Showing papers on "Services computing published in 1978"

New telecommunications services and their social implications

Abstract: The various forms of message (alpha-numeric, audio, or audio-visual) and the various numbers of people receiving a single message produce a matrix of possible telecommunications services. The two main groups of existing service (wireless broadcasting and wired switched telecommunications) at present occupy separate parts of this matrix. Both groups of service will grow, and are likely to extend into new forms of message and audience size. In an increasingly information-based society, these developments in telecommunications seem likely to have profound social effects at the individual, organizational, national, and global levels. Any novelty contains powers for good or ill. The good or ill is in the usage not in the device. The providers of telecommunications do so within the mores of the society of the day and take note of those mores. It can be argued that those mores are influenced most by the climate of ideas and analysis that is created by writers, publishers, broadcasters, academics and politicians, and only secondarily by the devices and novelties of the telecommunications engineer. This paper argues that the new telecommunications services in prospect over the next 25 years will have profound social effects, and that these present opportunities and dangers of potential concern to all those involved in the provision or use of telecommunications. NEW TELECOMMUNICATIONS SERVICES New telecommunications services include computer communications, facsimile, mobile telephone and paging, videotelephone, conference television, Viewdata, cable television, remote metering, surveillance, and alarm services. To understand the general trends underlying these innovations, it is necessary to see them in the wider context of on the one hand the existing telephone service, and on the other hand the broadcasting services of radio, television and teletext. Two important dimensions of classification are the form of the message and the number of people who receive the same message. The form of the message may be audio-visual (e.g. television), audio (e.g. telephone), or alpha-numeric or graphic (as is the case with any written or printed material). The number of people receiving the same message may be anything from one to many millions. Existing and prospective electronic communication services are laid out in terms of these two dimensions in figure 1 (dealing with wired services) and figure 2 (dealing with wireless services). In each figure the existing services have been boxed in a heavy line, the new or prospective services being boxed in a light line. In some cases the prospect is of a completely new service; in most cases the new service does already exist on a small scale, but still awaits the breakthrough from isolated specialized use to general use. Although the wired and wireless services are today rather separate in terms of their tech

System design approaches to public services

Abstract: Applying his practical knowledge from years of experience with public services in mental-health communities, the author examines the weaknesses in our own services and make viable suggestions for restructuring them into total and life-extending systems.