfäietUt to annonce—demOMd Auçc 6aMdwieU&. The myth: Many ambitious and costly attempts were made, beginning in the I970's, to introduce videophony. None have succeeded The technology is simply too expensive and too complicated and does not answer to a demand that would motivate the costs even in thefature. The reality: As happens with everything else in information technology videophony costs are declining. Or you could say that comfort and quality increase without additional cost. Just as was the case with telephones andfax machines a certain critical mass must be reached before videophony can have mass appeal. Just like personal computers it could be a mass product in a cheap version with limited quality. In a high-quality version it could be run on closed networks within organisations, waitingfor that critical mass to build up—which gains supportfrompeople getting used to the cheaper version. AT&T, the gigantic American telecommunications company, thought like everybody else that the time was ripe for videophony, at the beginning of the 1970's or slightly later. Consequently equipment was installed in Pittsburgh and other places. It was seen as the cradle, the place of origin, the seed of what would grow into a nation-wide videophone network. Strictly a matter of time, simply. The experiment, which was not intended to be an experiment, is still ongoing. The small videophone network has not grown at all, on the contrary it has diminished. There is a reality to analyse. Analyses of why it never became successful are still of current interest—at least to see if analyses, connections and rules-of-thumb are still valid. First, videophony was too expensive. Second, there never was a whole network: there were never enough people around to talk to—critical mass was neverreached.Compare it to the fax machines: there were isolated fax networks operating in the I960's, but no more. So faxes would never make it big? Then came the fax explosion in the 1980's. Third, the uniqueness of the videophone was that people thought it was good to talk on the phone without showing themselves, so even if they wanted to see the person on the other end of the line they were not willing to pay the price: showing their own face. A picture s a y s m o r e than... and c o s t s more t o transmit. Why then is it so much more expensive with images than just talk? Simple: there is so much more information in an image than in a conversation, much much much more in terms of computer technology. The idea of image transmission as something too difficult and expensive lingers. Nowadays it is, however, hopelessly out of date like so much else. Truth is local, a myth that time has made untrue. To begin with transmission costs have decreased considerably, around 15-20 percent a year. Calculated from the early 1970's it comes to something like 99 percent. But this is not 40 ITMyths the most important factor. Second, computer costs have decreased by 30 to 40 percent a year. This is probably essential. Let the electronic equipment do the Job—at the beginning and the e n d . By using a computer you could code and compress the bulky image very much. You could simply eliminate unnecessary and double information. You could also replace transmission of much information with intelligence, with computer power not only at the sender part of the transmission but also at the receiver part. There, local intelligence is used to recreate a moving image, an intelligence which can be used to remember, too. It is a question of only transmitting changesfromone image to the other. It could mean fractal coding of images, that is using the fact that most structures in reality (and in the images) are made up of repetitions of a limited number of structures but on many different scales—the jagged rim of a leaf looks roughly the same regardless of magnification, a coastline looks the same on a map of the world as if I look at it with my own two eyes, from a hilltop as well as the meter between my legs, the fluctuations of the stock exchange look the same over the course of an hour as drawn on a chart of the month... There are other formulas and methods for compressing and coding data—if only the essential hardware is there to unfold the compressed message at the receiving end. A n e w d e a l of possibilities. The possibilities to transmit signals are simply increasing in numbers. From pair-thread for telephony we went on to coaxial cables and radio links. From there it was a big step to optical connections, big since light is used instead of radio connections, even though light is an electromagnetic undulation and the laser was developed from its microwave brother the maser. And so we had satellites, and we had mobile telephony which taught us new tricks when it came to transmitting signals. Cable TV is undeniably moving images and that cable could certainly be used for telephone messages, so why not signals for images, then? There you are! Now, the possibilities are completely new and different than when Bell tried to make videophony their business twenty years ago. So how is it done? • There are now systems for using an ordinary PC for a video conference with the aid of a simple camera. The Swedish Parliament has been following the negotiations in this way, day by day, hour by hour, in a video conference with the administration of the European Community and politicians in Brussels. It is simple and cheap, and ordinary telephone wires are quite adequate. • You could even at the price of a few thousand Swedish crowns buy a printed circuit card and a camera, and voilà! have videophony in your PC, connected to the electronic conference network Internet. You see one or several other "stations" someplace else in your "window" on the screen. • It is also possible to transmit perhaps two TV channels on ordinary old-fashioned telephone wires. Again, part of the secret is coding, and another part is more ingenious technological solutions for communication. Is it possible to manage with grainy, delayed images? The TV images could actually be of the same quality as on a VCR. The Interact image is simpler. It is grainier and delays images of quick movements, since it only transmits changes and it takes a while before these areregisteredif the demand for transmission is larger than the available capacity. ITMyths 41 This is also true for other PC-based solutions—but you could affect quality by renting an adequate transmission capacity and getting more and costlier hardware. In real life it is a big advantage to be able to see the person you are negotiating with and register gestures and the like. Moreover, the biggest advantage could well be that you are able to transmit stills like overhead pictures, newspaper cuttings, et cetera. And what we really know is that transmission capacity keeps getting cheaper, as does hardware, and coding, compression and other technological possibilities. In the near future. Perhaps PC videophony will become the new standard? Perhaps it is the plethora of windows on the screen that will make us tolerate showing our face—because it is just another function? Which is good because it is easier to look at pictures together, at scripts that you work on together, and so on. And on Internet and other "computer mailboxes" you can file not only voice messages but also image messages, for example of when you are talking! Again as part of a larger message. I m a g e s a s part of s o m e t h i n g larger? In 3D? Perhaps we will see using images, images of the communicators themselves, as a natural part of a larger package of groupware, program packages and services which make it easier to conduct teamwork regardless of distance—in space, perhaps in time. We are now talking about brainstorming and registering what must be part of the collective memory of a company or an organisation. For practical reasons, for legal reasons, in order to convince a customer, to secure quality, to fulfil the demands of the law. There are already numerous aids in existence which should make it possible to make a video meeting more vivid—we have now left the simple PC-based solutions. For example there is an American "video wall" where you try to place the participants so that they appear to be sitting at the same table, something which demands big flat screens, "walls," something like mirrors, for the illusion to work. It can be quite convincing—and here it is not the transmission that costs, but the installation. An extension of the development in virtual reality makes for a variant, where you instead project the image inside a helmet of the type which is used in that context. Perhaps it will be both cheaper and of higher quality. With that solution we are closing in on the question how you could represent the participants even more realistically than as flat projections around a conference table. How can they look as alive as in reality, in other words how can they appear three-dimensional? In the helmet mentioned above this is done with projection, by giving the eyes slightly different images as with other three-dimensional projections. Three-dimensional representation is something of a problem. The technical devices you must resort to makes the situation more artificial and less direct. Sitting with a helmet on your head feels less than natural to most people. So far, the helmets are too heavy, as well. Nobody knows if you could get used to it and grow into it! At the MIT Media Lab an original and seemingly clever solution has been tried. You place a mask, a cast of a "neutral" face, on the wall. Then the image of the person who is talking is projected on the mask and this of course contributes to giving the impression of the specific features of the speaker. But of course it comes out a little artificial: it is the projection which is talking and moving, so an obvious mismatch between the neutral mask and the facial expressions of the speaker cannot be avoided. The hologram i s promising a lot—can it deliver? For a technician it is natural to think of a solution with holography. A hologram offers truly three-dimensional representations, and at least short holographic film sequences have been produced. 42 ITMyths Question is if the technical problems are too great. Holograms are based on interference between light waves in dimensions like the light wave length. That means short and grainy! It means large amounts ofinformation to transmit, and entirely new types of projection, with high-resolution systems of a completely different kind than the screens of today. But perhaps this is the beginning of a new myth? That of the heavy and nigh impossible demands of holography, which perhaps some clever technicians in the background are working their way around with a solution which will make us all gasp and say "Ooh!" There are reports saying that such efforts are in the making. ITMyths 43 Myth #8 lelecommutticatùMA otfOtcmà one éUtfftUi attd uttcÂOMçeaéte The myth: Telecommunications systems represent large, heavy, long-term investments. They take decades to write-off Systems take time to build up and they are expensive to renew, i.e. progress will be sluggish and slow. The reality: What was once the ultimate truth is no longer so. Telecommunications systems are no longer necessarily electrical wiring, but can be light-waves and radio. Telephone stations do not have to be connected buildings with big obvious machines, but can be decentralised hardware localised where appropriate. A local telephone exchange can be virtual, fanctions can be spread out and allocated in the distributed, decentralised "system " even though it appears to be in the hands of the person operating it. Software is the key to the various functions. Telephone wires are hanging outside my window. I have had the same telephone for decades. Telecommunication is like roads and railways, certainly telecommunication systems must be slow and unchangeable. The investments are necessary but expensive. Think of France that invested so late, think of the developing countries and their poor infrastructure. It feels almost like a miracle that if I make a phone call to China my telephone is in galvanic contact with the one in China. Before, this was certainly the case, but nowadays you ca not be sure. This uncertainty is what directly contradicts the old idea that the telecommunication system is so sluggish and slow to change. Four really g r e a t c h a n g e s . For the contents of these systems it might be true, indeed, for the market and structure of demand connected to these systems—they might be sluggish sometimes. But it is not true for the telecommunication systems themselves! Not anymore. No, there are at least four sweeping changes: 1. 2. 3. 4. The digital revolution The new freedom of choice The merging of information machines The merging of industries The digital revolution means that our speech, data and images, all which shall be communicated, are transmitted in data form. Using the well-known, wom-out zeros and ones. Digitally. Obvious s t a t i o n s , m a c h i n e s , isolated units—before. Not long ago a telephone station was a large electromagnetic monster buildingrepresentinga coherent unit. The station was vulnerable, and it demanded quite a bitfromthe building it was in. Now, electronics is digital, and, as we know, at the same time it is cheaper because it allows us to replace physically large computers with many small ones, equally powerful as the original. Or more powerful—in any case faster and morerobust.More complex, yet more robust—that is a paradox of digital technology. 44 ITMyths Before, the telecommunication system was not only about relatively few large telephone stations which were clearly visible—these few stations could also with relative ease be distinguished from the telephone system itself for purposes of cost estimates and planning. Naturally station and system were dependent on each other, but everything was technically unambiguous and distinguishable, telephone station versus system. Digital t e c h n o l o g y blurs, t a k e s a w a y boundaries. With electronics and digitalisation the clear distinction faded away. Digital signals could be transmitted in other ways, could be coded, transmission could be made more efficient, and many channels could be out side by side only to be separated in another place. In many contexts we have seen how the load on the system can be altered by deciding how much power should be close to the sender and the receiverrespectively,for example when transmitting images. This decides the dimensions of the system, the capacity demanded. Naturally there are demands and priorities concerning what must be put at the telephone stations. But these can now be divided and distributed over the whole system. What must be optimised is then the function of the entire system, including telephone stations connecting phone calls and other connections. It i s p o s s i b l e t o c h o o s e b e t w e e n different w a y s of s e n d i n g information. As we have seen you can, according to demands of capacity and economy, choose much more freely between transmission through the air, and between different kinds of cables and wires. This makes it cheaper and more manageable to expand. The telephone system is not the stationary and sluggish unit it used to be. It can be changed through flexible operations in different places. Moreover it can be changed through different programming. Digital technology allows for reprogramming in an entirely different way than when you connect up and install new relay stations! The condition is that there are telephones that can use the programs, which means that the phones should have at least twelve keys. This abstract, digital freedom brings with it mobility,freedomput into practice, which can be expressed in a few different dimensions. It means a much greater freedom in space—you can move about freely and receive messages through your mobile phone or your pager, carry your laptop computer and your personal digital assistant around with you. It also brings with it freedom in time, since you can leave messages in electronic mailboxes, on answering machines or use voice-mail. It is also about largerfreedomof form: you can choose between words, images and data, and soon you will perhaps be able to show yourself, run simulations, even try tele-presence. Withfreedomof form comes largerfreedomof content: what was previously simply not possible to transmit can now be communicated. And in a way you could say that via these opportunities we can disguise ourselves or express new facets of ourselves. Old b o u n d a r i es a r e c r o s s e d , distinctions are blurred. If you list mobile phone, personal digital assistant, fax machine, personal computer and telephone you are immediately faced with a problem. Is not the personal digital assistant a computer and a telephone at the same time? A fax machine and a simple videophone can be built into the PC—so why sort out fax as a medium on its own? No, information machinery is merging and overlapping. Old statistics are invalid. And telecommunication systems are far from unchangeable. ITMyths 45 Satellite transmission is of course a special form of radio telephony. Mobile telephony as well as radio on the "citizen" and amateur bandwidths are other forms. It is not absolutely necessary to assemble a number of phone calls through a wire and then use a satellite, but there are ideas for how systems of satellites flying relatively low could make up a global telecommunication system where there is no difference between mobile telephony and other telephony. But the satellites have simply got to compete with other solutions. Even if the French had to wait until the end of the 1970's to get a modem telecommunication system, new countries do not have to wait very long. Solutions resembling mobile telephony, including telephone stations on ships off the Polish coast, have made it possible for "new market economies" in Eastem Europe, old Soviet "satellite states," to very rapidly create such technological solutions that the communication important to business works. Telecommunication economy has changed character. You can look at it from a cost perspective. What is cheap is easily achieved. Optical cables everywhere where there is dense Swedish telephone traffic cost as much as a few miles of highway. It could still be a problem if there were limited resources, limited space in some way. In the United States you talk about "right of way," i.e. the permission to pull wires or cables. It is a matter of negotiation and essentially a legal question, a matter of permission. But Sweden is open and liberal conceraing this. Again we hit upon the opportunities to use electromagnetic waves, radio. Here the restraint which could lead to sluggishness is lack of bandwidth. But again the digitalisation—coupled with other technological development—means that the opportunities are increasing. Another type of sluggishness isfinancial.It is obvious in countries which have talcum monopolies with earlier large investments on their balance sheets to pay mortgages on. In these cases technology and deregulation are important factors. Competition is a driving force -deregulation is necessitated by technology. We have seen how Televerket (the Swedish telecommunications administration), now Telia, gradually more and morerapidly,and deviating from earlier plans, switched to the AXE system, a digital system instead of traditional electromechanical stations. This was for two reasons, partly the "invisible foot" in the form ofrivals competing with better quality, features and price. Then there is no choice despite what the balance sheet says about assets which have not been written off. Partly it was due to the lower price on semiconductor electronics, which may make it financially justifiable to invest in the new technology in spite of the fact that the old one is still functioning and has not been written off. What Is the difference between telephone cable and TV cable? Finally we see something rather different: the next big crossing of boundaries. How far this will go remains unsaid, but a lot is happening, and some of it is happening fast. As we have seen you can transmit simple, cheap and slow but practical videophony on an ordinary telephone wire. For a few thousand Swedish crowns you can communicate on Internet, the public conference network, with eight people at the same time. Otherwise the great new possibility being discussed is to use TV cable for telephones. Possibly the reverse will happen even earlier, i.e. to use telephone cable for cable TV. The new possibilities can be expected to cause confusion and some disappointments. But they will definitely contradict the idea that telephone systems are unchangeable! 46 ITAfyths •'•i;'. ;-fC- ,.': ITMyths 47 Myth # 9 Society will âc pafienieoo The myth: The mechanical calculator was swept away by the electromc one, the cash register, as was the electromechanical telephone station by electromc competitors. Now, when it is cheaper to store information electronically than on paper, and easier to search using computer search tools, paper will disappear. The office will be paperless, school will be paperless— society will be paperless. The reality: Development of computers and electronics has brought with it a deluge of paper. Paper seems to have certain qualities that suit people, which we perceive as comfortable. And paper is still cheap enough, so it does not matter that it costs a bit more than electronic memories. The paperless society. The paperless office. The paperless school, the paperless university. Of course paper quantities will be radically reduced. For more than ten years there has been an office or a shop called "The Paperless Office" in Washington DC—in the very Watergate complex, neighbour to the Swedish embassy before it moved, and to the Watergate hotel. Of course electronics will take over. Of course all information will be digital. Yet again visions of the future that came out wrong—can w e leam anything from t h e m ? The predictions did not come true at all. On the contrary paper quantities seem to increase with computerisation, with informatisation. What went wrong? Perhaps nothing, except that human reactions were misjudged. It is true that it is cheaper to store data electronically. The cost of hardware is declining by about 40 percent a year, memory costs only slightly slower. Against the option central information storage available by telecommunications, with cost declines of about 20 percent annually, stands the opportunity to have your own electronic memory: semiconductor, hard disc, floppy disc, CD-ROM. If you look at the actual costs of floppy disk and CD-ROM you will find that paper concerning the cost of the media as well as shelf-space does not stand a chance. Still, people seem to prefer paper—not for everything but for a lot. Is it a question of a generation gap, maybe? We do know that it is easier to proof-read on paper. It feels safer to print a message on the screen and save it for reading later, than to just store it in an electronic memory. Perhaps it is because it is easier to bring paper to read on the subway or on airplanes than it now is to work using a laptop computer, perhaps it is because most people have both a stationary computer and a laptop computer, if they have a laptop at all. How m u c h paper per n e w c o m p u t e r bought? Program? Fax machine? On an ironic note we can establish that every purchase of a computer or a program is accompanied by a little library, manuals and instruction books. Computer companies cannot afford to practice what they preach—some of them have really propagandised paperlessness and its imaginary blessings. 48 ITMyths C o p i e s a n d c o p i e s of c o p i e s . More important to the paper quantities is probably the invention of Xerox copying. Suddenly it was possible to give paper information to everybody who had requested it and you could silence their demands before they had arisen—which led to lots of unnecessary copying and circulating, "just in case." There is a not so recent American study of internal circulation of documents in an office. It showed that in a day 27 documents were put in the average "out-tray." 14 of these documents did not really belong there. You can also describe the great importance of copying by saying that you can make copies of copies. P a p e r i s part of a s y s t e m . . . There is a system built around paper. This refers to envelopes, mail routines, files, binders, bookshelves of the correct size, means to write with, et cetera. If you look at this system you may well find it sluggish and awkward compared to what electronic storage, transmission and search allows for. At the same time there is a lucidity and clearness in different colours on different files, localisation of different documents in the room, mnemonic aids connected to orientation in the room—as well as a certainreluctanceto break up the system. The great successes for "time control," i.e., advanced paper-based planning systems connected to your personal calendar (Time Manager and their competitors) seem almost ironic in the face of the fast development of various advanced tools in smaller and more manageable computers and electromc systems. ... and IS a s y s t e m ! However, paper-based products show the intrinsic potential of paper and its openness to direct cleverness. It illuminates something which is often overlooked, namely that paper is not just a memory device—which is what many take as a starting-point when they compare costs for information storage on various media. Paper is much more—it is a system! Paper is a system which is signified by its user-friendliness. If paper did not exist maybe electronics would invent it. Paper is more than a mnemonic element, it is the display you read on. When you write on it paper has an input function. In an existing text, i.e., in the memory, you can enter margin notes. You can write illegibly, but you could also say that the number of fonts and the possibilities of individuality are endless. You can tear off a bit of a paper, you can use a yellow or purple marker to make sections of the text stand out more clearly. Just think of the newspaper. Actually an incredible amount ofinformation, yet lucid, allowing you to skip the uninteresting parts but still discover the unexpected which you would not have asked for. Is not paper s e n s u a l ? And in a fine book it is a pleasant feeling to turn the page. There is a sensuality in elegant printed matter, a tactile feeling which can be heightened by the smell of paper and print. The talk about the paperless school, the paperless newspaper et cetera, is based on a simplistic and rather mechanical view on people who use information. Maybe this tactility and smell are thereminiscencesof a literate generation. What we do not know is if future generations who have played computer games and watched TV in the cradle will have the same appreciation of paper and paperbome messages. If paper as a medium has lost importance because of declining newspaper sales, it has regained this on computer manuals, faxes and copies. Similar changes and shifts will occur in the future. This is one of the things we can say with complete certainty. New inventions will come, maybe not all as beneficial to paper as the copiers. ITMyths 49 What d o e s t h e c o m p a n y ' s memory look like? Development aimed at creating corporate memory and organise a work flow is taking place. This means that an organisation, a company, an organisation, an association co-operate on developing documents. Even if the co-operation is not primarily about documents but about the outcome of a legislative process or product development, the results are in the form of documents: blueprints, descriptions, minutes, letters. In the process of co-operation itself big gains can be made by connecting different desks, by sharing the work flow in a new way. This can of course be done using the tools ofinformation technology. The aids that exist have given good results. This development will continue, accelerate, spread. At the same time there are questions and limitations. How ready should the material be in order to deserve distribution to a wider circle? How can you distinguish between different generations of a common document? Who is actually responsible, not perhaps as publisher but more for the effects of the document, if it has faults or can be misunderstood? How should problems of copyright be handled? What distortion effects do we risk if this way of working is the basis for rewards, such as promotion, salary, power? Naturally old-fashioned co-operation, based on paper, ordinary meetings, the telephone et cetera, has the same problems, at least concerning the valuation of individual achievements. There are certainly distortions, but we have learned to live with them. The corporate memory means the idea to organise everything worth organising regarding information and communication in, to,fromand within an organisation. In this respect you can also see great potential gains. Characteristically this method has been developed in American companies which have big legalresponsibilities.It can be companies which have signed large defence contracts. It can be industries, areas of technology, where there are special demands on documented security: pharmaceuticals, airlines, nuclear power. Careful documentation showing that certain matters have been considered, that there were motives for specific choices, can be demanded afterward. Since you cannot know in advance what questions will arise later it is vital to have a good "general" memory. Quality thinking is a driving force. Another need stems from the American quality movement. The annual Malcolm Baldridge Award is very prestigious. Collection of points following a checklist of a wide range of corporate activities is demanded. Like in the European variant, ISO certification, systematic and routine registering of documents and "events" in the life of the company or the association can be an obligation or a facilitating factor. In the practical work with an internal quality program "work flow" can also be used. A stack of paper, documents, electronically registered data—to organise and search in this is not an enviable task. That is why meaningful activities like corporate memory and work flow demand tools helping you find your way, without making unreasonable demands on the person entering information into the system. This brings us to what is called hypertext, something which enables us to make connections and enter search terms in a much freer way than would ever be possible in paper-based form. Eliminating paper—a w a y of b e c o m i n g innovative? To imagine a paperless office is a positive challenge. To start without paper is to critically scrutinise what paper is really good for. The same goes for a paperless school and other forms of paperlessness imaginable. JO ITMyths The Danish company Oticon, a world leader in hearing aids (even if they do not approve of this expression, no-one calls glasses seeing aids) has made their offices paperless. Perhaps this example can illuminate the dependence on the outside world and the reluctance to a paperless society. The company receives stacks of letters and printed matter. Everybody gets these in their own mailbox and goes through them in the mailroom. Everything that can be thrown away is thrown away there, and what should be saved is stored on optical discs. In that way it is then available electronically. Through the cafeteria runs a hollow plastic tube where the shredded paper messages fall down, as a constantreminderof paperlessness. Which after all is not complete. On the technological development department they still have to work with paper for matters concerning the exact CAD screens and their equally precise printouts. The fundamental reason why the society or the office has yet to become paperless is simple: it is not a good goal, just as a completely automated manufacturing plant or a "peoplefree" machine-room. What it is about is to work more effectively, to reach certain overarching corporate goals. In Oticon, paperlessness stands as a symbol for something much larger, what the CEO Lars Kolind refers to as "the unthinkable." Out of this unthinkable has emerged an organisation without hierarchy where everyone has a briefcase of three completely different tasks or focuses. The new way of working and thinking is a goal, paperlessness is one of many means and another one is that nobody, not even the CEO, has a permanent working space—again the development group is the exception. Perhaps in the future some company will on the contrary be paper-based in order to stand out from their competitors and colleagues who do not go in for user-friendliness as much. For paper is a system—which contains our attitudes toward it, created by habit, among other things. ITMyths 51 Myth #10 'pattoiUM. wiii 6c {fCttùf automated, comfttetefy without otafä The myth: Technology replaces people. Robots are cheaper, more efficient, more precise, more obedient, more predictable in the long run. The natural extension of the increasingly roboticisedfactories is that they becomefallyautomated This has already happened with a few factories and some warehouses. (The myth can be generalised evenfarther,to include for example the retail trade.) The reality: Technology can do more and more, and is becoming more robust and generally programmable—that's true. But its target is moving: new technology makes for new possibilities andfor (his reason demands more not onlyfromtechnology itself but also from people. The point is that people, unlike robots, are unpredictable,flexibleand creative! The goal is not to get rid of people but to produce things with a junction, thai can be sold and used. The factories of the future are fully automated, they are run by robots, and do not need humans. The expression "untouched by human hand" gets an exact meaning. And if you can make factories that are run by computers, you could send instructions, commands and orders to them via telecommunications. They can be placed anywhere that is economical—balancing costs of transportation, proximity to the market, and land prices for the factory. Fully or almost fully automated factories have been built—that is true. Smaller units, of the warehouse type, which are entirely operated mechanically and electronically have also been built. D e v e l o p m e n t on a side-track, g o n e astray. But this movement in development has come to a halt, turned around, at least to a degree. Eliminating people seems to be a strange and backward goal. Reasonable goals are insteadflexibility,high quality, customer value, and above all profitability. It is now a question of striking a balance between automation and manual labour, and paying attention to costs,flexibilityand quality. Flexibility—it is about being able to adjust, adapt to new customer demands, technical ideas, perhaps brilliant inventions with greater rewards and demands, and above all something different. Something unforeseen—which demands genuine flexibility. It has turned out that people actually have advantages compared to machines. Sometimes the advantages are of the kind that it could seem that man is being degraded, but this is far from always the case. People are much more flexible, much more general, much more "general purpose," than any machine. There a r e o b v i o u s , s o m e t i m e s t o o obvious, e x a m p l e s . In a number of rational modern warehouses, computers know how many items there are and where they can be found. But a man is sitting on the huge, custom-made and automated fork-lift truck. With his eyes he can find the right object in therightquantity when the fork-lift truck has steered to the right place. The right object and in the right quantity because there is a huge span between the small and the big, between different colours and shapes. Besides, man easily beats most robot 52 ITAfyths arms and robot hands when it comes to grasping delicate objects—an egg is the prototype of what man can manage but the machine finds difficult. (It may be added that many modern warehouses are monuments to antiquated thinking—with just-in-time deliveries you do not need very large warehouses, instead they should be as small as possible.) IBM constructed a new printer, with only half as many details as the earlier one. Cheaper, faster, higher quality, easier service. And completely automated production—or so it was believed. OK, it was fine to manufacture the printer, as was intended, especially since they had fewer parts and simpler and more efficient joining, and therefore were easier to take disassemble. But it was even faster and more efficient and resulted in higher quality to have people involved in the production. Toyota designed a completely automated factory. They now confess that they went too far. Complete automation did not work out as intended, it was not flexible enough, not adjustable enough to any large surprises and changes. Reliability was not as high as they had hoped, either. People are needed. Mazak, which sells production equipment and wanted to demonstrate that they are automating themselves, has a showroom factory which attracts many visitors. But they are not the only people there. It was impossible to fully automate the most varied tasks. It was best, indeed unavoidable, to use the eminent flexibility of people. And this in spite of the fact that Mazak wanted to demonstrate that the machines they sell can manage everything. Seiko manufactures instruments as well as their most famous product, watches, along with some other products. When production is switched to a new product, retraining of employees must take the lion's share of time and resources, since the machines themselves are quickly re-programmable, right? Seiko's answer is that it is exactly the other way around. People are so well-educated and generally knowledgeable that they adjust quickly, whereas machines take much more time (but not necessarily very long either). Adjusting the machines is a human task, as is reprogramming them. But—the Seiko people thought that the conditions were not the same in the United States, where available manpower is not as well-educated and does not have the same general work competence. Tele-presence and virtual reality emphasise man's unique abilities. In many of its imagined applications, tele-presence is a prime example of, at best, successful combinations of the strengths that characterise people and machines respectively. We are talking about robots, but not robots in the original sense. For they are not programmed, but operated by a person, commonly by that person performing the movements that the remotecontrolled robot faithfully and exactly imitates. It can be a fireman robot, which can take heat and heavy lifts and balancing on heights— but the situation is always new, and using the eyes of the robot the human, skilled fireman can steer. Repairs in subterranean tunnels, in inaccessible mines, underwater work—man is manoeuvring but does not have to take the risk. Perhaps in the future: micro-surgeons operating from inside the human body, controlled by real surgeons on the outside? More everyday tasks like plumbing in inaccessible spaces, chimney-sweeping and work on difficult roofs... Dangerous situations in a minefield, where the robot can be made much lighter than a man, problems in chemical and other reactors... the possibilities are infinite. But so far and for some time they will be expensive to realise. Dynamic d e v e l o p m e n t , not s t a t i c invariability. The idea that people would be replaced by machines, by robots, comes partlyfromthe old fear—or dream?—of an artificial human being. But that idea is too static, since it assumes that nothing else will change. ITAfyths 53 Because what happens with robots and advanced machines operated with information technology is that these can be operated in a much moreflexibleand smooth way. The degrees of freedom multiply. When it became possible to program telephone stations the difference between telephone station and telephone system gradually disappeared, and space was created for a large number of telecommunications services where there had previously only been one: to connect two subscribers. In the same way new production techniques suddenly offer what used to be a contradiction in terms: mass consumption implies mass production, low price implies mass production. Instead we have flexible specialisation and custom-made products at a mass production price. It is a violation of the mêmes of scale expressed in methods of calculation, forms of organisation, rules-of-thumb, ways of thinking—Taylorism, Fordism, MTM, "there is only one economically best solution," "one best solution" (to quote F W Taylor), The cheapest is no longer the best if the better one c o s t s only a little bit more. Maybe there is only one best solution but the additional cost for dozens of other solutions is negligible in relation to the added value that the customer, the user, the consumer is willing to pay for. The only condition is that the production, construction, and distribution systems are ready to fulfil the promises the new technology makes. An example is Matsushita in Japan, which sells bicycles there under the trade name Matsushita. There are eleven million different options available! It does not cost very much more to have a bicycle custom-made, and it could be ready in two days, even if it now takes two weeks since Matsushita wants to purvey the image that something exclusive is being delivered. It may well be that many of the components and in part the whole bicycle is manufactured in automated machines. It obviously demands a well thought-through production system, extensive co-operation with subcontractors, management of warehouses and internal and external transports. The salesman and the customers must put in an effort connected to the sale and choice of bicycle. In the choice of bicycle and the construction process information technology plays a part. The conclusion is that the options and flexibility of this technique lead to a redistribution of work tasks—some, the most monotonous and least pleasant, become rare or perhaps disappear, and others grow in importance such as the right to use the flexibility and freedom of choice offered by information technology. New challenges, new skills become essential? In the same way tele-presence is a fascinating andfrighteningdevelopment which probably in the beginning will be realised in more down-to-earth, everyday ways. But again the human abilities flexibility, adaptability, creativity, and combination skills are used. If we may speculate it might be a matter of developing intuition, which is theoretically hard to get at but very valuable in practical life. A world without people is in any case a strange goal, even if we limit it to a world of people-less production. A worldfreefromjobs which are not suited to people is on the other hand a desirable goal. When a Japanese company, Yamashita Electric, have as their goal that "people should be doing what people are good at, machines should be doing what they are good at"—it is an effective and dynamic goal. What machines are good at changes all the time. But when machines change in this way, we discover at the same time what people are good at. Will creativity and intuition be the next rediscoveries? 54 ITAfyths Myth #11 VwcotmcttU 6avc dcetitted e«*t4*dena6bf. T h e myth: We can see clear and worrying declines in corporate investments. It means an unsurefinancialfature,and weakened power to compete internationally. T h e reality: // is true that investments have declined considerably—the way they are measured. However, the problem is that the measuring methods, the way investments are defined, lags behind reality. Because today a large and growing portion of investments goes to knowledge and information, to market communication and branding, to IT software and hardware, to training and development of the organisation. These costs are not counted as investments—but they are investments. Swedish politicians and economists have worried a lot over the obvious decline in corporate investments shown by statistics. It is not a local Swedish problem, but is also visible in the largest national economy of them all, the United States. T h e s a m e problem e v e r y w h e r e, t h e s a m e illusion of a problem. No wonder several countries notice the same thing, since the problem could well be an illusion related to great changes in industrial structure, in the way a number of advanced countries function economically. It is the very focus of investments that has changed to categories we did not use to classify as investments. What it is now about is what has not traditionally been treated as investments according to good accounting practices. But if the investments nowadays have changed character, there may still be problems. One problem could be that you do not have the same indicators to see where the economy is going. It is probably unfortunate if you feel you have to stimulate one type of investments if instead another one—but hidden, unknown, not entered in the books—should be favoured or at least not treated unfavourably. And which should moreover be measured, managed and better understood. Obvious d i f f e r e n c e s disappea r entirely. You may distinguish between two types of expenses: investments and running expenses. For everyday production and operation you have running expenses. Investments is something you use for a number of years, like factories and machines. The depreciation period should mirror the life span. One of the problems is, as we shall see, that what is counted as running expenses can be of vital importance to the investments' real value. Another problem is that there are two kinds of life span, a technical one and a financial one. This problem is now becoming more urgent, for several reasons. It has partly to do with the development ofinformation technology, and partly with the faster market development. A computer has an (almost) infinite technical life span. You may find it necessary to replace a keyboard or a screen because they are technically wom out, but the interior that does the actual data processing is really not wom out. New computers have so many advantages and features, including capacity and speed, that technological development still makes it wise to change for financial reasons, even if the equipment is not "finished." ITMyths 55 Also, there is no point having machines that work, old or new, or factories where the machines are standing, if nobody wants to buy the products these machines produce. Possibly you could differ between equipment which is out-of-date from a financial perspective, and what is out of operation market-wise, even though the market is strongly related to economy. Big shifts in c o s t structure. The "hardware" part of product cost is—somewhat depending on the kind of product—declining rapidly. The development cost, the marketing and sales cost, which includes finding out what should be sold, and the cost of services related to the product increase in share. Many of these services are based on information and knowledge and, consequently, often on information technology. If we get an order on a large, single product which needs research and development to be produced, these are running expenses for that product. If the effort in research and development builds a foundation for a whole series of new products and is used for several years, it is actually an investment: it should be written off during its life span, even though this can be difficult to ascertain and establish (but the same is true for machines et cetera). Some knowledge development is really an investment. A single company cannot develop everything or even most things themselves. An important way to adopt results of research and development is to buy machines and other equipment where such results of research and development has been built in. Training of staff that will handle the machines is necessary in order to be able to use them properly. Recruiting people who already have knowledge, either from a company or from a university or such, is another effective way to develop knowledge assets. Part of their salary can be seen asfinancialcompensation for their expertise. An investment paid with running expenses. Sometimes there are statistics—formally of another kind. Has not it always been like this? Yes, it certainly has, but the point is that products and services are becoming more dependent on knowledge. The share held byresearchand development has increased. At the same time the life cycle of the results has shortened in many cases. Investments of this kind have increased considerably and at the same time they live shorter. There are clear statistics for research and development. They show a doubling of Swedish R&D as a share of the GNP over a period of thirty years. Free enterprise stands for almost all actual increase, so we could really say it's a factor three. What is shown in statistics—always difficult to do—to a higher degree than before underestimates the real scope of research and development. This is for two reasons. One of them is structural and has to do with information technology itself, namely that the Swedish economy and, even more so, that of the United States is increasingly characterised by small and new companies, while the big companies, becomingrelativelysmaller, comprise a smaller share of the economy. The smaller companies are not included in the research statistics, which consequently does not cover a sector which until a few years ago was negligible but now should be included in the bookkeeping. A study made by the Central Bureau of Statistics and NUTEK shows that a number of companies which, as judged by their sales, are very small, make gigantic investments in R&D—and besides, this micro-sector in its entirety is not negligible in national statistics. Another statistical problem is directly connected to the entrance ofinformation technology. Research and development are defined according to an international convention, which does not include more "routine" construction work meant to transfer the development results to real production. This distinction used to be not entirely without problems, but still relatively clear. 56 ITMyths This is no longer the case. With CAD tools you can calculate, test and simulate in a computer, and the boundary between development and construction is gradually disappearing. You would think that this would make for an overestimation of development costs, but studies so far show that they are instead being underestimated. T h e distortion h a s b e e n pointed out, and t h e figures s o u g h t h a v e b e e n brought out. Professor Gunnar Eliasson has long been able to show that the figures and statistics are distorted, among other places in the book "The Knowledge-Based Information Economy," published by Industriens Utredningsinstitut (the Industrial Research Institute) and TELEKON 1990. If we, like him, recalculate statistics we find that the sectors in the economy comprising "information design" stand for 8.5 percent of the economy. In the manufacturing industry internal information stands for 16.1 percent while external services— and that's not only information—represent 23.9 percent. If we instead look at how the labour force was used in 1980 (and the development toward information work has been fast since then) Eliasson estimates that creation of new knowledge stood for 5.6 percent, financial co-ordination (market information et cetera) for 25.2 percent and knowledge and information transfer, from data communication via research reports to media for 5.3 percent. The total for Sweden would be 36.1 percent, against 40.8 for Great Britain and all of 45.8 for the United States. Laterfiguresreferto 1986, when Eliasson could establish that the share for big Swedish companies was about 44 percent. The d e p r e c i a t i o n period is important—as it i s t o all i n v e s t m e n t s t a t i s t i c s . But our initial discussion concerned the investments. What does not count as investments is not included in a depreciation plan. Consequently it depends on the depreciation period how large a share the immaterial investments should be of the total investments. In the ten largest Swedish multinational companies the investments in R&D, marketing and training can indeed be estimated to 40-61 percent—the interval depends on the write-off principles. (The fact that knowledge you have invested in is not consumed but rather grows with use when used and combined with other knowledge—that has yet to be shown in theoretical economical terms.) The r e p l a c e m e n t v a l u e s p e a k s clearly. If you were to make calculations on something as interesting—and, it seems,relevant—asreplacement value, it is for the "soft side" (and the same selection of companies)roughlyequivalent to information and knowledge, worth 90 percent of the physical investments, including goods in stock. (In the physical investments you will find embedded knowledge, you buy machines for their performance, which is partly based on research, development and construction. Of course you will also find direct information machines like computers and switchboards and the like.) We c a n look a t t h e s e r v i c e s e c t o r a s well. In Eliasson's figures for manufacturing companies "external services" were included. Everything is not information, but for example computer consultants and advertising agencies belong in that category. Sweden and many other industrialised countries have for a long time been "service economies," if you choose to focus the number of people employed in the service sector. In Sweden these people to a high degree work in the public sector. Just concerning the service sector there are a number of myths. A common opinion is that no research and development whatsoever is undertaken in the service sector. But of course ITMyths 57 that is not the case, it is only that development looks different, obviously, than when you develop physical goods and objects. How do you do research on a service? Above all: what does the product look like, and how do you develop it? Naturally in close contact with the market. What is looked upon as failed or semi-failed sales activities could reasonably be looked upon as development costs instead. Testing new combinations, say for example selling computer programs in a kiosk, is it in some ways as well. Here another factor is obscuring things: American studies indicate that the sector in its entirety, possibly with the exception of the retail trade, spends as much on research and development as the manufacturing industry. And much of what they do is of course tied to information technology: telecommunications services, computer services, software services. A problem with services as well as information is that both have the character of miscellaneous items. That provides the basis for many myths, including those that prove the existence of an "information society" or a "service society": "this can be proven" with statistics, but the miscellaneous item is incredibly heterogeneous, and by generalising from narrow sectors you get a completely distorted view of the whole—which is not a whole anyway. Proving with statistics by the way: there may be many miscellaneous items- but that does not stop the entire service sector in the United States from being described by 40 statistical categories, whereas the industrial sector is described by 10 000! Industry i s t h e foundation. Both information and services have a close connection to industry itself, the manufactured product. Without that they generally lack meaning. But the reverse is true, too: no factory, no machine has any value—regardless of what the balance sheet indicates—if they do not produce sellable things. That's why there are companies that spend more time and effort on their balance sheet of ideas—yes, ideas!- than they do on their financial balance sheet. The law, the stock exchange, and the owners say they must have the latter. But the ideas are the future, the possibility to have any returns on the contents of the balance sheet. Earlier, we stated that a product in itself involves a lot more than the actual goods. Different services can be the collective denomination. Among these we find information, maintenance, training perhaps—including those that make the product grow with time so to speak, and become more useful. We are talking about training the customer, which should not be thought of as an investment. But we can establish that the more frequent use of new technology and the demands to build in and transfer knowledge and training in the products make it essential to invest in staff training. Again it is not training that will be "consumed," but an investment. IT i s a large hidden factor, and it i s growing. Before we proceed, with Gunnar Eliasson, to point out an even larger area of investment, namely in the market and in links to customers, we will look at a basic factor behind the development in that area and in research and development, which was treated earlier. Of course we are talking about computers and telecommunications systems. Regardless of the area of application we know that what really costs is not the investment in computers or switchboards, but the opportunities to use these tools successfully. Again training comes up, and moreover, training on a higher level: organisational change, perhaps of a radical kind. Here it's definitely about investments, since you hope that the mobilisation will be lasting! Obviously software is an investment as important as hardware—you do not use a program just for a year or for one project? (Another thing is that it feels good to treat the program as an 58 ITMyths expense—otherwise the bookkeeping would be too complicated, what with all the updates and all! An analogy could be the corporate library: books and serious magazines are really investments.) Even more exciting is the fact that the data you enter into your systems, the contacts and possibilities that exist in the telecommunications systems, are also potential resources— potential in a different and broader sense of the word than the machines that have to produce something you can sell. Here, the reverse situation exists, meaning that data and other things that have been developed for specific and defined tasks may have great added value, if you can only find synergies and symbioses. It is important to be creative—a small development effort can have great leverage, and yet again we areremindedof the problems associated with entering immaterial investments in the books. The s o f t w a r e a r e a i s very s p e c i a l . A small amount of programming concerns technology and natural science. The scientific reality serves as a solid foundation—in the form of Maxwell's equations. Ohm's laws, et cetera—for the results calculated. This does not apply to most other programs, which have to do with co-ordination, control, and management of large data quantities. We want to believe that they are based on human logic. How can we create the clear "Ohm's laws" that should apply, and which provide good tests for controlling that the software works? The airport in Denver has not been able to open in a year because the software managing luggage handling does not work. Simple and cheap—oh no, afinancialdisaster. Sabre is a successful program for booking tickets, and American Airlines ticket to financial success when air transportation was becoming less profitable. The next step was a matter of course: connecting the system with booking the leading hotel chains. Alas! Following losses of about 200 million dollars the project was shut down. In the United States when they want to redesign air-traffic control it costs billions of dollars--and at the time of writing it is uncertain if the scaled-down project, which so far has cost twice as much as budgeted, will ever get off the ground. The purpose of this lament for investments turned sour, is to point out what potential there is in developing methods to make better software, to make it work better (to work!), perhaps repair itself, to be built up by modules—or something else. There are methods which promise to increase productivity 15times.On top of this there are skilled programmers that achieve the same results a hundred times faster than an average programmer. You can easily understand that training and selection procedures, but also organisation and method development have effects that make conventional calculation of investments tricky. Investing in being f a m o u s and earning c o n f i d e n c e . One area remains, and that is market and customers. That is the area of the largest growth in what should rightly be called investments. To start with, if we look at recent company acquisitions it turns out that astronomical sums have been paid for brands. A brand is the incarnation of something that is more than a name or a symbol. It stands for a quality, and a relation between seller and buyer. It is something that only in part can be established with commercial campaigns and bargain prices. It takes more for the brand to symbolise something good, and something you automatically choose to buy: characteristics and experiences of some kind. Another thing is that commercial campaigns and bargain prices can give a new brand the chance to become established. That the reasoning has different meaning to different kinds of products,fromeveryday commodities to consumer durable ITMyths 59 goods to investment products or expendable supplies for industries and offices, is quite natural. Research and development as well as administration and management use information technology, and this is also the case with sales and marketing. Its reverse should be included in marketing, trying to find ascertain customer reaction to the products, both existing and planned products. SIFO (a statistical information institute) and their counterparts in other countries use increasingly sophisticated methods, aided by computers, to describe and divide market and population in different opinion, customer and consumer groups. In the United States they are even more advanced. Not only do they use TV commercials, based on the sophisticated surveys, in a clever way. They also use telephone plus cable TV to keep the customers alert. There are "intelligent shopping trolleys," too, which point out news, bargains and what is on offer in the closest gondolas, to the customer. Consumer taste is clearly revealed by what is selling well. It important not to get tied down with large supplies of unwanted goods—it is better to have them on sale. To manage the logistics system, i.e. subcontractors, intermediate storage, transportation, and what's on the warehouse shelves—these are tasks suitable for computers and telecommunications technology. Developing systems like that can be research and development. Installing them is an investment. Creating an image of your customers and building a good relation to them is really no less of an investment. A real breakthrough for IT. The new image of investments may seem harder to manage, and elusive. In a way it is. But thinking that the old image is more sturdy and tangible is to give in to an illusion. Because today it is not. As we said earlier, what are machines worth—regardless of their book value—if their products ca not find buyers? In addition it should be said, using the title of an American novel, that "something has happened." What has happened is that information technology has finally begun to show a profit. It used to be something of a mystery that although companies could justify computer investments, they could not show any effects on profit or productivity. Which, as somebody said with a sneer, was used as evidence that even larger investments in information systems should be made. With the same obscure effect. On the other hand companies could not very well not invest. There were competitors doing things faster, with more information and more services connected. Soon everybody had to do it. The advantage lost its economic value except temporarily—but if you did not invest at all you were out. What seems to have happened sometime in the beginning of the 90's—and of course this is something that has developed gradually, not at some magic date that can be easily pinpointed—is that both the companies' organisations and the larger structures within which they operate, markets and networks, have adapted to the new possibilities ofinformation technology. Because of this, the time is ripe for the really large effects, and the big breakthroughs. (The networks, which contain collective competence, confidence and trust, the ability to communicate far beyond the confidence in and knowledge of a brand, are other aspects of investment structure and the same problem regarding bookkeeping.) Wrong financial policy b a s e d on f a l s e s t a t i s t i c s ? The lacking statistics mentioned earlier make this explosive development largely hidden. In the United States official statistics indicate a productivity growth of 0.8 percent a year. But official statistics systematically underestimate the growth of about two thirds of the economy, in sector parts like 60 ITMyths financial services and communication among others. The correct figure should be double the above, i.e. maybe 1.5 percent or slightly more. Today you get twice the effect when you buy information technology, compared to a couple of years ago, and these large effects are included. If you paid regard to this effect, which is almost unknown in earlier technological development—namely that the development is twenty times faster for productive contents in information technology than in conventional technology—the private investments in communication equipment would be worth twice as much. Instead of disturbingly low 3 percent, corporate investments in the United States would be close to 4 percent, which is unparalleled. The problem is, among other things, that the US central bank, the Federal Reserve, base their monetary policy on the lower figure. Wrong figures give wrong action, making "the Fed" risk having the reverse effects from what they wanted. The same goes for inflation pressure, which isreflectedin a 3 percent rise in consumer prices, a figure that moreover keeps rising. But if you take into consideration dramatic productivity changes in things purchased, and in changed patterns of consumption, increased opportunities to have custom-made products et cetera, you get a more "true" inflation figure of 2 percent. Which is hardly worrying. To sum things up, investments have indeed declined—the way they are measured. Because the companies prefer to invest in something that yields returns, even though it is entered in the books as running expenses. On top of this a factor that has been growing for a few years: that "returns" are not only defensive, i.e. enable you to survive, but are strongly positive. But oldfashioned bookkeeping finds this hard to discern—and even harder to show the connections. 61 ITMyths Myth # 1 2 Çioc Wc /tAot oj, V&toe Vata, aHd/RttpWiïtÇ &» Ge &UcctiaXedf The idea behind t h e myth: Given computers that are big enough, fast enough, have enough memory and are furnished with data dense enough—well, then anything can be calculated. It is just a matter of time before we have reached that point. Reality: Something happened on the road to the perfect calculation. This something was called chaos mathematics. The very equations which apply to physical reality are insoluble without the simplifications of practical calculus. The results are also entirely dependent on infinitesimal—yes, actually infinitesimal—changes in the starting-point, in the initial starting conditions. Computers become increasingly powerful. There are certainly mathematically or volume-wise difficult problems, those that require vast memories, large amounts of in- and output, contain huge equations, require a lot of working memory and involve so many steps in calculation that the speed of the computer becomes decisive. Nevertheless, if we just gather and input enough data, are given sufficient computer capacity and enough time, anything can be calculated, anything can predicted that can be put into formulae. It is just a matter of programming, of describing, of understanding—then the computer will give us an exact and unambiguous answer. Sometimes networked computers are used, such as when, in 1993-94, close to 1,000 computers were joined in order to solve an immense mathematical problem which was split up into its component parts. 'Give me a fixed point in the Universe and I shall move the Earth,' Archimedes once said. From the linear to the non-linear—the self-deception of the exact s c i e n c e s ? But this will not work even if the perfect and complete formulae exist. Not even if we gather data closer and closer, in time and in space. Not everything can be calculated. It really is impossible to reach exact and unambiguous results from the calculation. There are certain courses of events which are non-linear. They frequently lead to chaos, to what mathematicians call chaos, that is to fundamental impossibilities in calculations, or rather the impossibility of reaching conclusive and meaningful results. There will definitely be results, but not as reliable as we would like them to be. Not at all reliable, but totally unreliable—chaotic. As a matter of fact it is not the linear but the non-linear which governs the world. Long live t h e role of O s c a r II in c h a o s ! It cannot be said exactly when chaos was discovered, only when it was given a name—as is proper, it was discovered long before that. But the first discovery is probably one which oddly enough can be associated with a Swedish king, Oscar II (1829-1907). Newton described the forces which act between masses and create gravity. The planets are masses in space. It is convenient to start with applying Newton's laws on the Moon and the Earth, and calculate the two celestial bodies' joint motion. And that is unproblematic. Two bodies in theory—the calculations can be made. 62 ITMyths The next task would then be to look at three celestial bodies or three masses in outer space which are assumed to mainly depend only on each other, everything else is so far away that such forces are relatively very weak. This deceptively straightforward problem made mathematicians and physicists bite the dust,figurativelyspeaking, of course. During the 19ll, century it was popular to announce scientific and mathematical prizes for problems which were difficult to solve. For one of Oscar II's birthdays a prominent such prize was announced for, among other things, the person who could calculate the solution for the problem involving three celestial bodies. The prize proved to be stimulating on research. A Frenchman, the great mathematician Poincaré, won it, but not with a solution of the three celestial bodies problem. On the contrary, Poincaré succeeded in providing watertight evidence for that there did not exist an analytical solution to the problem, i.e., one that could be calculated. It was even theoretically impossible to calculate, and thus a computer cannot do much to improve things either—not exactly. Much later astronomers have found that there is at least one moon of the larger planets in our solar system which behaves chaotically, namely Hyperion, one of Saturn's moons. It makes unexpected and sudden swings in its orbit sometimes, it is impossible to calculate how it will behave. However, during certain periods it behaves normally and in a calculable manner. Different weather despite initial values being the same— almost, very almost. The next (?) important discovery came in a completely different area, meteorology. Lorenz, an American weatherresearcher,was busy predicting the weather. He happened to have an unusually solid background in mathematics, but it was not those faculties he was to primarily make use of, but instead chance. At this point in time, the early I960's, he was probably as convinced as everybody else that sometime in the future it would surely be possible to predict the weather, for an arbitrary future date and level of precision, with a lot of densely spaced weather stations on around the globe, on each hill—and given large and fast enough computers. Lorenz made a long calculation of the weather and then he left it off at the end of the day, went home and resumed work the following morning. Instead of starting from scratch again, he backtracked a little bit in his calculations and slightly rounded the figures off relative to yesterday's calculated value. One could say that instead of starting out with yesterday's intermediate results 16.7802 heroundedit off to 16.8, a very small change which according to all mathematical opinion should lead to only minor deviations in the final result. Imagine his surprise when, just a few calculation rounds later, at the round where he had stopped the day before, his calculations had created a totally different result. Lorenz checked, he redid his calculation experiment, he calculated backwards and forwards. For a while he thought it was a computer error, but that was not the reason either, neither was it a programming error. Because everything checked out, there were no mistakes in the calculations, nor in the equations. How could this make sense? It only made sense with chaos. Among other things, chaos means that the initial values used are completely decisive. The wing strokes of a butterfly on Tianmen Square in Beijing create a tornado in the Caribbean two weeks later. It will never be possible to measure, know and decide upon the initial values accurately enough. Archimedes cannot find a fixed point, or if he does, the Earth will act unexpectedly and fall off the lever. ITMyths 63 We are taught to calculate linearly. But reality is most often nonlinear. The equations which are analytically soluble and computer-calculable are usually described as linear. They are straightforward and mathematically linear, which does not necessarily mean that they look simple or easily lend themselves to calculation. But they lack the relationships that exist in real life in the form offrictionand other, non-reversible processes. In the teaching of mechanics, students are obliged to calculate small swings of pendulums, weightless strings and frictionless pulleys. If the simplifications are eliminated and, e.g., large swings and friction are introduced, the equations suddenly become non-linear and they risk leading to chaos. They risk leading to chaos. In certain areas of calculation there may not exist chaos, and that is why they work with small swings of pendulums. There is also the possibility that chaos proves to be deterministic, which sounds like a contradiction in terms. How can chaos be predetermined? The answer is that the deterministic means that it moves within certain boundaries and according to certain rules, although they often are limits and boundaries which are arduous to understand for common sense. It may take mathematical reformulations in order for these boundaries to be seen. If we once again take the weather as a starting point, it is not entirely chaotic. In fact, it is possible to predict the weather up to two weeks in advance—although meteorology has not come that far yet—and thereafter chaos rules. But it is deterministic, since next summer will surely be warmer than in the winter and in the winter we can always count on some frost and snow in Northern Sweden. Besides deterministic chaos there is also pure chaos, a kind of chaotic chaos. We said that frictionless pulleys and small pendulum swings are used for calculations. It is the way in which teaching is forced to be done. The problem have to be calculable, they have to be linear. If we want to further emphasise the idea that chaos is very significant, we can be frank about it: during our studies we are taught how to solve linear problems. Reality, the world around us, is essentially non-linear—which often, maybe most of the time, leads to chaotic behaviour. But there has to be both limits to and areas entirely devoid of chaos. Non-linearity leads to a complete dependency on initial values, on the starting-point. It was in this that Lorenz made his small adjustment. A consequence is that these values are focused upon. Is it at all possible to determine them exactly, are they akin to the butterfly in that they are perpetually in a fuzzy area of basically microscopic uncertainties. Lorenz' experience gives us the possibility to test whether a course of events or a relationship are chaotic. Hence, there are definite boundaries for how far we can get by making calculations. Everything is not calculable, not even in the natural sciences or technology. C h a o s a l s o h a s i t s limits. However, we observed that deterministic chaos exists within certain boundaries. This deterministic chaos can be analysed and the limits of it be described. Thus computers have been given a new and different task, namely to aid this much more qualified analysis of reality. 64 ITAfyths Myth #13 Tue &a#c Btitencd t&c Ott^onmatcott Society/ T h e idea behind t h e myth: If we merely calculate the employment and turnover statistics correctly, we will see that our economy is an information economy. Our society is an information society, where information and information technology are the completely basic activities—those that have replaced the industrial society. Reality: Everything is a matter of statistics. Information will not survive on its own, it is dependent on other activities and structures. Using the term information runs the risk of putting the focus on information technology. Information is an unclear concept—what differentiates it from knowledge or data? What is common for amusement parks, for entertainment and information about bank accounts, or the weather? From the agrarian society we entered the industrial society. Now we have proceeded to the information society. A greater part of the labour force is employed in the information sector than in any other activity. T w o w a y s t o a r g ue a g a i n s t this. True—and false. There are at least two schools of criticism against the image of an emerging information society. One is that talking about a deeper shift in societal structure is a mirage. The other school asserts that that there may in fact be a real shift, but that all talk about an information society rather is manipulative. In any case, it is not neutral. By the way, do w e not need to eat anymore? What happened to agriculture? Already the image of industrial society was too simplistic. Employment in the agricultural sector did not simply just drop to three percent. If we scrutinise what formerly took place at a farm, in agriculture, much of this can be found in industrial society instead—in the food industry, of course, and to a large degree also in retailing and distribution. Refinement and preparation of the food used to be done on the farm. Now food factories, packaging, storage, transportation, distribution and retailing are required instead. This is not all. At the farm a lot of other things were made, such as clothes and buildings. Heating and other types of energy were also supplied for the farm. These aspects of farming can now be found in a number of industries, e.g., the textile and clothing industry and the electric power industry. It is not the case that we as a people, as citizens, are wandering from one society to another as if in a sort of gigantic migration. Our activities, what we need to survive, live, be entertained, develop—they also develop and change. Naturally our basic needs remain unchanged. We need food and drink. We need roof over our heads, heating, human community. We are looking for entertainment and perhaps also personal development, including education. The information industries are more visible and have undeniably bec o m e m o r e important. The idea that and information society seeks it nourishment in the fact that we increasingly tend to come across information organisations which appear to be independent and self-sufficient, more cut loose from the industrial activities of yore. But this is often a statistical and organisational mirage. Companies make subsidiaries out of their ad- ITAfyths 65 vertising departments and PR-departments, of their internal computer departments, and maybe even partially of R&D-units. There are large corporations which have even established their own banks. But these blatantly obvious new organisational creations most often do not add anything really new, anything that did not already exist. But that which existed is refined as it is made independent of the parent company. Why not t h e k n o w l e d g e s o c i e t y ? The knowledge society can be treated similarly. It is only part of the information which is refined into knowledge—knowledge which is treated in research and development, and is disseminated through scientific and other publications. It hard to imagine activities which have no need for knowledge whatsoever. But then the definition or description of knowledge society is rendered practically useless, or at least hard to manage and to apply, because how can one discem how large part of an activity which is based on knowledge, actually is knowledge? A d i s s e r t a t i on that m a d e an impact. The idea of the information society received its great boost in conjunction with the publication of a dissertation by an American, Marc Uli Porat. Porat published his ten-volume dissertation in 1976. All but two volumes contained detailed statistics. Porat had distinguished between all types ofinformation activities, a fairly mixed jumble—and it was this distinction that created all the supplementary tables. The problems of where to draw the borders were few. One of these was something like the following question: is a surgeon primarily a sophisticated craftsman or a "knowledge worker?" According to Porat's statistics on the information sector, it constituted nearly half of the American economy and employment (46 percent). The United States had become an information society—i.e., the information sector was the largest sector in the economy—in the late 1950's. Inspired by Porat's tables and curves, a number of other OECD countries conducted the same type of statistical massage for their own economies, albeit none as thoroughly. Great Britain had a large information sector, larger than Sweden's, which amounted to 40 percent of the economy. But according to the same reasoning Sweden had become an information society sometime in the 1970's. The problem is which starting-point to choose. Porat had made no secret of the fact that he had just sorted out the information activity from its industrial- or service context. But had he chosen services as the starting-point for the analyses, he would have found that the United Stated to 70 percent or more was a service society—and the same goes for Sweden. And other countries. The J a p a n e s e ventured—and w e r e disappointed. In one country the notion of an information society gained afirmerfoothold than anywhere else—namely in Japan. In the land of the rising sun it became the origin of many studies and grandiose concrete suggestions, not the least of which from professor Yoneji Masuda. When the grand plans had been slimmed down to manageable proportions, this line of thought also became the basis for a number of large-scale technological development- and purchasing projects aimed at supporting the export industry just as much as the national "information society." The results in the form of new and competitive products were not those hoped for. Because of different structural reasons, work organisation, societal organisation and culture—not the least of which was the written language—information machines such as computers did not gain as big a foothold in Japan as it had in the United States, Sweden and other parts of 66 ITMyths Europe. The telefax, however, did, and because of the written language. Hopes and plans that Japan would replace the United States as producer of not only TV-sets and computers, but also of computer programs, were utterlyfrustrated.On the other hand new competitors appeared in East Asia, Korea and Taiwan. And as the 1980's progressed, the Japanese instead started speaking of the "advanced information society", this time in more subdued tones than during the earlier techno-optimistic euphoria. Then they yet had to go through the disappointments ofthat the "Fifth Generation Computer" did not tum out the way they had expected and could not handle automatic language translation or intelligent functions. Neuronic computers and "fuzzy logic" became some of the new guiding lights. In the United States there was now also some talk of the "experience industry," from cinema to comic books and amusement parks on to virtual reality. If we look at the statistics in the right way, this can be said to be the largest single industry in the United States. And in any case it is the country's single most prominent export sector. However, no one has chosen this as grounds to assert that we are entering the age of experience... A g r e a t work about k n o w l e d g e . When Porat wrote his great dissertation he was very inspired by an original economist called Fritz Machlup, whom in the late 1950's and early I960's worked to map out the share that knowledge, if not information, had of the economy. He had made preliminary and rough calculations but found that he first needed to look into what we really should mean by knowledge, how it can be measured, how it is related to the economy and its development, economic growth, competitiveness, etc. It came as a surprise to Machlup when Porat's dissertation was published. Machlup himself had written the manuscript for the first a planned long series of books about knowledge and its role in the economy—it turned out to be a plan that grew with each volume that was printed by the publisher. Machlup died during his work on this magnum opus, so not that many volumes were ever published. The criticism of the expression information society, and some its streaks of manipulation, at least in Sweden led to a discussion about that it was not an information society that we were entering—or should strive towards. However, Machlup's and Porat's calculations showed that the share of knowledge in the economy, defined and measured in some feasible manner, turned out to be around 15 percent; one cannot expect it ever to become higher that say 25 percent. This in its turn sheds some light on the problem of how to characterise a "society" or an "age." The information s o c i e t y a s a mythical i m a g e of t h e future. Emin Tengström belongs to those who most unambiguously have criticised the notion ofinformation society" as being manipulative, together with Lars Ingelstam. Tengström conclusion is that it is a special type of image of the future, namely a myth in the organisational theoretical sense. This means that the image contains a value system which comprises both opinions about what should and should not be done, which in their turn form the basis of strategies for action. This does not stop Tengström from emphasising that information technology will have significant effects. But it is not the technology itself that we should focus on. Tengström means that a more neutral term is "the post-industrial society." We can alsoremindthe reader of Alvin Toffler's "the Third Wave," which follows the two earlier waves of agriculture and industry. ITMyths 67 Five post-industrial d i m e n s i o n s . The term "post-industrial" only related that it is something which comes after the industrial. The term was introduced by Daniel Bell in the I960's and was expounded in a great macro-sociological work in the 70's (The Coming of Post-Industrial Society, 1974). Bell characterised the post-industrial society in five dimensions: • more white-collar than blue-collar workers • services have a larger share of the economy than production industry • progress is based more on theoretical rather than practical knowledge (researchers more than practical inventors) • the university will replace the company as the primary driving force of society • progress by using intellectual technology The intellectual technology will certainly get some of its driving force from computer technology and its ability to handle large amounts of data and complex equations. But Bell's prime example of this "social alchemist's dream of ordering society" was in the 1960's systematic studies of the future, in order to colonise the future. Whom d o e s t h e myth of t h e information s o c i e t y s e r v e ? Tengström sees the parties interested in propagating the conceptual complex called the information society as being the producers ofinformation services. The change-over to a "new society" will furnish these actors with a host of interesting and well-paid tasks. Myth will thus also be propagated by those who sell and produce information goods. A future reward in the form increased consumption is promised, and this will threaten and discipline groups that do not work with information; "you'd better keep up." The myth is dangerous due to its suggestive character, Tengström warns. At the same time he stresses that the myth and its origin must be viewed as a more fundamental insecurity in the face of the future. The vision of the Swedish Welfare State, the idea of the Swedish Model, may both be at the end of the road. The myth at least can serve to fill a void, a sort of need. An image of the future such as the myth of the information society cannot be spoken about as being true or false—that is meaningless. The myth is a s y m p t o m . If my analysis is correct, Tengström says, we can expect a number of different myths, temporary comprehensive pictures and complexes of beliefs, which will rapidly succeed each other. It seems to be correct. We have already mentioned the information society, the advanced information society, the post-industrial society, the knowledge society, the Third Wave. To this we might add the computer society, the communication society and the system society, the bio-society, the ecological society, the recycling society, the network society, the cyber age, the C-society (as in culture, communication and creativity), the society of immaterialism (Madeleine von Heland) and numerous other. To criticise the term "the information society" is hence not equal to underestimating information or IT. It is rather to stress how multi-faceted both information and its technological aids are, how important it is to scrutinise human contexts, goals and needs. The discussion can then provide both more focused and in some sense correct images—where the question mark becomes exactly what should be meant by correct. 68 ITAfyths What will b e c o m e t h e e n d result of t h e d i s c u s s i o n ? One result can be just what Daniel Bell did to post-industrial society: that a number of dimensions or descriptive tools are created which enable us to measure or qualitatively see what it really is all about, to compare then and now—to observe that only two of Bell's dimensions lend themselves to quantitative measurement. Another result may be that we conclude that the industrial society could be described fairly clearly and unambiguously—mass production for mass consumption, a large working class, the importance of material investments and manual labour—while the post-industrial society is looking for a name that will capture the larger breadth of variation and diversity. Until then—competing myths, competing images? ITAfyths 69 Myth #14 "THùtitcl^oA êeen. attdotMtA a, ytcat MCCCOA T h e myth: Minitel, the French computer terminal and its system, has become en enormous success. Millions of terminals, tens of thousands of different kinds of services, large usage, profitability. Reality: The terminals have been distributedfreeof charge, there are a few services which are responsible for the major part of the traffic. The services do pay off for those who sell them andfor France Telecom. The questions is whether the investment itself will ever pay off. The fact that thefiguresare darkened suggests that there is something wrong. It is a whole different matter that the Minitel perhaps was a good idea—for its time. However, today's basic demandfor services is carried out through other terminals and networks, simply because technology has moved ahead. The Minitel is the French computer terminal connected to the telephone. Different kinds of information such as both text and numbers are available through it. There are more than six million Minitel terminals in France and the traffic is heavy. It is used often and in many different ways. There are more than 20 000 different types of services offered which the user can reach with the system. It Is c l a i m e d t o b e a profitable s y s t e m . The services are dependent on the system, otherwise commercial companies would not continue to offer their services this way. Some companies, actually rather many, have closed down when it was discovered that they were not profitable. And for France Telecom it is a big source of income. Lots of services and traffic mean big revenues on the telecommunications traffic which is actually computer traffic generated by the Minitel. Therefore it must be profitable. So why has not other countries copied the French success? It all d e p e n d s on h o w you c o m p u t e t h e figures. One important factor is incontrovertible: Minitel is definitely prosperous from an operational point of view. The revenues are bigger than the actual cost of running the system. But are they in proportion to the investments that the France Telecom has made? The investments mainly concern the Minitel-terminals. According to the plan, they have been placed at the telecommunications subscribers throughout the country. However, it was not possible to offer them to all subscribers at once. These computer terminals are free of charge - or rather was - you have to pay a reasonable rent for the new and more advanced terminals. Those which were for free are today old-fashioned and slow. France had a special situation regarding telecommunications. The motive for the distribution of all these terminals was rather unique. During the early part of the 1970's, the French telephone system was down and out. From an international perspective it was not at the level which was expected by an industrialised nation. Therefore the govern- 70 ITMyths ment finally decided to rapidly develop the telephone system and in three stages create a supermodem system. To make an analogy—the Swedish technical attaché in Moscow once became very popular, not only among his colleagues but also among his Russian contacts. He compiled something unique—a phonebook consisting of all the telephone numbers which he had collected to be able to do his work. There were no phonebooks in the Soviet Union ofthat time. They did not exist because the government wanted to prohibit people to get in touch with each other in a uncontrollable way. A phonebook is a necessary prerequisite for a person to be able to use the phone to any extent. That meant that France Telecom had to produce phonebooks to all new subscribers when France took a serious look at increasing its telecommunication facilities. In Sweden, which during several decades has created a well-developed telecommunication network, we change phonebooks once a year. It is necessary because people change addresses, new listings are needed when companies expand and phone areas merge, etc. The rapid growth in France—from four million telephone subscribers to more than fourteen subscribers in only a few years—meant that new phonebooks were needed not only once, but maybe three or four times per year, or they would be so dated that people would call the operator instead. However, that would be too expensive. France does not have many forests and the paper had to be imported. Or people would always call the operator which would be too expensive. The Swedish phonebook is a financial success because of advertisement revenues. However, is it only possible to sell that many new ads, and as I already mentioned an operator who can handle all the dated information is expensive. Now the French wanted not only to reach the level of countries, but s u r p a s s t h e m . Once the decision had been made to create a modem telephone system, the idea was to surpass other countries. In the area of telecommunication, it is just as expensive to get something very modem as something a lot older. Hardly anyone wants to sell an old system. That was one of the reasons that the telephone system was in focus for France's very purposeful industrial policy in which other elements were computers and the Concorde. French politicians were very interested in computers, because the information society was being discussed everywhere, e.g. in a famous report called 'L'information de la société.' It was called the Nora-Mic-report after the authors' surnames and was treated as a bible on the subject by both French politicians and public debaters. The only thing the French political parties disagreed on was how fast the country should move—they competed in how fast they could carry out the basic message in the report. The politicians competed in being "technical optimists." When the idea of the Minitel came up it was like forcing open an open door. No one opposed the idea, everyone rivalled each other in having proposed it earlier in some form. It was approved without any kind of analysis, its advantages were highlighted, and there was no price tag. In the usual French manner, procurement was made from domestic producers. One must add that to begin with there were some vocal protests. They came from other media, primarily print media which mean newspapers and other publications. They were satisfied (or bribed, as the critics claim) with some special arrangements and free runs which made them believe that they had the best way of reusing their material in this new distribution channel. But they were not the only pioneers—banks and local authorities, which supported the idea of increased democracy and better public service, also belonged to this group. ITMyths 71 It was particularly exciting when new types of multimedia were created. The ability to shop on mail order might not have been so exciting, but excitement was in the air when the popular literary program Apostrophes was accompanied by biographies and bibliographies concerning the authors Bernard Pivot interviewed. The Minitel s o o n r e a p ed c o n s i d e r a b l e r e v e n u e s and b e c a m e an important m e d i u m . Already in 1987, the most important Minitel-network—there are several ones with different formula for fees and the division of the fee between France Telecom and whoever delivers the service—was worth two billion francs, which is as much as the French TV channel TF1 was worth before it was privatised, or half the turnover of the Parisian newspapers or two thirds of the 30 most important magazines. More than 60 percent of the revenues are collected by those who supply the services and the rest to France Telecom. A new line of business had been created, a trade for hosts, consultants or experts who, e.g. could help newspapers and banks to get started with Minitel-services. The banks and newspapers did not have to get the computers and tele-equipment or the expertise needed to run the system. The data they had was enough. The hosts ended up in trouble when the more indecent pornographic services were prosecuted. Who was legally responsible for the publication of this, who could be maderesponsiblefor the pimping or indecency? T h e Minitel will help France on t h e global market. The industrial political aim was not only to provide France with a modem telecommunication network, a basic prerequisite for international competition. Through the purchasing of terminals, which was limited to domestic manufacturers including foreign subsidiaries in France, the government stimulated a technical leap forward which created a mass product and reduced the price on it. Whatever the France Telecom pays to buy the terminals from the manufacturers is a well-kept secret. The idea was, of course, to create an export industry. The important b a s i s for t h e Minitel—a s i n g l e standard. The Minitel has many good qualities as long as someone pays for the basic investment the way the French state, i.e., the taxpayers and the phone subscribers, ended up doing. It creates a standard. It creates a platform. The Minitel also provides a kind of basic service. The standard makes it possible to communicate. The French were cunning enough to develop a Minitel-network to which it was easy to connect existing databases and similar services. The platform, the basic understanding of the idea, the relatively easy handling, and a large application, i.e., thefree-of-chargedirectory assistance. The person who wants to send electronic mail obviously also has a usable platform. One important service was that the fees for the computer services a person used were put on the telephone bill. France Telecom is responsible for an accounting system which makes it easier for the suppliers. They do not have to collect the fees themselves unless they want to or prefer to do it by, e.g. credit card. More impartial calculations came late and were vague. How come the surrounding world believes that the Minitel is such an incredible success? Because it provides so many services and they are lucrative, otherwise no one would continue supplying those services. Because the actual financial result, including the write-off for the investments, is classified information. 72 ITMyths A few years ago, it made a stir when France's National Audit Bureau calculated its profitability. According to the result it is still unprofitable, and if it will ever make a profit that will be around the year 2000 or 2010. The person who read the material carefully had already seen that only Minitel terminals used at least 90 minutes per month would be written off in five years. Many of them were, but how many on the average were used that much? (According to some information, ten calls per terminal and month are made on the average. That means that each call has to be at least nine minutes long.) The i n a d e q u a t e financial situation d e p e n d s on t h e c o s t of distributing t h e terminals f r e e of c h a r g e or s u b s i d i s e d . Although there are a great number of users, there are also many who never use their electronic door to the rest of the electronic world. Some parents would tum off the terminal when the children learned how to use it and the first very expensive phone bills came. Studies showed that less than half of those who originally received a terminal used it. Many discovered how expensive it was and they returned the terminal. The use of the terminal usually went down by 15-20 percent a few months after the first excitement had been replaced with the economic reality. One consequence of this was a new policy—only the 1/3 of the subscribers who had the largest phenols, who also phoned the most and needed the electronic phonebooks could receive the Minitel-terminal for free. The idea of bringing "la télématique" to the French people was pushed to the background for obviousfinancialreasons. And t h e n it w a s this thing about s e x . Another type of criticism in France dealt with the pink Minitel, i.e., the pornographic databases, phone services and personal ads for sexual contacts. There are a number of startling examples of what the medium can be used for, creativity has been and continues to be large. Just like with other kinds of media, it is difficult to compute issues of media ethics and freedom ofinformation on the Minitel's balance sheet. In the book 'Le Dossier Noir du Minitel Rose' (Albin Michel, 1988), the critic Denis Perier discusses the fact that a state organisation like a bank (which often are or were state-owned in France) encourages and makes a profit on sexual services. A member of the French senate also thought this was scandalous. There a r e s e v e r a l r e a s o n s for darkening t h e figures. One reason for the difficulty in obtaining exact figures for the Minitel's revenues and costs is that it would expose the political and administrative system's incompetence and inability to see through technology's shortcomings and costs. Another reason is that the state does not want criticism for opening the system to erotic purposes, which Perier claims is lucrative and therefore of basic importance. A third reason would be that France would like to export the Minitel. Therefore it is important to create an image of a very successful product. When the then Minister of Telecommumcation Gérard Lounget, who resigned in 1994 after being prosecuted on bribe charges, was asked how much of the revenues could be accounted to "pink services," i.e., pornography, he answered that is was somewhere near 100 million francs in 1987. In his book. Denies Perier writes that if one studies France Telecom's own statistics the figure is closer to 500 million francs. S t r a n g e contradictions—on t h e s u r f a c e ? This can explain not only Lounget's answer but also the debate between the two experts Beate Petersen and Carl Henrik Svenstedt ITMyths 73 in the Swedish morning daily Svenska Dagbladet in the fall of 1994. The debate was sparked by France Telecom's very contradictory images of facts andfiguresregarding the Minitel. The explanation might be found in the fact that there is not a clear division between the number of services and the number of messages and the time connected or fees paid. For example, the fee per minute can differ from service to service. Obviously that leads to different results. In 1986, the Minitel consisted of more than 4,000 different types of services. Twenty of the most used ones accounted for 75 percent of the total usage time. The result will, of course, differ depending on if you count time or number of services. The following services were counted on usage time: the electronic phonebook 18 percent of the time, message exchange 22 percent, professional applications 23 percent leisure time and games 14 percent, "the practical life" 10 percent, bank and stock exchange 9 percent and general information 4 percent. In one section of the Svenska Dagbladet article it says that there are six million Minitelterminals, in another section the figure is 15 million. This can be the difference between active terminals and those actually distributed. Nowadays, it is just as common to have a Minitelprogram in your computer as having an actual terminal at home. Some companies even have several Minitel-terminals on the same subscription. We also find a comforting report that the pomo-services only account for four percent of all services. However, as we have already seen, that report does not say anything about volume of the traffic. Another report puts it as high as 50 percent, Denier's rather old figure says 25 percent. The d r a w b a c k of being an IT-pioneer. There is a particular drawback, which now is beginning to show in France. The French moved into the IT-world too early. It is possible that in a few years, the Minitel will be referred to as a failure, which is a bit unfair since the product has been affected by a general problem. The name of the problem is alternation of generations. That is something which appears no matter when the first generation is created. During an entire decade, the Minitel has on the whole been a successful standard. However, it is a standard characterised by its own time, of the technical limitations and the compromises that these limitations brought about, when the electronics were less developed and much more expensive. It is a slow system with limited capacity. A number of measures have been taken to make the system more flexible, e.g. to create better images, but the question is whether that is possible in the long run. But t h e d e m a n d i n d i c a t e s underlying n e e d s . The 20,000 services and the large traffic show that there is a great need for transfer of information which preferable can be handled by this type of medium. We are talking about different types of computer networks, not uniform terminals and a system which is called something special, but more about PCs with modems, databases and general computer networks like the Internet. It is obvious that the phonebook is only a phonebook. Some of the Minitel's many handy functions make reservations on airlines or other types of transportation, theatres or other kinds of entertainment. French mail-order companies have discovered that the most expensive way to handle an order is by telephone and mail, by fax is less expensive and the cheapest way is by the Minitel. With the interactive medium Minitel one can also give updated information, if some goods are out of stock, if there is a waiting time. As long as one has a connected PC, it is possible to make bank- and insurance transactions, orders in general which require a credit card as payment with or without the Minitel. 74 ITMyths U.S. p a t t e r n s a s a c o m p l e m e n t . In the U.S. there are four large service providers which give access to many services similar to the Minitel's and many more. They all have different profiles, different payment strategies, etc. The most comprehensive one is CompuServe. One of the four is a system that IBM and the chain store company Sears operate called Prodigy. In the beginning, it was described as an American version of the Minitel. Interestingly enough, after a rocky start Prodigy is doing well. As we have pointed out before, the problem is rather to have too many services to chose from than too few. The services can exist in connection with the service networks, but there is no need for special terminals or a centrally located state-run unit. CompuServe, Prodigy or someone else, which in a central position receive the subscription, can be responsible for, e.g., the debiting. One function on some of the computer networks is a kind of phonebook service. One can find interested parties in open lists or anonymously look on the electronic bulletin boards. But where does this system end and the Internet begin—where you can reach CompuServe, Prodigy, etc. or the reverse? Who is the host for data and messages, and how does one charge? What does interface mean? Maybe the Minitel should be defined in these categories, and the system could be judged as a temporary success thanks to its characteristics, not for its physical look or relatively centralised structure. ITAfyths 75 Myth #15 7<fe ùtftaétvactwtc o£ ùtjovmatfat id éûée toad* attd taiutoado The idea of t h e myth: Information technology such as mainframe computers and telephone systems is today's equivalence of yesterday's ports, canals, railroads, highways. Therefore the same characteristics apply: slow-moving, big investments, conditions for society 's competition and success. Reality: Ports and roads are needed so that the means of transportation, ships and cars, can do some good. Lots of ships create a line, lots of cars create traffic jams. It is the reverse with information systems—the benefit increases with more telephones, faxes, PCs. That makes program development and education more important. Focus is movedfromthe heavy visible infrastructure to the invisible human and cultural ultrastructure. As early as during the Middle Ages and many centuries later, ports were an important part of the infrastructure. The Romans created a lasting infrastructure consisting of roads and aqueducts which are still in use. During the 18th and 19th centuries, the new and important part of infrastructure was the canals and later railroads. During the 20th century, we witnessed the massive construction of a road-net which could handle private cars and trucks, and which was a prerequisite for the development of motoring, and later on the airports. Infrastructure is something for the good of the collective, which dem a n d s c o l l e c t i v e efforts. Infrastructure is the common structure that greatly contributes to a country's or region's power to compete. It also demands heavy and costly expenses—investments. It is of a collective nature—many can benefit from it, it is difficult to see it doubled, in general it is not for private persons to invest in since it does not only benefit the individual investor. In the information age we have information highways and information ports. With that we refer to telecommunication, optical cables, satellites, maybe mainframe computers. Tele-ports rather than seaports and airports. There are already a number of tele-ports. Think of the importance of the Atlantic cable. Few countries have had or permitted competing telecommunication networks developed sideby-side. Were the American parallel railroads a lasting success? Remember when three towns competed about the location of the Swedish mainframe computer, an important piece of infrastructure. Right, but at the same time so wrong. It is of central importance to have a well functioning telephone system, access to computer power, and so on. The calculated cost, both the total costs and the distribution of c o s t s , i s radically different. It is wrong to say that information technology is particularly costly, an obvious piece of construction and creator of jobs. That is how information technology differs from the previous collective structures. It differs today in a way that it did not yesterday. 76 ITAfyths A large part of the Swedish cable network with optical fibre can be built at the same cost as a couple of meters of highway. Sometimes it is a bit more expensive, maybe in big cities where there is less room or in rural areas with few subscribers. In the case of rural areas, cheaper alternatives exist such as transmissions carried by radio. It is not only about cellular phones, but also about satellites and radio relay links. Nowadays it is not a problem to get permission to lay down a cable. Especially not if you can transmit radio-waves through the air. Frequencies may be in short supply—there are ways around that. It is possible to make the cells in the cellular phones smaller, re-use frequencies. What i s important is a c c e s s and comfort. What is needed are things which cannot be seen in reality: • • • • • • • phonebooks knowledge, education entry ways and terminal equipment software and data which make it worth while on both a personal and financial level common standards attitudes, a will to utilise the possibilities understudying, a common language, confidence Some of the things mentioned above is equivalent to infrastructure, it is called ultrastmcture. Just like infrastructure it is common, collective, shared by everyone, but differs from it because it is invisible. All investments are made in human resources, competence, education and even attitudes. We take the phonebook for granted. However, in countries where the rulers want to maintain a dictatorship, control the flow ofinformation and contacts, all types of numbering and listing which would help instigators of rebellion to contact each other have been stopped. During the Shogun era in Japan in the 17th century and onward it was forbidden to have names or numbers on the streets. That made it almost impossible for troublemakers to meet. In the Soviet Union there were phones because it was an effective means of communication, but no phone books. That way the those who had phones could only call within a small network which was practical. However, there was littlefreedomto find larger groups of people of the same way of thinking with whom one did not have a working relationship. Critical m a s s — o h , h o w critical. Just like the telephone, the telefax had a difficult start. During the 1800's, the phone was used for two-way communication only—between the factory and the factory owner's home, between the store and the store owner's apartment. In the beginning, the fax was only used in closed networks, between a newspaper office and the newspaper's printing plant, between all pharmacies, their main warehouse and the head office. It was not until a catalogue listing telefax numbers came that there was an increase in faxing. Now fax numbers are found in the ordinary phone book, on business cards, in letterheads, etc. Just like the phone it needed a critical mass, a network large enough to make it worthwhile faxing. The net itself is collective, an infrastructure. But the difference is that the fax machines or phones and their owners is the important part in the collective resource, less the connecting lines or radio waves. I do not need other cars to drive on the highway. On the contrary, I prefer being by myself, because there are less lines of cars, traffic jams and accidents. On the ITMyths 77 road I do not mind being alone and independent of others, but completely dependent on the road. For the traffic ofinformation, however, it is necessary to have many players, the more the better. And there are many alternatives as to which road to chose. Is it p o s s i b l e t o c r e a t e a built-in p h o n e b o o k? A great advantage with general computer networks, electronic conference systems, the Internet and similar systems is that they contain their own built-in phone books. It is possible to look for those interested in a particular subject without knowing who they are. However, it is impossible to ask for a catalogue with the more than 25 million Interact addresses. It is an impossibility which also shows the great finesse of the system which has an automatic catalogue function. Compare that to the telephone operator! It i s o b v i o u s t h a t t h e r e is a n e e d for k n o w l e d g e and e d u c a t i o n . It becomes more evident when we talk about utilising more advanced digital special points in the phone and its system, or when we combine the phone and the computer. Alexander Graham Bell believed himself that the telephone would be used as some kind of wire radio. You need knowledge to be able to take advantage of the different possibilities. After the German reunification, a Dutch company managed to find a way to get around the limitation posed by the few telephone lines between the East and the West. They used a voice mailbox and lines via other countries to make communication more effective—and they made money. Then there were existing satellites, quickly built mobile phone stations which could help the countries in the east to start the phone traffic. Satellites were obvious, but not the other things. The few phone lines were due to political reasons, not technical or financial limitations. It is obvious that no one can use a phone system without a telephone, a fax connection without a fax-sender and receiver. It is against this background one has to view the French state's allocation of subsidised Minitel terminals. Like Alexander cleaving the Gordian knot, the problem with the hen and the egg was solved. Why buy equipment when it cannot be used, why create software before there is equipment to use it? On the Internet it is at least possible to advertise for people with the same frame of mind. In the same way, the Minitel created the basis for a number of computer services and data bases which could be profitable. It had probably taken too long to let it grow organically. To sell c o n t a c t possibilities . The telefax, and to some extent also the Internet, offers the service to get in touch with others. The Internet and similar systems actually sell the possibility of contact without any particular purpose. Price, tariffs, high or low fee, high or low call charge, easy or difficult to get a phone and other possibilities—these are factors that influence the way we use our phones. In Japan there are an incredible number of pay phones. The Japanese are honest people and do not vandalise them, so the pay phones work. Therefore cellular phones have not developed as fast as in many other countries. This is an obvious example. There are less obvious ones, maybe more cultural, which have to do with wanting to use the telephone or resisting it. One obstacle is how binding agreements made over the phone are. Electronic signatures, which would make electronic mail as contract safe as letters, is a crucial problem. In an economy and a culture like the American where so much ends up with lawyers and in courts, the lack of confidence can be costly compared to cultures like Japan where a common ground is created by talking. 78 ITAfyths C o n v e n t i o n s a n d s t a n d a r d s a s b a s i c structures. Electronic signatures represent almost overly explicit demands and corresponding possibilities. An accepted system of electronic signatures is as common as a telephone standard - the telephone system is global, but that is not the case for the cellular phone system. To put it shortly, it is not regarded as infrastructure. However, it is an ultrastructure, a convention, a collective utility which has become what it is thanks to the acceptance of the people, not through big investments. A similar Swedish or Nordic example is mobile telephony. A common and well functioning all-Nordic standard, the NMT, was created at arelativelyearly stage. That became the stepping stone to a quick and important industrial development as well as for the distribution of cellular phones. It is true that some of these standards and agreements demand at least some investments and can only partly be viewed as voluntary. That is the case when for example important and powerful customers demand of their subcontractors to enter a specific standard, e g EDI, ISO 9000, Map, a standard for how certain electromc documents such as invoices, consignment bills, blueprints, etc. should be constructed. However, the real cost does not lie in the acquisition of appliances, machines, buildings. It is found in the software, organising to live up to the quality standard or the electronic level, to teach people how to work according to these new standards and routines. The power comes when there is more than one customer who invests in these new demands. Otherwise the investment will become too expensive in proportion to the isolated benefit. No one builds freeways if there are only a dozen cars in the country. Formalisation or unfailing c o n f i d e n c e . The European criteria for quality work, as well as the ones that characterise the American Malcolm Baldridge Prize, have been criticised for being too formalised, rigid and missing the point—customer use. There are examples of companies which have won the prize and a couple of years later have gone bankrupt— which shows that becoming a winner sometimes is not worth the price. There is one alternative: to build confidence. If I know that I can trust my subcontractor, customer or partner, it makes things easier. No strict contracts, no prices or distinctions. That becomes the common ground, a collective benefit which means big savings, e.g. in time and where confidence makes creativity and risk taking so much easier. Within a company the common ground of confidence and understanding is called company culture. We can talk about a culture of networking, a culture of co-operation. It also makes up part of the ultrastmcture whichreplacesinfrastructure in an economy dependent on information, a number of activities dependent on information. Earlier we touched upon that fact that well established trademarks gain higher in value and cost if we look at how companies are regarded in a purchase situation, e.g. at the stock exchange. This is not about general trust but rather a deep effective ground for fast communication without big risks of misunderstandings, a common language, a commonframeofreference.Confidence is something that grows slowly. Quality price is a quicker, more instrumental and easy-to-read instrument. A g e o g r a p h i c ultrastructure—Italian Prato. A soon-to-be classic example adds more to the discussion. The Italian Prato-region is dependent on its textile industry. A few years ago there were signs of an upcoming crisis. Italian design was still attractive, but the production lines saw the big volumes go to low-wage countries such as Portugal in Europe, different free-trade zones or low-wage areas in East Asia. The bigger companies got rid of their excess capacity. There were employees who could take care ofthat in their own smaller ITAfyths 79 companies in exchange of buying into the bigger companies or doing it for free. It was necessary to concentrate to survive. At the same time, the different companies and units, which all were rather small, began to hook up in a common computer network. In those days videotex was the poor person's chance to computer communication. The idea was that everyone could use the network. It was not an investment in big computer railroads, butratherthat each company bought one or several cheap terminals. It also demanded central resources. Collective but not very expensive ones. A common electronic mailbox, an electronic bulletin board, a database. Furthermore and very important: a common CAD-program, a collective benefit of the same type as the standards we talked about earlier. No individual company (with one or two exceptions) would have been able to develop such an advanced software for this particular industry. It would not have been valuable if it had not been jointly owned by all the companies in the network. The common, the collective proved to be the joint network—it was also a computer network but that was of less importance—for the market and the retailers. What counted was which one of these market contacts one could trust—their loyalty, ability and will to pay in time, to do the right thing. And above all, their ability to quickly sense and forward new market signals. The network also worked within the own group. Which subcontractors existed in Prato and other places, how trustworthy were they? It was possible to quickly order and in small quantities, right in time. These components put together, including the ability for competitors to co-operate and share orders, experiences and news on the CAD-system broke the region's financial downward spiral. Within a couple of years, the number of employees had doubled, the number of companies more than doubled (the average size of a company had been reduced). Ultrastructure does not mean a major one-time investment—it takes ti me. The lesson to learn of the Prato example a common standard, the ability to communicate together, a common understanding, the ability to speak each other's language. It is not an infrastructure in the ordinary sense—if there had not been a phone network maybe radio had done the same thing—but an ultrastructure of collective benefits such as computer language, education, understanding, network for the market and to the own group for raw materials and semi-manufactured goods. Infrastructures are long-lasting and take time to put into place. The fact that it is longlasting is obvious in the initial examples of Romans roads and aqueducts. It is not possible to install an ultrastructure in the same obvious way as a new bridge or railroad. It is developed, built and destroyed by humans. But is also has its long-term value, for the person who can look after it and in a sensible way further develop it. 80 ITMyths Myths, Mêmes—How to View Humans? We have seen many myths of very different characters. The motives behind them are also very different. Are there always motives—conscious motives? But if they are unconscious, what are they? And should we even call all of them myths? Underlying Circles of Motives? In the introductory chapter we quoted a work containing a collection of Myths, which also was its title, and which in 1983 accompanied a exhibition at the Swedish National Museum in Stockholm. In the book there were also sections with different subjects for myths, such as the Hero, the Mother, and even Technology. Is it possible to discem similar recurrent themes among the IT myths? I would like to propose at least the following mechanisms: • wishful thinking, i.e., that into information technology are read possibilities to do something that one always (or at least for a long time) has wanted to do; depending on who "one" is and what one has wanted do there is also the perspective of an interested party or of power • preconceptions, i.e., something which has been generally described as something which has to come to pass that it is not even questioned; it can also involve en certain type of description which becomes dominant even though there actually are good reasons for it to be questioned • extrapolation, i.e., to stretch out a trend in a direction which seems quite logical and natural, it becomes only a matter of time for something to happen • making a mountain out of a molehill, i.e., a relatively isolated fact is allowed to grow to represent something much larger • historical analogy, i.e., because things happened in a certain way in a course of events which is described analogously to the current one, it is possible to predict what will happen now • exoticism, i.e., what is now taking place in another place with different external circumstances becomes proof of that people there are bolder and have more of a pioneering spirit, and yet concurrently that this development is becoming the standard It is fairly obvious that some of these mechanisms are caught in each other. That which is a preconception for one person can be wishful thinking for another, or the wishful thinking may become firmly established and converted into a preconception. That which one person views as a mountain made out of a molehill, another views as a fairly natural extrapolation. For yet another person maybe the historical analogy makes it natural to make a mountain out of a molehill since history seems to do so. In a way, exoticism, at least sometimes, is an analogy, albeit more in space than in time; again a spatial extrapolation. Let us now review our fifteen myths and discuss to what extent they belong to one category or another. We will later return to the issue of which interests may be the propagators of the myths, as well as see if we can derive some underlying, more general memomes (see the introduction) to the mêmes that the myths can formulated as. There is one myth that I have trouble placing under one of the six simple headings, and that is *#2I#. It is also an unusually fleeting and ephemeral myth; to begin with it is not a myth since it is a fact that this type of abbreviation is used and even is an international standard. But ITAfyths 81 on the other hand this is about a transitory state. Yet it is a gratifying example— precisely because it is taken from the real world—of what engineers can subject their fellow man to. Hence, the underlying memome might be: see how inhuman, specialised and cumbersome technology is. Then there are historical analogies—while an engineer might just as easily assert that it is merely a collection of preconceptions, historical analogies and mountains made out of molehills. Depending on which view we take, AI and Expert Systems are Taking Over and The Fully Automated Factory come close to this myth. A technology critic like Jacques Ellul (for whom technology also encompasses modem organisation, business- and national management, etc.) will in these phenomena see examples of an uncritical and concurrently self-generating infatuation and rigidity with regards to technological solutions. This is for him and many others the opposite of wishful thinking, rather it is a nightmare, but one that will come true nonetheless. TTien we are talking about extrapolation and historical analogy with other human technological projects. Conversely, there are streaks of wishful thinking and extrapolation among those who propagate for these developmental tendencies. If we speak of The Fully Automated Factory, we are obliged to add a measure of exoticism; Japanese plants are in the foreground of the patterns which are referred to. The images of the Minitel-sysXem are also characterised by a high degree of exoticism, mountains made out of molehills if we look at different kinds of services, and wishful thinking if we scrutinise at least some of the actors. Ideas such as those regarding the Paperless Society are more than one-dimensional technological extrapolations. Pictures are expensive is an unusual myth in that it gives voice to a distrust which at least is a cousin of •#2i#. This is also about extrapolation and a molehill become a mountain—^although interestingly enough the molehill once used to be a mountain. Pictures are expensive is being made obsolete by technological progress. It is so close to technology and obvious application that it is easy to see. The myths which are connected to how we regard society, how we present statistics and organise are more problematic in that they have actually have become outdated or at least appear grossly simplified. This applies to 77ie Investments Which Disappeared, Controlling the Passage of Bits at the Border and Telecommunication Systems are Unchangeable. In the first instance we can speak of extrapolation as well the molehill made into a mountain. In the second instance it is rather historical analogy and a measure of wishful thinking, while in the third we are speaking of extrapolation and historical analogy. Closely related is also the more one-dimensional notion that Optical Fibres are a Must, whichrepresentsthe mountain made out of a molehill. Another one similarly related myth is The Information Infrastructure is like Roads and Railroads, which is closer to a historical analogy transformed into preconception, or if we desire to extrapolate, it is used with regards to electronic highways and tele-ports. Telecommuting is naturally a result of wishful thinking underpinned by historical analogies, and with an element of exoticism: one can find excellent examples of telecommuting across the globe. The farther away they can be found, the easier it is to see them as more widespread and general. The idea that Exact Figures Give Exact Results is more fundamental and is less closely related to positive conceptions about technology than for example Artificial Intelligence. It is probably both wishful thinking, historical analogies and extrapolation behind this outdated notion—although it is not outdated if isreformulatedin a way which even so must appear too complicated: deterministic chaos. Behind the idea of The More Information the Better is positive wishful thinking and a preconceived notion which lacks a firm hold of the complexity of the underlying problem. The 82 ITAfyths same factors plus the effect of mountain made out of a molehill can also be said to be present in the concept of TVie Information Society. Memomes are Few and General In the introductory chapter we observed that meme-fields or bundles of mêmes are connected with each other. We cannot expect other than that these larger and more complex notions are considerably fewer than the mêmes which are revolving around them. However, we should first note that a même can be turned into its antithesis, a powerful anti-meme. We have seen that within the IT-area we are dealing with truths which are local in space and time. It may seem especially peculiar that we have included *#21# and Pictures are Expensive in this work. Nevertheless, they are interesting and illustrative in their own special way. The investments in videophony in the 1970's were only based on a powerful même, similar to the one about The Paperless Society. This was something that just had to happen! It was only a matter of time. When it turned out that there actually would not be a breakthrough for videophony, it was replaced by the—waning—myth we have included here, without any great disappointment or expensive ventures. Behind a number of our myths a couple of larger images or memomes can be discerned, and which are complementary and contradictory, but only partly. One memome can be described as "Technology can handle everything, as long as progress continues." This lies behind the idea of The Paperless Society, Artificial Intelligence. Fully Automated Factories, Border controlfor Bit Passage and Exact Figures Give Exact Results, and, for that matter. Minitel as well. The other memome is when "Technology is inhuman and imperialistic" and it, too, encompasses, albeit with a different emphasis. Artificial Intelligence and Fully Automated Factories. Our more unambiguous example of this memome is, as was earlier hinted at, *#21#. A more extensive memome can be described as "Order and consequence" with the motto "Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose." This is simply about that it is expected that different phenomena will look as they "always" have, and that established analogies let themselves be made into analogies of other analogies (taste that) or detailed consequences of the analogies. Here we can find everything that has to do with structures, investments and systems—The Investments thai Disappeared, Information Technology is like Roads and Railroads. Optical Fibres are a Must, Exact Figures Give Exact Results (which then is linked to two memomes/ Telecommunication Systems are Unchangeable, as well as The Information Society and in its own way Pictures are Expensive. Telecommuting must also be counted as belonging to this memome. Finally there is a memome whichrefersto a dream of democracy, one which can be traced all the way back to Francis Bacon's statement that knowledge is power, and which equates knowledge with information. Thomas Jefferson has made a similar statement about the importance ofinformation for democracy (which did not exist when Bacon made his remark four centuries ago). The memome vrill thus be: "Information to the People." The most obvious manifestation is the hitherto unclassified More Information is Good. When Minitel was introduced, there were similar lines of argument used—but they were sabotaged when, for economic reasons, the distribution of terminals was limited after a few years to cover the third of telephone subscribers with the highest telephone bills. Even with regards to Telecommuting there were such democratic and egalitarian overtones, being the ITAfyths 83 most obvious when subjects such as regional equalisation and easier access to information and knowledge regardless of place or distance are brought up. Optical Fibres are a Must is yet another example of a même belonging to this general memome, in combination with the earlier "Order and consequence." Can we find other examples—besides our fifteen—of myths which fall under these headings? A number of years ago Frederick P. Brooks, Jr., one of the men responsible for the development of IBM's famous 360-system—a huge success which came close to failing, plagued by problems and delays—wrote a brilliant little book called "The Mythical Manmonth." The myth is that work can be split up—in this case the development of software—into units all of which can be assessed with the unit man-month. This is due to that divisible and indivisible tasks must be distinguished from each other, the latter contaimng complex relationships between the different members of the project. In plain language: people must keep each other informed, are dependent on each other's achievements andresults—andon information about those achievements and results. The person who has not been involved in the project previously cannot simply start on the spot, but will require extensive, entirely project-specific training. "To add new persons to a delayed software project will make it fall behind schedule even more," Brooks observes. I would here in like to refer especially to the memome "Order and consequence" even if there are streaks also of "Technology can handle everything, as long as progress continues." Much more general is Manfred F. R. Kets de Vries' "The Myth about Rational Leadership," a book with management character, but with no particular IT-outiook. The historically acquainted reader can, if he or she wishes, connect it with a forgotten IT-myth of the past, the one about the coming of Management Information Systems, MIS. De Vries' book emphasises among other things that rationality has its limitations, that emotions do matter. It is close to the memome "Technology is Inhuman and Imperialistic," at least if what de Vries attacks will lead to overly "imperialistic" expert systems or new types of MIS. In Whose Interest? At last we havereachedthe question about who are interested in propagating the myths. Emin Tengström has devoted an entire book to describing the myth of the information society as created by certain interests, namely those who work with and exploit information, in particular information technology. Maybe it is worth adding that the interested parties are all the more convincing as they themselves are convinced: if the myth is about manipulation—as Tengström asserts—the manipulators themselves are manipulated and believers. This conviction is basically a function of the myth—already in urban legends or tales. The urban legend will emphasise and accentuate what we ourselves believe, are convinced of and want to be convinced of. An added plus is the presence of an unexpected, exotic or special flavour, if it is not about something which seems as altruistic as defending the principle of All Information to Everyone. It also explains that the interested parties do not look upon themselves as such—not the engineers, we can call them technocrats without putting any value into the term at all. These technocrats see Exact Figures Give Exact Results, Artificial Intelligence (and artificial life for that matter) and Fully Automated Factories as both natural and on the whole positive for all of humankind. That these same notions also are positive for these groups of individuals is effect, not cause! Otherwise the information industry is a potential winner in several of the myths—if things do not tum out as badly as they did with Pictures are Expensive, where the myth is turaed into 84 ITAfyths its antithesis when reality comes calling. As H2Ht did for "the friendly technocrats." Counter-interests are then those who defend or want another type of society, not meaning that the interests cannot represent another group or some sort of power game. The Paperless Society can hence be said to be serving the interests of the electronic industry, just as Telecommuting does. The picture of vested interest becomes even more intricate when we speak of things like Optical Fibres Are a Must and The Infrastructure ofInformation is like Roads and Railroads, because then those who are anxious to create new jobs and regional development have acted according to the garbage can model of decision making: they have embraced a technological solution and adapted a problem to it, i.e. the competitive power of the region. Minitel may be said to benefit the information industry, not the least the suppliers of this kind of equipment. Even a number of entrepreneurs with new ideas have interests to defend. On the other hand, the image of Unchangeable Telecommunication Systems helps to create an atmosphere of status quo which may deter bold entrepreneurs from making the most of the new opportunities. Maybe the notion that it is possible to control The Passage of Bits at the Borders will work in favour of the Federal Reserve Banks across Europe and in other parts of the world until someone finds out what a castle in the air it really is. Or maybe entrepreneurial development will be held back yet again, in favour of some sort of general status quo? Or are the those who discover the flaws the privileged, tom between being loyal and de facto ignoring it? Not all connections to vested interests are thus straightforward and obvious. It is entirely unclear to me how I should treat the problem of 77ie Investments that Disappeared. If nothing else, I could refer it to statistical agencies as more evidence of both how insufficient today's statistics are and how important correct statistics are for good decisions. Conclusions—About the Image of Man? How are myths created, then? Some of what we have seen developing builds on false analogies—or correct analogies which have been taken too far, far enough to have become false. A number of these have to do with the image of man himself. We are all human beings. Should not all of us, through introspection, by thinking about how we ourselves would react, be able to understand how, e.g., a new electronic medium or a new electronic service will be received? The are certainly pyramids of needs, well established and visible to everyone. Maslow is famous for his hierarchy of needs which starts with the most basic needs for survival: adequate food and drink, shelter. Reproduction is also a need, an urge to guarantee the survival of the human species ("the selfish gene"); thus we have to count on other social aspects and needs. What, then, is man's really genuine needs for information? Some, and the most important, relate to the demands for human survival. As time has passed they have become increasingly indirect. Agriculture is dependent on accurate weather forecasts, ergo there are weather satellites, programmers, information services over the Internet, and naturally chaos mathematicians. The relations become increasingly indirect, something which also produces arguments both for and against the existence of an information society. The answer is more troublesome: in fact we do not know which our own needs are. Troublesome—but should it be? Maybe it is quite natural, since new communication media are also changing the entire ecology, the whole system of viewing and working with information. We do not know our own needs, or rather: our own information behaviours. Behaviours, i.e., how we actually, in practice, react to getting access to new technology, new opportunities. ITAfyths 85 Especially when software and hardware are linked together in certain ways, and where both societal conditions and—in spite of everything—infrastructures play a role (means of transportation, cities...). Marketing research showed that there was no market for video games at the time that they were introduced. Nothing strange about that: the "market" was asked about something there was only a verbal description for, but could not be practically and concretely demonstrated. This is the problem when asking about something that does not yet exist, and which the consumer has to have concrete experience of before being able to react in any way. The first success for personal computers, for the Apple II, was due to the development of a spreadsheet program called VisiCalc. The development of cable-TV in the United States is heavily influenced by the regulations conceraing acquisition of licenses and the American anti-trust legislation. In Sweden there was a TV monopoly for more than four decades, and the placement of transmitters for the Government TV1 and TV2 was an important factor. A factor which quickly lost its importance when TV satellites were placed in geostationary orbit above the Earth. It is now starting to get crowded in that same orbit, unique because it is only satellites in this orbit which seem to stand still relative to the Earth's surface, since they rotate at the same speed as the Earth itself. One could say that satellites, the ground-based TV network, as well as the interaction between software and hardware, are examples of a problem of predicting actual information behaviours, namely the one having to do with that several different arenas are linked together. Both software and hardware are certainly a part of the free market, but they are two markets which are connected. This connection of markets is perfectly demonstrated in the symbiosis of development of increasingly powerful and faster computers with larger memory, and software with more and more features—which require greater processing speeds, enormous amounts of memory, etc., in order for the whole thing not to become impossibly sluggish. If we go on to speak about TV-networks and the American regulated market—well, then it is obviously about an interplay between markets on the one hand, politics on the other, with the bureaucracy's and courts' interpretations of general legislated procedures as additional factors to take into consideration. In short, some of the myths we have seen, some evidently quite reasonable mêmes that despite this fail to emerge victoriously from the struggle for survival, have their origins in one arena, e.g., the market, but the problems arise when the rules— and maybe mêmes—which exist in another arena enter the game. We are talking about different types of decisions, different types of vested interests, different types of power. To refer back to our very first myth, the one about telecommunications which replace physical transportation: Jack Nilles in California belongs to the pioneers in working with and studying telework. As early as the 1970's he helped install a system for telecommuting at a large Califomian insurance company. The project was not so much about working at home, as it was about splitting up one large office into four smaller ones, which were located in such a way that the employees had significantly shorter commuting distances. We already know the story and what lessons can be learned from the first myth-chapter, yet let us recapitulate. As mentioned, it was possible divide the central office up into four smaller offices by making sure that all four had similar tasks without any major differences in specialisation. Thisradicallycut down commuting time. This was naturally beneficial for the employees. They benefited from getting faster to and from work. The benefited from savings on petrol money and wear and tear on their cars. Society also benefited, of course. The enormous load on the vast traffic system in Los Angeles became slightly lighter, while there was a somewhat better chance of being able to see the mountains in the east through the normally polluted air. Thus, on the whole it was a gain 86 ITAfyths for society (but not necessarily in economic terms, since less petrol and cars were used which are included in measures of consumption). But the cost lay wholly on the insurance company. And it did not make any obvious profit on its investment. At least not as long as it is not possible to negotiate some kind of refund from the employees or "society," which hardly is feasibly done in a way which would not be distorting or overly complicated. The profits could possibly be indirect: more loyal employees, greater possibilities of attracting qualified staff. This early "experiment," which was not intended to an experiment, except that the economic reasons listed above discouraged any imitators, shows that telecommunication at least occasionally can replace physical communication. This need not necessarily be a myth. Some of the reasons why it turns out to be practical myth were elaborated in the discussion of the myth, e.g., that the utilisation of electronic communication is dynamic. Other reasons can be found in given structures—as in the case of the insurance company—in the type of interaction or lack of interaction, sometimes even in the counteraction between different arenas. (This is nothing novel or exclusive to IT). Already as single individuals we have to handle several different arenas, with more of a private character. Economic calculations usually try to take into account how much we can consume, and are made in terms of investments and economic room. However, there is one resource which in its way is more limited in an absolute sense than room in an economic sense is: our time. There is a finite number of hours in a day, a reduced number of hours available for the consumption ofinformation in the forms of entertainment, education or information. This temporal budget is starting to become more closely scrutinised without anybody necessarily being certain of how it affects us or how it interacts with our more financial budget. It is possible that the temporal budget needs to be divided further. Maybe we should also speak of "attention," as it is one thing to allocate time to entertainment, information or knowledge-gathering, but quite another to leam how to use new means for this trinity. The time necessary to maintain a certain level of skill once it has been reached should also be added to attention. Hence there is a difference between using a word processing package and learning how to use it; a difference between working with a CD-ROM and learning this new medium. Further, it might be that the skills to use the more advanced and exclusive functions in the word processing package can be maintained as long as it is used reasonably often. What then becomes the difference between "seldom-users" and "often-users," and when do we migrate from one category to the other? Our myth #2, that we human beings want to have as much information as possible, that more information is a wholly good thing, that the more commumcation the better, is evidently a myth which fits well into this context. Firstly, it is about the time available. Secondly, it is also about having a frame of reference that makes it possible to handle the inforaiation, to make something out of it. It is merely a special case of the problem of attention. We also saw that in this case everything was about attention in another direction, the one in time and related to a meaningful average, that information can come so thick and fast that it prompts to action at the very moment we should keep a level head. We run the risk of constantly having a wavering composure, of becoming overheated and excited all unnecessarily! In this case, more than ever, it is an advantage to be a "seldom-user" ofinformation, since it only conveys something meaningful when it arrives with just the right interval and summarised in an appropriate manner. ITAfyths 87 A related idea is the one about the informational need becoming additive, so to speak. Because both the telephone and the television have become so successful, it is from the outset only a matter of course that videophony also will serve a great need. The addition-effect is counteracted by an old discovery in economics that has had aremarkablydifficult time being properly appreciated: it is enough that we are satisfied. This is called "satisficing" in fancy language. If we have something that works well enough, we do not necessarily want something which may be slightly better but demands more time and money. We could also view the component-level in electronics as an arena, the electronic system— a computer, an entire telecommunications network, an Internet— as another arena, society as a third. The choice of levels and arenas is probably dependent on the type of problem, medium or phenomenon. And the point of this way of viewing things is then that there is a big difference between what happens on one level and what is successful on another. We have seen many examples of this, perhaps the best being the one regarding the myth of the paperless society—but the idea of an information society also fits in here. Emin Tengström emphasises that there is no doubt that information technology will have far-reaching consequences. But to take it from there to where we are talking about an information society, where information activities are dominating and organised? There are surely differences in opinion here, but not regarding the fatal error in believing that paper would disappear merely because it had become cheaper to store it electronically rather on this ancient medium. Storage become the focus of attention, a level or a component, but not the social and the human, e.g., convenience. At the same we could assert that technology in this way helps us discover what we do not know about our own abilities, and our will and need to work with and assimilate information. The video game is a trivial but telling example. The paperless school is another: after fruitless attempts to automate the school and improve textbooks and classic backboards, we are finally starting to ask ourselves more profound questions about the way pedagogy really, ideally, should have been designed, and how we humans really leam. The simple conclusion: what it is we have to leara. This leaves us close to the next conclusion: we really do not know how man thinks. He does not seem to do what the first generation of computers are doing, with their von Neumann-bottleneck. The computer in its traditional form is a bad, even misleading analogy or metaphor for how man thinks, all the more misleading by virtue of its power and lucidity. Of course computers can be built in many different ways and a computer be programmed to behave as another computer, which works in another way. It would too simplistic to contend that computers are the only reason for the revolution in the way we see and understand man's cognitive processes that seems to be going on right now. But they have certainly at least partly served as a provocation: a red rag to people, inviting or alluring, all depending on the researcher's own conceptions and images of what a computer could do, what a computer program could be shaped into. These include functions like learning and pattern recognition, maybe even language translation, the notorious stumbling-block and equally infamous disappointment. If we refer to storage, which has become cheaper electronically than on paper, this misconception can also be reformulated into that man is simple system-analytical formula—maybe not superficially simple, but all the same possible toreducein a classical and mathematical way. Here we find a wonderfully subtle effect of the desire to create electronic life or artificial life. It has led to the discovery of emergent properties, properties which are difficult to deduce from the relations between components in a system in a number of phenomena— 88 ITAfyths mathematical and geometric structures, ecologies and bits and pieces of computer programs, as well as natural and human ecologies and social systems. The most closely related of our myths to these phenomena is the one about the exact numbers and their absolute limitation of the non-linear equations tendency to create chaos. If we instead look at the disappointments, artificial intelligence and fully automated factories have to be counted as examples of such. There is a core of truth, as there must be, and there is a tendency to extrapolate and exaggerate which characterises the preponderance of what our myths are about. TELDOK publications since 1993 TELDOK publications printed 1993 and later can be ordered, free of charge in single copies (SEK 50 a copy in larger quantities), from order_teldok@fr.se. Please quote the publication number to ensure prompt handling! For further information, please point your browser at http://www.ftamfab.se/teldok. T E L D O K Report ("Rapport") 94E I T myths. (Translation, with an addendum, of Report 94.) November 1996. 108 IT—några skolexempel från Mittnorrland. October 1996. 107 Nyttan av elektronisk affàrskommumkation för småföretag. Erfarenheter från fem företag. June 1996. 106 Teknik i butik—informationsteknologi i svensk dagligvaruhandel. June 1996. 105 Resor i m m och tid. April 1996. 104 Utan IT stannar marknaden. April 1996. 103 Lär vid din läst. December 1995. 102 Omsorg med IT på äldre da'r. December 1995. 101E 20 seconds to work. Home-based telework. November 1995. 101 20 sekunder tiU jobbet. Distansarbete från bostaden. October 1995. 100 IT i skolan. August 1995. 99 Den grafiska branschens utveckling mot digital kommunikation. August 1995. 98 Företagande i informationsteknologi. ... Telebild, Trans Net, Minitel och Tele Guide. July 1995. 97 Våga Vara Visionär. O m att använda videokonferenser idag och imorgon. June 1995. 96 Sett och Hört via bildkommunikation. June 1995. 95 Tillväxtföretagen och de teleanknutna informationssystemen. May 1995. 94 Myter om IT. April 1995. 93 Den svenska marknaden för online, audiotex och CD-ROM—framväxt, nuläge, utveckling och trender. March 1995. 92 Japan—teknik, slagord, genomförandekraft. Junel 994. 91 NII—USAs elektroniska motorvägar, alias Infobahn. Junel 994. 90E Telecottages, telework, and teleleaming. June 1994. 90 Telestugor, telearbete och distansutbildning. June 1994. 89 Office Information Systems in the United States and Sweden. May 1994. 88 Arbete i nätverk och förändrad näringsstruktur. May 1994. 87 Informationsteknik och handikapp. March 1994. 86E 86 85 84 83 82 81 80 16 15 14 13 L K 26 25 24 23 22 21 The TELDOK Yearbook 1994. June 1994. TELDOKs Årsbok 1994. February 1994. Vård och råd på tråd. ... distansdiagnostik och telemedicin... February 1994. "Bootstrapping"—en strategi för att förbättra förmågan till bättre förmåga. November 1993. Mänskliga möten med mindre möda. ... 90-talets enklare och billigare videomötesteknik. September 1993. Danmark... Framgångsrika medborgarkontor och hög "IT-temperatur" i enskilda företag och regioner. June 1993. Out of stock Danskt brobygge pågår. Sociala försök med informationsteknologi. June 1993. Out of stock ESPRIT, EUREKA och RACE—tre pan-europeiska IT-satsningar. February 1993. TELDOK-lnfo Att utnyttja den nya friheten i tid och rum—en liten skrift om flexibelt arbete. October 1996. Elektroniska marknader - dagligvara och vision. December 1995. Mobila telekommunikationer—en handbok. May 1994. Tala i bild. En skrift om bildkommunikation. July 1993. T E L D O K Reference Document 55 rapporter från TELDOK 1991— 1995. October 1995. Utgivning 1981-1991. April 1992. Via T E L D O K ITkultur—användare och värderingar. November 1996. Informationstekniken nu, då, sedan. June 1995. Tvåvägs multimediakommunikationer i USA. March 1994. Gruppvata i praktiken. March 1994. Electronic Publishing—elektronisk förlagsverksamhet. December 1993. Information Technology, Social Fabric. May 1993. Teldok TELDOK was initiated in 1980 by the Board ofTelia, Sweden's largest telecommunications operator, to facilitate early and easy-to-read documentation on the use of telecommunications-based information systems. TELDOK aims at documenting, as early as possible, working applications of new information systems and arranging study trips and seminars directly related to this task. TELDOK activities are coordinated by an Editorial Board with wide representation from the IT corporate user community, academia, trade unions, government authorities, suppliers, and Telia AB. The TELDOK Editorial Board welcomes new ideas concerning the study and documentation of working applications of new communications technology systems. The Editorial Board can best be reached by sending email to PG Holmlov,Telia, 100070.1724@compuserve.com. TELDOK has issued more than 150 publications, mostly in Swedish, that are distributed regularly and at no cost to 5,000 professionals in Sweden and the Nordic countries. Other rcecent TELDOK publications in English include... TELDOK Report 101 E: 20 seconds to work. Home-based telework. October 1995. TELDOK Report 90E: Telecottages, telework and distance education. June 1994. TELDOK Report 89: Office Information Systems. May 1994. TELDOK Report 86E: I7«e TELDOK Yearbook 1994. June 1994. Via TELDOK 21 : Information Technology, Social Fabric. May 1993. These and other publications from TELDOK may be ordered, free of charge in single copies, from an independent grocery store, "Linde Livs", in northern Sweden, FAX +46-650 800 08; http:// www.framfab.se/teldok; or order_teldok@fr.se. Reports are stored in Ture s cowshed. TELDOK Report (Rapport) • 1996 • ISSN 0281-8574 • price SEK SO To request reports, free in single copies: oriderjeWok@fr.se Other matters: write to teWo(c@fr.se or look at http:llwww.framfab.selteldokl