Interregional Seminar and Regional Demonstration Workshop on Accessible Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) and Persons with Disabilities
Bayview Park Hotel, Manila, Philippines, March 3-7, 2003

The Four Forces of the Communications Revolution

Charles Kuhlmann
New York University

Why is accessibility an issue?

• The digital and communications revolutions have made information pervasive
• Intellectual capital and the service industries as engines for growth
• Who can participate?

Paradigm Shifts

• The digital revolution
• New transmission modes
• Models of computation
• Circuit switching <--> packet switching

One: The digital revolution

• War, computation and trajectories
• Mechanical computation
• Electrical
  • Power of miniaturization and declining cost

Digital language

• Reality, analog reality, digital reality
• Bit representation
  • Text, visual content, sound
• Infinite reproducibility
• Transmitability

Two: New transmission modes

• 1700's semaphore signaling
• 1800's telegraph
  • all copper
• 1900-1960 telephone
  • copper, microwave, fiber
• 1960+ All digital

All digital media

• Copper
  • bandwidth related to gauge, distance and encoding scheme
• Radio
  • Free air and coax
  • bandwidth limited by power and spectrum
• Fiber
  • laser and LED driven
  • wave division multiplexing

Three: Models of computation

• Mainframes
• Minicomputers
• Microcomputers
• Client/server
• Browser-thin client/central server

Communications and computers

• Terminals--low communication load
• Time-sharing--medium communication load
• Distributed computing--high communication load

From the desktop to the world

• LAN
  • shared medium: Ethernet and Token Ring
• MAN
  • Metropolitan Area Network links LANS
• WAN
  • Wide Area Network

The computer is the network; the network is the computer

• Whether large or small, computers are almost never standalone devices.
• Networking is integral

Four: Circuit switching and Packet switching

• Circuit switching: clear permanent path 56/64 kilobits wide
• Packet switching: routed grouping of bits, no permanent path.

Circuit switching

• TDM Time division multiplexing
• ISDN
• SONET
• Class 5 switches and tandems

Packet switching and routing

• ATM -- Asynchronous transfer mode
• IP -- Internet protocol

Crossroads issues

• QOS Quality of service
  • Switched circuits -- no issue
  • ATM -- built-in, 10% overhead
• IP -- none yet. Does it matter?
  • Convergence or replacement
  • Use existing communications capital
  • OR build new communications mode

New communications mode

• All IP, all the time
• All fiber, all the way
• All wave division

Accessibility challenges

• International organizations in catch-up mode
• Access --infrastructure inadequacy & inequality
• Human physical differences
• Intellectual property
• Linguistic diversity
• Economic capacity

The New Wave: wireless

• Cellular
• Mobile wireless - 802.11b
• Fixed wireless
• Bluetooth, very short distance

Issues and opportunities of wireless

• Security
• Availability of frequencies
• Adaptability to new types of appliances
  • Palm pilots (PDAs)
  • Telephones
  • "Intelligent" electrical appliances

What should we do?

• Depends where one is
• And who controls telecommunications

Guaranteeing investment

• Must ensure that telecommunications are a national priority
• Ensure that investments lead to a telecommunications systems to which everyone can have access
• Ensure that international technical norms are followed

Where telecommunications are a monopoly

• Use the political process to promote standards of availability and accessibility

Where telecommunications are private

• Advocate standards and public regulations that obligate accessibility as a pre-requisite for operating licenses
• Ensure that the obligation for universal service is not lost -- that rural areas have the same priority as urban areas
• Show private telecommunications companies that accessibility is good business

Promote appropriate technology

• Promote accessibility appliances that take advantage of the new digital innovations
  • Text to voice
  • Voice to text
• Urge universities to develop interfaces between people and machines

Agree on common technologies

• To take full advantage of the technologies, organizations of persons with disabilities should agree about the software and hardware that will be used
  • Chat protocols
  • Video and voice protocols
• Use bridging technologies

An exciting future

• We are only at the beginning of the digital revolution
• Tremendous scope for innovation

Copyright (c) 2003 AIMS/VisionOffice.
Last updated 03/06/03. Contact: info@visionoffice.com