Network Wonderland Rael a Fenchurch

Home , Ian Hargreaves

Demos has received invaluable support from a wide range of organisations including: Northern Foods, Cable & Wireless plc, Pearson, Scottish and Newcastle, National Westminster Bank plc, British Gas, Shell International, Stoy Hayward, the Esmee Fairbairn Foundation, the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust, the Rowntree Reform Trust, the Inland Revenue Staff Federation, Etam, Heidrick and Struggles, the Charities Aid Foundation, the Corporation of London, and the Economic and Social Research Council. Demos’ Advisory Council includes:

John Ashworth, Director of the London School of Economics Clive Brooke, General Secretary, Inland Revenue Staff Federation Jack Dromey, National Officer TGWU Sir Douglas Hague, Templeton College Jan Hall, Chief executive, Gold, Greenless Trott Stuart Hall, Professor of Sociology, Open University Chris Ham, Professor of Health Policy, Birmingham University Charles Handy, author and broadcaster Ian Hargreaves, Editor, Independent Christopher Haskins, Chairman of Northern Foods plc Martin Jacques, Journalist Richard Layard, Professor of Economics, LSE David Marquand, Professor of Politics, Sheffield University Sheila McKechnie, Director, Shelter Julia Middleton, Director, Common Purpose Yve Newbold, Company Secretary. Hanson plc, Director, British Telecom Sue Richards, Director, The Office of Public Management Anita Roddick, Group Managing Director, Body Shop PLC Dennis Stevenson, Chairman, SRU and the Tate Gallery Martin Taylor, Chief Executive, Barclays Bank plc Bob Tyrrell, Chief Executive, The Henley Centre.

Open access. Some rights reserved.

As the publisher of this work, Demos has an open access policy which enables anyone to access our content electronically without charge. We want to encourage the circulation of our work as widely as possible without affecting the ownership of the copyright, which remains with the copyright holder. Users are welcome to download, save, perform or distribute this work electronically or in any other format, including in foreign language translation without written permission subject to the conditions set out in the Demos open access licence which you can read here. Please read and consider the full licence. The following are some of the conditions imposed by the licence: • Demos and the author(s) are credited; • The Demos website address (www.demos.co.uk) is published together with a copy of this policy statement in a prominent position; • The text is not altered and is used in full (the use of extracts under existing fair usage rights is not affected by this condition); • The work is not resold; • A copy of the work or link to its use online is sent to the address below for our archive. By downloading publications, you are confirming that you have read and accepted the terms of the Demos open access licence. Copyright Department Demos Elizabeth House 39 York Road London SE1 7NQ United Kingdom [email protected] You are welcome to ask for permission to use this work for purposes other than those covered by the Demos open access licence.

Demos gratefully acknowledges the work of Lawrence Lessig and Creative Commons which inspired our approach to copyright. The Demos circulation licence is adapted from the ‘attribution/no derivatives/non-commercial’ version of the Creative Commons licence. To find out more about Creative Commons licences go to www.creativecommons.org

Demos Quarterly

Issue 4/1994 Demos Quarterly is published by

Demos 9 Bridewell Place London EC4V 6AP

Telephone: 0171 353 4479 Facsimile: 0171 353 4481

Editorial team: Geoff Mulgan Daniel Sabbagh Martin Bartle Joanna Wade Zina Saro-Wiwa Ian Christie Ivan Briscoe Liz Bailey

Printed in Great Britain by EG Bond Ltd

Design and art direction: Esterson Lackersteen

Special thanks to: Helen Norman Andrzej Krause Contents

FEATURES Networks for an open society 1 Geoff Mulgan Before we rush to declare a new era 19 James Woudhuysen Network wonderland 33 Rael A. Fenchurch Push-button professionals 37 Sir Douglas Hague Plug-in politics 49 Martin Bartle The lean controllers: The new patterns of regulation 51 Martin Cave Open architecture: The case for separating networks 61 and services Suzanne Warner and Jonathan Solomon Netfacts 67 Daniel Sabbagh Architechnology? 79 John Welsh Demos 4/1994

McJobs or MACJobs: will the network make work? 83 Ian Christie and Geoff Mulgan Down your superhighway: shopping in 91 the electronic parish Nick Rowan Dial B for banking 97 Ian Courtney and Kevin Morgan Self-health and the virtual health service 101 Daniel Sabbagh The ABC of educational multimeda 107 Mark Edwards Regional is beautiful 111 Andrew Davies

REGULARS Making vice a virtue 117 Jon Norton Project reports 121 Media Watch 127

vi Demos Liberation technology?

Five years before the millennium governments across the world are trying to decide how best to develop the communications networks which they believe will be the key economic and social infrastructures for the next century. So far most of the debate has been about regulation, competition and technological choices. But important as these are, they are not the whole story. Equally important are questions of culture and uses: how to nurture the enthu- siasm and creativity of the children and teenagers who are now far more at home with the networks than their parents; how to improve learning and health; how to widen access from the technophiles to the rest, from the young to the old, from the rich to the poor. Perhaps most important of all is the question of whether networks will truly be servants of an open society: open to service providers and citizens, and open in the sense of making public life and decisions more transparent and responsive. This special issue probes these questions. It deliberately seeks a balance between overoptimistic hype and unrealistic pessimism. Along- side analyses of how networks should best be regulated, it focuses on their uses, in fields ranging from the professions to buildings, education to shopping. It illuminates some of the complex choices and points to how they might be resolved, proposing:

a shift in public policy focus from hardware to software, technologies to applications

Demos vii Demos 4/1994

a new model of regulation entailing a separation of networks and services, and reformed approaches to pricing, social issues, contents and access regulatory guarantees that networks will be open to service providers and direct public involvement in policy decisions political vision and leadership to involve the public, combined with experimental applications across a very wide range of institutions.

Ensuring that technologies achieve their potential to liberate will not be easy. It will depend on foresight, care and active choice. It will depend on a clear grasp not only of the economics (and the dynamics of competition and monopoly), but also of the culture. It will depend on an informed public debate about who benefits and how. As the networks develop at breakneck pace it is to these more complex questions that the debate now needs to turn.

viii Demos Networks for an open society Geoff Mulgan

1994 is a year of anniversaries. 150 years ago Samuel Morse’s first telegraph messages were sent between Washington and Baltimore. 60 years ago the US established its Federal Communications Commission. 10 years ago we saw both the breakup of AT&T,and also the privatisation of BT. Looming on the horizon too is the most resonant anniversary of all, the millennium which is set over the next five years to focus people’s minds far more effectively on the future – its possibilities and its dangers. The future of the networks must be central to this. But as yet there is surprisingly little policy clarity about how best to foster high performance and life-friendly networks. One reason is that governments still need to discard two older models: on the one hand the directive, technology push model of the 1960s and 1970s which still has many advocates, often funded by vested interests involved in a particular technology solution, and on the other the belief that market forces on their own can make decisions effectively. Recent experience suggests that governments cannot avoid playing a role in shaping technological choices. But there are also other shifts in gear that will be needed if the right choices are to be made. Too often debate about networks has oscillated between absurd hype and equally unrealistic scepticism. Too often debate is dominated by technologists

Geoff Mulgan is Director of Demos, and author of Communication and Control: networks and the new economies of communication (Polity, 1991).

Demos 1 Demos 4/1994 and economists. Not enough attention is paid to how networks will be used, and to the very valid public fears that they will have no control over how networks circulate information about them. Moreover, too often debate is still couched in general terms, rather than acknowledg- ing that each nation, even perhaps each city and region, will need to develop its own solutions appropriate to distinct histories. In the last year, two factors have driven policy debate forward. One is the pace being set by the USA. There, an activist President and Vice-President are feverishly encouraging interest in the information superhighway, pushing through new legislation for re-regulation and deregulation, and helping US firms compete in the key markets for hardware and software. Much of what they are doing is based on simplistic high-tech hype, but it appears to be effective hype. The second factor is fear of being left behind. With strong industries in communications and tradeable services the UK is legitimately wor- ried that policy mistakes now will have costs far into the next century. Across Europe, problems of competitiveness in electronics and telecommunications have not been resolved. But neither large-scale R&D programmes nor deregulation will solve these problems on their own. Many of the issues raised by technology are universal. But what should be done in Britain in particular? First we need to acknowledge the strengths and weaknesses. Historically Britain has often been at the forefront of technologies and uses. The UK had one of the earliest telephone systems, one of the first telegraphs and the first working television service. It also has considerable modern advantages: a relatively advanced digitisation programme; very sophisticated value added and corporate networks; greater experience of liberalisation and regulation than any other country in Europe; and relatively high levels of public usage of technologies such as mobile phones, faxes and home computers, relative to income. A recent study of several European countries networks by PA Consulting concluded that although the UK is never the most advanced in any one area ‘it is consistently a good second and does not lag significantly in any major respect.’ The UK also has the benefits of several billion pounds of US cable investment. And it has the great advantage of the English language.

2 Demos Networks for an open society

But there are also obvious weaknesses: a less coherent pattern of network development than other countries, the spread of cable networks with limited switching and interactivity, confusions over the role of BT,government network choices that diminish their use for active rec- iprocity between state and citizen, and the lack of training for much of the UK’s workforce. The failure to address these is one reason why there is a sense that after the policy innovations of the 1980s things have ground to a halt. The present government believes that all necessary policy instruments are in place, and that we simply need to step back and let things happen with a mosaic of competing networks. Unfortunately, even if it were not for the other gaps in government policy, this view would be incomplete. The history of communications shows that competition has not often been stable; periods of competition have often been followed by periods marked by bankruptcy,takeover and re-established monopoly.Failure to get standards right can lead to massive and unnecessary costs. And failure to manage effectively the social innovations that are the necessary corollary of new technologies can often create bottlenecks and barriers. What we need now is a more activist approach,but one that doesn’t blunt the impact of competition, the need for experiment and diversity and an open culture of change. Governments cannot shape networks in any full sense: there is no longer, probably in any country, an organising actor with the money or power to implement a single vision. But government can exercise a useful influence when policies go with the grain of change through experiments, pilot projects, regulatory reforms and cost- effective public service applications. Perhaps more importantly governments can act as guardians of openness by encouraging open networks in a number of senses: as a regulatory model that guarantees access for service providers, as a model of universal access for citizens, and as a foundation for an open society based on freedom of information. In what follows there are 11 main themes which suggest how this might be realised:

‘Young people are being brought up to doubt any format that is simply monologue – whether in the classroom or in politics’

Demos 3 Demos 4/1994

1. Interactive culture The starting point is culture. Modern generations expect to be able to respond to commercial and political messages, and to give feedback. Young people are being brought up to doubt any format that is simply monologue – whether in the classroom or in politics. This is increasingly acknowledged in marketing; in the USA 83% of branded products now have an 0800 number. This is the wider significance of the network. Unlike previous dominant forms of communication like television, it is inescapably interactive, involving the user in the shaping of services, whether in sophisticated corporate value-added systems, in the relations between a manufacturer and consumers, or in the new forms of ‘lean democracy’ set out in the last issue of the Demos Quarterly. At its best this involves ‘interstanding’ rather than ‘understanding’. This culture is bringing radically new mindsets. The cognitive shape of a new generation is very different from people brought up on TV or print. Our minds are becoming accustomed to multi-tasking, using many different communications media simultaneously. This change may bring other concerns – for example the greater need for time for reflection as opposed to reflexive action – but it is undeniably a valuable resource. The significance of this culture is rarely acknowledged in policy debates. It is where technology comes together with a more engaged, sophisticated and demanding public. It is being nurtured at the edges of society: in specialist brands, the Internet, the TV and radio phone-in, the self-help group, but is still scarcely acknowledged in the top-down models of policy-making and governance which still, as in the metaphor of the information superhighway, cling to the models of the industrial age. If leaders in business and politics are serious about nurturing cultures appropriate to successful networks in the 21st century they should signal their readiness to move to a more interactive culture. The starting point is schooling: models of learning that directly engage the learner, whether in the classroom, the home or in the burgeoning provision of learning in the workplace through the projects of firms

4 Demos Networks for an open society like Rover and the idea of developing a virtual University for Industry. There is a role for all institutions, from parties and trade unions to employers and voluntary organisations in developing more interactive ways of working, with feedback to leaders, internal juries to consider policy issues, and open networks to encourage lateral communication.

2. Leading through practical vision From this flows a different model of leadership: one in which the appropriate role of government is not to operate networks or over define how they should be run, but rather to lead in an enabling way. The first task is to outline a vision. This need not be wholly specific. It could set out how the great majority of citizens – from the 5 year old to the 80 year old, could benefit from new applications. It could offer a vision of a modernised, responsive and interactive public sector. It could set out the potential of new networks for different cities and regions, and for the evolving countryside. And it could link the vision to the future role of the UK as a trading hub exporting an array of new services, information, culture and other industries. Other governments have been quite successful at this: France since the Nora-Minc report in the mid-1970s, Japan with the various initiatives around the ‘johoka shakai’, and more recently the Clinton-Gore administration with the promotion of the National Information Infrastructure.

3. Balancing integrity and diversity Debate since the late 1970s has focused on competition. There is now conclusive proof that competition is both possible and desirable in many areas of telecommunications: services, mobile telephony, and long-distance. But there is still no proof that in the long-run competition is stable in local cable-based connections. Indeed the economics of building and operating networks points heavily towards monopoly, and only sustained regulatory intervention blocks it. For the UK the great unresolved issue is who will build the information superhighway, or rather who will invest in the very expensive last

Demos 5 Demos 4/1994 link – the cable connection from the network to the home. This issue, focused primarily on the question of when the restrictions on BT in delivery of entertainment services such as television should be lifted, has dominated debate. BT argues that only it can provide a vertically integrated network, and that this depends on full freedom to deliver television services. By contrast the new competitors, particularly the cable companies, argue that this would crush the evolution of effectively competing local networks. Neither position is sustainable or desirable. Full freedom for a vertically integrated BT would create a hugely powerful monopolist which would be extremely hard to regulate in the public interest. It would also have insufficient incentives to efficiency. The alternative of an indefinite restriction on BT would threaten to leave a patchwork of limited interactivity and doubtful commercial viability, and probably a slower roll-out of infrastructure in many areas. Although the UK government has for now signalled that it is unwilling to change its policy, the only viable option in the medium term is to manage the evolution to a rather different market structure. History and economics suggest that in time there will be local monop- olists for broadband cable connections, unless regulators artificially prop up competition. A better option would be to acknowledge the likelihood of local monopoly and ensure that a range of different firms in various regions is involved in running local franchises. Competition should in any event steadily evolve through radio based technologies (whether satellite or mobile), while the lack of a national monopoly would enable benchmarking regulation of local network operators. To get there, those areas not covered by cable franchises should be opened up and offered to any public telecommunications operator. In each area government should signal that it will ultimately – perhaps in 2001 when BT’s position is reviewed – licence a single company or consortium to provide the bulk of domestic connections. Takeovers should be permitted between adjacent areas and consolidation of existing operators. Crucially however, these arrangements should all be for network connections, not for vertically integrated operators.All local franchises

6 Demos Networks for an open society should be required to offer open access through regulation of menus offered and through fair interconnection arrangements. Alongside them competing networks should continue to be encouraged for corporate, long-distance and other specialist uses.

‘The new model public sector should use new technologies to encourage greater self-governance by public sector employees, working under contract, and measured according to subjective as well as objective indicators’

The second question implicitly raised by the question of monopoly is who should pay for the last link to the home. Some have argued for public subsidies citing the parallel of the early telegraph. But it is hard to justify such subsidies on two grounds: first because there is little proven demand for new services such as home shopping or video-on- demand, second because other calls on public resources, such as education and health, are almost certainly higher priorities. The basic principle for public funds should be that they are only used where there is a clear justification in terms of other public goals, such as improving health care or regional economic capacity. This can best be achieved by funding pilot schemes and other initiatives through depart- mental budgets or regional development agencies rather than through a special fund for networks. The primary goal should be to accelerate the connection of institutions – from GPs’ surgeries to schools, rather than the home. If new uses in the home are the priority then resources should be spent on easing schoolchildren’s use of Internet services from the home via PCs and existing twisted pair wires which can anyway now mimic broadband links because of advances in signal compression.

4. The public sector as a mosaic of experiment After nearly 20 years of retrenchment the public sector has lost much of its confidence to lead. But it can act as a showcase and experimenter in new technologies. Schools and hospitals can play a role, as can

Demos 7 Demos 4/1994 environmental monitoring schemes, libraries, official statistical offices and kiosks in public spaces. All of this can be done with far more style and panache than has been the case in the past. This has been one of the themes in the USA where $100 m is being spent on pilot projects in the ‘non-profit’ sector which includes schools, hospitals and libraries. In the UK JANET and SuperJANET,which by 1997 will link all universities and teaching hospitals with broadband connections, are good examples of open networks. Not only are these a good way of motivating staff, and upskilling; they also help prepare the public for technologies. Instead of focusing solely on technologies’ uses in cutting costs, the public sector needs to cultivate its entrepreneurs and visionaries to develop new functions, subject of course to care that essential services are not disrupted. One useful model might be City Challenge (a recent competition for urban renewal funds, designed to stimulate innovation and cross-sector part- nerships centred on local authorities); the same principle could be applied to publicly supported experiments around superhighways, encouraging local authorities to collaborate with business, universities and other institutions to develop innovative ideas. For government there is also another crucial choice to be made: whether to shape the governments own data networks for social security, inland revenue and other services primarily as internal networks for management control, or as media for interaction with the public. So far the choices are being made in the first direction, perhaps not surprisingly given the lack of public debate.Yet there are strong argue- ments for shaping them very differently – to empower customers and provide a medium for interaction around services such as job place- ment, health information, tax advice or complaints.

5. From lean services to lean management: a new model public sector The application of management principles from manufacturing (such as re-engineering) is often not appropriate for the public sector. It shrinks front-line staff and builds up administrators and managers.

8 Demos Networks for an open society

More intensive management is often essential during periods of change. But little attention has been paid to other applications of technology which could not only bear down on costs and micro inefficiencies, but also improve the quality of service experienced by clients, by giving more power and discretion to front line workers, and by freeing resources to help repopulate the front-line – bringing down teacher- pupil ratios, bringing in more care workers, and employing more people to oversee public spaces. The new model public sector should also use new technologies to encourage greater self-governance by public sector employees, working under contract, and measured according to subjective as well as objective indicators. In parallel networks should be used to open governments in other ways.A Freedom of Information Act could be buttressed with easy and cheap access to materials used for decisions and publicly collected data. Other institutions such as courts or quangos, could be required to provide not only full information about their activities, but also to promote a more active dialogue through permanent conference systems.

6. Reorienting R&D from hard to soft The UK’s (and EU) R&D spending remains geared towards hardware rather than software, high science rather than applications. Little attention is paid to the social dimension of technological change (except in the most general terms), even though most experience shows that this is a key determinant of how technologies come to be used. A diversion of funds from pure R&D into practical experiments and applications would pay obvious dividends. It would help the UK’s competitive advantage in applications and marketing; and it would help to involve the public in the process of change. This might mean many things: interactive multimedia programmes for school students to explore ‘what if’ questions about trade-offs and policy problems, to help prisoner’s rehabilitation or as a tool for public consultation; local and national databases for job search and teleworkshops for potential entrepreneurs; services to link up and help train home-based carers. At the European level funding could be provided for projects to create virtual cities

Demos 9 Demos 4/1994

(similar to the Amsterdam Digital City) which offer a networked town- hall space for politics, tourist information, news and campaigns, linked together into a bigger network of European networked cities.

‘As yet there is surprisingly little policy clarity about how best to foster high performance and life-friendly networks’

7. A new regulatory framework Regulation has been a policy success story over the last decade. But on its own it solves few problems. Moreover its mindset has been so shaped by the regulatory theories developed by economists in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s that it may not be well suited to coping with the more complex issues of network openness and social uses. The task now is to build on the successes of independent regulation but to adapt it to a wider set of goals. To do this a range of reforms is needed. i. An integrated regulatory agency for all communications – OfCom Our regulatory structures are now far too complex, with a mess of overlapping roles. The regulation of networks needs to be consolidated into an Office of Communications, covering all broadcasting and telecommunications networks. The core of OfCom should take the form of a commission, with open recruitment and hearings before a select committee on the membership and chair. OfCom should be given stronger powers to access information from bodies it regulates. It should have a set of goals – primarily the achievement of satisfaction or welfare amongest the public. Competition should be seen as a means, not as an end. For example, some regulatory interventions might be justified in terms of increasing telework (and parenting time) or cutting travel to work times. In each case competitive principles (such as negative tendering) may be useful as means. Alongside OfCom we need a separate taste and contents regulator for cinema, press, TV and video. This should act

10 Demos Networks for an open society

with a very light touch except in the case of mass channels and where children may be at risk. This could be called the Standards and Quality Council. Its task will not be easy, especially when 6 year olds may have a better understanding of how to access the network than their parents. Ideally it should have some direct public involvement, perhaps including an advisory citizens panel or jury, rather than being another collection of great and good. ii. Separation of networks and provision One of the primary regulatory tasks now is to separate the operation of networks from the provision of end user services. This is the only way to ensure fair competition across a complex series of networks, and to ensure that the very best and most diverse services are widely available. It is a step which should have been taken at the time of BT’s privatisation in 1984. It could now be achieved through a mix of regulatory rules and suasion. The principle should be to evolve towards open network principles of access to any network, whether cable or telecoms. Interconnection rules should further evolve to become more sophisticated. iii. Adding social goals The 1980s model of regulation focused almost exclusively on competition. In the 1990s much greater attention needs to be paid to the social goals of regulation, while not compromising existing commitments to competition. One of these is spreading access (which has also become a priority in the USA). This may be easier than it seems since there is some evidence that it is often cheaper to cable some rural than urban areas, and since there is also often greater usage. This social goal can be achieved through setting targets, linked to profits regulation, or alternatively through negative tendering. Other social goals might include targets for connecting public institutions like schools, libraries, hospitals and GP surgeries, or services for people with disabilities. Dominant or monopoly local network operators must understand that their power brings with it responsibilities.

Demos 11 Demos 4/1994

iv. Pricing policies Inherited pricing principles will not last long in a multimedia environment. More appropriate pricing will help the development of new services and give the UK a lead. Much more costs will need to be loaded onto basic access – perhaps as much as 80% in the long-run, with the remainder covered by lower usage charges. Although this will be politically controversial (and may need to be balanced by cheaper access for groups like the elderly) it will accelerate the spread of services. v. Privacy/security Information superhighways will only be seen as effective and legitimate if there are clear guarantees of an individuals security and privacy. There are very legitimate public fears about how information regarding network usage, purchases or personal data, can be monitored, processed and sold. One model might be to copy the approach taken in Human Embryology, where a commission of scientists, journalists and others has the explicit role of reflecting public opinion into technical decisions. Such a body would act as a buffer; it would raise the level of debate, restrict potentially dangerous or threatening applications, and reassure the public.

8. Leading in Europe Open networks help shrink the world.They make the nation state steadily less relevant as a unit. This is one reason why it is time for the UK to lead a European debate. European telecommunications policy has not been a success story. Liberalisation has been slow and patchy. The big research programmes like RACE and HDTV/MAC have been almost wholly unsuccessful. Funds have been used for grandiose schemes, not as in the US for generating open, self-organising networks like Internet. A UK Prime Minister could lead the debate in Europe with a carefully conceived package of policies. These might include stronger arguments for extending infrastructure competition across

12 Demos Networks for an open society frontiers, making the consumer case for ending the barriers to cheap international communication, and setting out the steps to achieving a genuine single electronic market with strictly time limited restrictions on competition. Alongside these would be joint action on superhighways through a handful of flagship policies eg on Eurohealth, or Eurolearning, that are clearly designed to involve users, and perhaps a few exciting entertainment applications – virtual cities for enthusiasts in different areas, perhaps even a virtual fantasy football Euro-league, turning the Eurovision song contest into a Euro-karaoke or a European interactive blind date.

9. Integrating technology into policy Policy making still reflects older models of decision making. For example economic policy is advised by the six wise men who operate computer models of the economy but make no mention of technological issues (their models treat technology as an exogenous variable or as a residual). Nor is there much evidence of understanding what must be the goal of economic activity: human happiness, fulfilment or satisfaction. Debates about modernising the Treasury and its economic assumptions have been underway for decades. Two steps might set it in the right direction. One is to integrate technology forecasting and assessment into the heart of its strategic thinking, by moving the governments various advisory committees into the Treasury. The second is to develop more comprehensive indicators of prosperity and welfare. The Genuine Progress Indicator is one good starting point, which takes into account not only growth, but also other key variables such as defensive expenditures on security or insurance, or the costs of rising travel to work times which are essential to thinking through the benefits and costs of networks. Alternatively, government could use more explicit data about happiness as a guide to policy choices. A modernised Treasury – or rather government coordinating department – would seek to assess the impact of different government policies on such comprehensive indicators. Ideally these would be linked to

Demos 13 Demos 4/1994 assessment of public expenditure on such things as network connections to schools, higher fuel taxes or flexible working arrangements in the public sector.

10. Millennium The Millennium Commission will have hundreds of millions of pounds to spend on various projects in the run up to 2001. Their perspective seems largely pre-technological; concerned with buildings and even, according to Lord Palumbo, a new medievalism.We need to propose a series of initiatives that exploit the potential of the superhighway and fit the ethos of the millennium. There are some imaginative ideas in the pipeline. One is to build hi-tech world forums based on telecoms in as many towns and villages as possible. Another is to construct a Media Lab (parallel to the MIT Media Lab, but closely linked to uses in homes, workplaces, pubs and shopping centres rather than being an ivory-tower approach of researchers following their pet projects). Such a Lab could act as a centre of excellence and innovation for Europe. A third would be to establish a genuine virtual university, offering courses to homes, workplaces and colleges on-line via satellite and cable. A fourth would be to pioneer new forms of democracy with deliberative juries at local and national level, debating how best institutions can adapt themselves to a new century.

‘Government is secretive. Businesses are suspicious of sharing information with employees. More open networks could play a huge role in challenging this inert, backward looking culture’

11. An open society Britain has become a remarkably closed society. Government is secretive. Businesses are suspicious of sharing information with employees. Professions rarely communicate across their boundaries. More open networks could play a huge role in challenging this inert, backward

14 Demos Networks for an open society looking culture. They could foster an open society which celebrates the openness and cosmopolitanism of British history rather than its insu- larity and parochialism. One element in this will almost certainly need to be a new set of obligations to provide information to stakeholders, overturning the ‘need to know’ principle with a ‘right to know’ principle. But openness goes further. The defining principle for every organisation that wants to be seen as a ‘winner’ organisation in the age of the network should be openness to dialogue and interaction, in whatever from that might take.

Cycles of debate There is a regular cycle in public debates about technology. The first phase of the cycle brings aggressive hype, overconfident forecosts, reams of policy initiative and high flown political rhetoric. Then doubts set in, the media become bored, and scepticism and pessimism set in. In the UK there was such a cycle between 1982–4 when the government promised a wired society based on cable TV.A similar cycle gripped Europe in the late 1980s around the promises of ISDN, HDTV and broadband. Most recently the cycle has happened again under the banner of the information superhighway and the Internet. This cycle is now ebbing. Editors and commisioning editors are looking for new stories. That is why now is precisely the time for policy realism. Few believe any more in the future as a glossy utopia of the kind promoted in much of the literature that surround the network. Nor do many find the Orwellian vision of a surveilance society any more convencing. Instead those more closely involved understand that the future is alreaedy present, albeit in embryo, and that it is liberating and disturb- ing, powerful and unpredictable, that its creates new forms of closure as well as new forms of openness. That is why we need to keep hold of the fact that despite the waxing and waning of cycles of public attention the spread of communications technology is steady and cumula- tive, and that it is bringing in its wake a radically different culture and a radically different way of seeing the world.

Demos 15 Demos 4/1994 ammers (need for better interfaces)ammers (need for cling (tighter laws; higher material costs) cling (tighter laws; (producing and choosing computer templates) (producing Factory cleaning (intelligent robots)Factory film) chemical free (digital, processors Film Hotel booking agents (software)Industrial arbitrators relations deregulation)(employment Notaries and commissioners of oaths Designers wider access to public) (chance for Telemarketing matchmakers Personal consultants(increasedredundancies) Career consultants (rise in random criminal acts) Trauma Disappearing trades in brackets)(with their replacements Air-couriers (high speed data networks) machines (computers)Answering Insurance claims assessors (neural networks) freezes) (electronic credit Bailiffs (with their causes in brackets) software)Checkout staff (image recognition suppliers (computers) register Cash opportunities(fuelled by Advertising in new media) (rising crime due to unemployment) (electricity) merchants and Solid Fuel Coal agents (networks) registration Company (keep staff and customers happy) Dictation services and secretarial Alarms and security equipment software) recognition (voice areas Growth artistsLayout (computer templates) Hi-fi and computer dealers entertainment Corporate Duplicating equipment (computers) Sports time) leisure equipment (more of technologies) (convergence networks) radio (more Cellular Recy progr Computer (tighter laws) systems Environmental

16 Demos Networks for an open society each day – the true mega stars of future). each day who will be famous for the discussions they provoke who will be famous for : New Scientist 16 April 1994. (video recordings)Draughting equipment maskers design)(computer-aided manufacturers Typewriting (computers) cleaners (intelligent robots) Window Airlines (rising fuel prices) Middle managers (networks) Escort services (importance of appearing to electronic physical from Change Market research business trips) leisurely Cruise companies (for sociable in public) to socialise) workers (less time for goodsNovelty Lawyers CinemaDoctors New trades Detective AgenciesSurveyors one out they’ll Call it) solve Estate AgentsSource Journalists fridge? talk to your Internet plumbers (PC won’t Writers together ideas (bringing synthesizers Workgroup locations) projects in remote different staff from from hosts of the Internet, hosts (DJs and talk show System

Demos 17

Before we rush to declare a new era James Woudhuysen

In America they are building a new kind of kaleidoscope. On the move, you pull it from a pocket, look through its magnifying glass and read incoming faxes like sheets of A4. The pager of the future, we are told, will be an extra eye. In America they are also building a new kind of camcorder. It digitises scenes, memorises them on a hard drive, then plays them, ready for direct manipulation, on home PCs. With this extra eye, the user is not just a cameraman, but a film editor too. To many users of Information Technology (IT), extra eyes could be just as important as information super-highways. Certainly highways represent merely one application of IT among many. Before we rush to declare that humanity stands on the brink of a new era based on highways, then we should pause for thought. After all, other IT break- throughs have also been the subject of high hopes in the past. Right up to the early 1990s, many commentators still felt that factory IT heralded a new era of ‘flexible specialisation’in manufacturing. Assisted by robots, even relatively small firms could for the first time profitably exploit low-volume, niche markets. Robots, helped by barcode scanners at retail checkouts, would enable firms to respond flexibly to market changes. By churning out only popular lines, or by assembling new models themselves based on computer-aided designs,

James Woudhuysen heads consulting in Information Technology at the Henley Centre for Forecasting, Blackfriars, London.

Demos 19 Demos 4/1994 robots and all the rest of IT would broadly allow the ‘mass production of individualised products’.1 In fact the robots are crawling, not coming. By the year 2000, human beings will still outnumber the world’s industrial robots by 6000 to 1.2 Yet the worst thing about robots is not their modest penetration, but what they tell us about technological determinism in its contemporary guise.

High hopes in the highways represent a narrowing of horizons Memories, so large in chips nowadays, are short in society. People forget how many times we have been here before with IT.For 30 years, the technical potential of IT has often, if not always, been undeniable. As a result, IT has frequently chalked up impressive achievements – from Telstar to the VCR. However, while information superhighways will undoubtedly have some impact, the realisation of their true potential could well be frustrated by wider social and economic constraints. To encourage stock markets, technology and entertainment suppliers have already talked up a superhypeway of hopes. The public has been more sceptical. Still there remains an undercurrent of approval for computers, and thus, possibly, for superhighways (Chart 1). The problem with highways, then, is not ‘technofear’.The problem is that hype about highways reveals a very narrow set of horizons about the future of society. One of the major post-war applications of IT was to put a man on the moon. By contrast, video on demand, one of the major applications of superhighways, is designed to obviate the short walk to Blockbuster Video. In the 1980s, critics at least foresaw an era in which consumers might eventually design their own durables. In the more recessionary 1990s, expectations have come down. All that is held out to us is a world where we can stare at screens all day, communicating, computing and indulging in ‘edutainment’: not making things, but rather Crusing the Net.

20 Demos Before we rush to declare a new era

Agreement levels 5. Strong agreement 4. Slight agreement 3. Neither 2. Slight disagreement 1. Strong disagreement 4.3 4.2 4.1 4.0 3.9 3.8 3.7 3.6 All Middle class/ C2DEs over 60 aged parents, DINKs

Chart 1 The popular climate for superhighways in Britain.

So even in It there has grown up a complacent culture of diminished ambitions – a culture of limits.We are told to celebrate, or to fear:

couch potatoes who shop by remote control and are always in when, magically enough, the home delivery boy arrives on time energetic cyberpunks who reply to mass junk e-mail (‘Spam’) with abusive e-mail (‘Flames’) computer games named Chaos Engine, Colonisation, Dark Forces, Doom, Hell Cab, Quarantine computer nerds in anoraks; on-line gamblers; international pornographers; electronic voters; unseemly viruses, and dangerous invaders of personal privacy, commercial secrecy or national security.

Ironically enough, then, highway hype misses out on ‘user-friendli- ness’.In practice it denigrates human beings and their talent to change the real world.

Demos 21 Demos 4/1994

A brief history of hype Illusions about information run deep. Charles Handy believes that, in business, Information, when multiplied by Intelligence and Ideas, amounts to Added Value: I3 ϭ AV.The Tofflers believe that a world of neatly defined nation-states is being replaced by a kind of ‘global computer’.Yet all this is hardly news. Here are some of the major fanfares about information since the birth of the integrated circuit in 1959 (Table on p. 23). IT does not herald a new social system. In the long view, IT is but a development of inventions first prompted by the growth of the world economy in the late nineteenth century. Then, in what Harvard’s James Beniger dubs the Control Revolution, typewriters and telegraphs came

22 Demos Before we rush to declare a new era

Just a small selection of post-war theories of the future

Date of Publication Author Key concept

1962 Machlup Knowledge economy McLuhan Global village 1969 Drucker Knowledge economy 1971 Touraine; Bell Post-industrial society Toffler Superindustrial society 1977 Evans Electronics revolution Porat Information economy 1980 Toffler Third wave 1982 Kahn Post-industrial economy Naisbitt Information society 1989 Zuboff Age of smart machine Feigenbaum et al Expert company Gilder Global quantum economy 1994 Business Week Information revolution

Source: Beniger (1989), The Henley Centre Media Futures study 1994/5. into their own because of the need to control the accelerated flow of goods brought about by steam-powered factories and locomotive.3 IT also grew up as a symptom of changes on the demand side. Since modern mass production first overtook the Industrial Revolution, firms have needed IT to guide them through markets ever more competitive, changeable, diverse and distended. As the telegraph has given way to the tickertape, telex and video- conference, so new critics have discovered that IT, in its different forms, is the key source of modern wealth. Indeed IT is now assumed to be almost omnipotent. With the end of the Cold War and the col- lapse of orthodox economics, the roles assigned to capital and labour in traditional accounts of economic growth are no more. Instead, the comfortably neutral framework of knowledge, information and IT comes to dominate analysis. That framework has some distinctly irrational components to it. The mystical aura that now surrounds superhighways contradicts the reality of straitened consumer and corporate markets for them.

Demos 23 Demos 4/1994

A weak market among consumers Penetration of IT-based services in the home is modest. America, for instance, barely uses on-line services to conduct transactions.

Malls beat mice

Shopping medium $bn annual sales

All US retailing 1500 Catalogue shopping 53 TV home shopping 2.5 Interactive on-line shopping 0.2

Source: Forrester Research (1994).

In Britain the popularity of computer games, an important surrogate for superhighways, is limited to youth, and to youngish parents (Chart 2). Until youthful users of computers grow up, most people will, for most of the time, be unable to use Britain’s installed base of IT to the full. Even regular users of IT are, after all, often unaware of the complete range of functions on the machines in front of them. Meanwhile there is an ageing, often female population of non-users of IT. Just as young boys play with computer games more than young girls, so taking money out of simple cash-point machines is a minority pursuit among older people, and especially among older women (Chart 3). Alongside age as a constraint on the use of IT, there is income. In the past it was the working class which first bought monochrome TVs, colour TVs and VCRs in volume. However, differentiation by income has for the past decade been on the increase. In the uncertain economic environment of the future, the penetration of superhighways in British households may never exceed 40% – roughly equal to CD players in British households.

A vexed market in offices Like mobile phones and multimedia now and Virtual Reality some years hence, superhighways may meet corporate demand before they

24 Demos Before we rush to declare a new era

Computers/word processors 70 Games computers/consoles 60

0 Dependent Pre-family Children Children all 5+ Post-family Post-family on parents any under five working inactive (teenagers) Source: The Henley Centre Leisure tracking Survey

Chart 2 The Sega generation.

Once a week or more

Never used 80 Men Women

0 16-24 25-44 45-59 60+ 16-24 25+44 45+59 60+ Source: The Henley Centre Planning for Social Change Survey 1992

Chart 3 The technologically disenfranchised: How often do you use a cashpoint machine? reach the consumer sector. With teleshopping and information services, the executive user looks a better bet for highway suppliers than do people at their leisure. It is notable too that private satellite and cable-based ‘business TV’ networks have won adherents as varied as

Demos 25 Demos 4/1994

Chart 4 The spread of corporate superhighways.

Wal-Mart in the USA and National Power in Britain. Indeed in Europe there has been a conspicuous spread of teleports (Chart 4). However, the jury is still out on the precise productivity benefits of superhighways. US government statisticians believe that their country is experiencing a boom in productivity because of IT. But there is counter-evidence to consider:

since early 1991, US outlays on business equipment, in current dollars, have risen only 34% – the lowest amount for any US recovery since 1960s because PCs are scrapped rapidly, net investment as a share of America’s GDP is way down on the levels achieved in the 1960 US government statisticians insist on treating PCs and laptops as equal, in power, to 24-hour number-crunching

26 Demos Before we rush to declare a new era

mainframe computers – when in practice they are used less frequently, and then often for simple word processing applications.

In short, the corporate sector could well find that superhighways offer dubious advantages for still considerable purchasing costs. In particular small firms, which today are heralded as key to economic recovery, may turn their attentions elsewhere. A highway is one thing; a £400 colour inkjet printer, with which to make old-fashioned hard- copy invoices, could be a much better investment. Of course, through repeated rounds of IT-assisted Business Process Re-engineering, productivity at the screen can be made to rise. But then, as the eminent Swiss ergonomist Etienne Grandjean has observed, ‘human labour is intensified’.4 The superhighway, being global, will make for longer working hours, as firms increase their exposure to international time zones. Companies will anyway want to realise their highway investments quickly, and so will have them used as much as possible. Again and again since the early 1960s, management writers have looked forward to organisations being more flexible, because less vertical in their internal structure, processes and mentality. Yet hopes have not been fulfilled. For employees in the PC-based, decentralised office of the 1990s, autonomy, flexibility,‘empowerment’ and even team-based working have often meant having to take on new and more complicated tasks, as well as having to make more decisions per minute. The performance of employees with such tasks and decisions is also super- vised more intently – and, through IT, more easily – than ever before. Superhighways, then, could add to stress at work. Note, for instance, that pilling up a stack of hostile e-mail memos on a colleague’s screen has already emerged as a fine way of conducting office politics.

The chimera of ‘convergence’ on the supply side Talk of ‘convergence’ between consumer electronics, computing, telecommunications and entertainment is nearly 20 years old.5 Since then, progress has been grindingly slow. Multimedia, for example, has taken a decade to reach mass sales in America.

Demos 27 Demos 4/1994

Why does convergence proceed so slowly? In terms of IT suppliers, the consumer electronics and computer industries are unregulated, while telecommunications firms, though operating in more liberalised commercial environments, are still regulated. Joint ventures with telecommunications companies as partners, therefore, often come apart in a clash of corporate cultures. A second factor is that the pace and direction of change in computing often lays even specialist computer manufacturers low. So to combine successfully, in one firm, both computing and telecommunications skills is often an impossible feat. The vertical integration between consumer electronics firms and entertainment providers – between Sony and Columbia Pictures, or between Matsushita and MCA – has also not been a success. Finally, like the consumer electronics and computer industries, telecommunications firms are under pressure on prices and margins. For them, investment in high-bandwidth networks remains a big, risky bet. The precise services which would be compelling and profitable enough to justify such a network are still far from defined. Meanwhile, even mixing optical fibre with coaxial cable means that wiring up 1.5 m California homes for superhighways would cost $800 each. That is cheaper than a fibre-only connection, but still expensive when compared with cable TV and conventional telecommunications links:

Cost per home of connection $

Cable TV to a new residential community 370 Narrowband telephony to a new residential 570 community Superhighway with coaxial cable to 1.5 m 800 California homes Fibre only to a new residential community 1760

Source: RAND Corporation (1992), The Henley Centre.

Apart from economic impediments, there are also barriers to convergence in the form of conflicting technical standards.

28 Demos Before we rush to declare a new era

‘Standards’ in computing revolve around no fewer than 50 different hardware platforms, operating systems and graphical user interfaces. Companies and countries use technical standards as a competitive weapon. One supplier firm or nation and its standard can be on the up for a time, but not for ever – competition will see to that. Given, too, the scale of investment already made in distinctive IT systems, neither client firm nor client nation likes to go over to new standards in a hurry. Even in multimedia and in games there are standards wars:

Philips’ CD-I is based on 8-bit microprocessors Super Nintendo Entertainment Systems run on 16-bit microprocessors In 32-bit, cartridge-based machines, Sega’s Genesis 32X upgrade is poised to slug it out, from the spring of 1995, with Nintendo’s 32VR, a different system rumoured to include virtual reality In 32-bit CD players on the Japanese market, Time Warner’s subsidiary,3DO,has worked with Matsushita to ship more than a million machines: Meanwhile Sony will launch a separate format at Christmas with PlayStation, which boasts 3D graphics Nintendo has teamed up with Silicon Graphics International to launch, in 1995. Ultra 64, a 64-bit cartridge-based system incompatible with all previous formats.

Standards functions as an obstacle to convergence. As far as users are concerned, they make incompatibility a way of life. The promise of superhighways is universal access to a seamless garment of world information. Whether highways indeed prove to be so simple remains to be seen. Great claims have long been made for IT. Now they are being made for superhighways. They may, however, never be realised. Demand constraints at home and in the office, together with industrial, economic and technical constraints among IT suppliers, could see to that.

Demos 29 Demos 4/1994

More disturbingly still, it is by no means clear that dreams about superhighways are worth dreaming. As we have shown, such dreakms can speak of narrow horizons – of a vision which, expansive though it is in rhetoric, is fundamentally cramped. Sometimes night-marish, frequently myopic, dreams about superhighways forget the old computer adage: Rubbish In, Rubbish Out. It is human beings and human inputs, not inanimate highways, which will determine the fate of the Earth.

30 Demos Notes

1. Michael L. Dertouzos, statistics 1983–93 and forecasts to ‘Communications, computers and 1997, October 1994. networks’. Scientific American, 3. James Beniger, The control September 1991, pp30, 36. See also revolution, Harvard, 1989. The Thomas W.Malone & John F. works cited are Charles Handy, The Rockart,‘Computers, networks and age of unreason, Business Books, the corporation’,ibid. For ‘post- 1989, and Alvin and Heidi Toffler, Fordist’ theories, see M. Aglietta, War and anti-war: survival at the A theory of capitalist regulation, dawn of the 21st century, Little, New Left Books, 1979; Brown, 1993. Alain Lipietz, Mirages and miracles: 4. Etienne Grandjean, ‘Ergonomics at the crises of global Fordism, Verso, the interface between man and 1987, and Stuart Hall and Martin machine’, in Gianni Barbacetto, Jacqes, New times: the changing face Design interface, Arcadia Edizioni, of politics in the 1990s,Lawrence & 1987. Wishart, 1990. The classic text of 5. Two French authors elided flexible specialization, whose telecommunications and fondness for the textile firms of ‘informatics’ (computers) into the northern Italy is still popular, is neologism telematics. See Simon Michael J. Piore and Charles F. Sabel, Nora and Alain Minc, The The second industrial divide, Basic computerization of society: a report Books, 1984. to the President of France, MIT, 1980, 2. Figure derived from United Nations, first published in 1978. World Industrial robots 1994:

Demos 31

Network wonderland Rael A Fenchurch

‘The Net is the world’s only functioning political anarchy but it could soon become a major tool for democracy a morsel is being given to mankind with one instruction: ‘Eat Me’, so that we may grow’

We have all heard of the Global Information Super-Highway. It seems that all of a sudden every newspaper and every magazine is crying ‘I’m late, I’m late’. Big Business, in its usual bandwagonesque manner is blindly flinging itself after the rabbit, to come face-to-face with the Internet. The question has to be, what does Alice find when she takes the plunge? Essentially there are two things – information which is widespread and patchy to say the least; but possibly more importantly, a culture. The Internet (Net) has begun to develop its own culture in the tried and tested manner, namely by dint of being a community of its own. It’s a culture that is dichotomously both more real, and more unreal, than life outside its virtual boundaries, and a culture that will very soon be a force majeure across the globe. Like Wonderland, the surreal and exciting society found on the Internet is itself Real Life (or RL, as Net parlance would have it), or at least a parody so recognisable

Rael A. Fenchurch is creative head of IT and new media at Howell, Henry, Chaldecott and Lury Ltd.

Demos 33 Demos 4/1994 as to be indistinguishable from reality.Actually, it could be argued that, by offering such an unadulterated form of conversation as can be found across the Net, the Super-Highway is offering a far more real experience than RL ever can. There are many different ways of communicating on the Net (too many to go into in such a short article), but inherently they all boil down to the same idea – allowing two or more people from anywhere around the globe to exchange ideas and information without the standard emotional baggage that face-to-face discussions inevitably carry. To take an example quickly, prejudices are limited greatly because you cannot initially see whether the people you are conversing with are the same as you, or whether they are of a different race, age, sex, religion or class. There is also no body language to cloud the issue – what you type is what people read. Interestingly though, this doesn’t always favour the more intelligent. Commonly, we consider quick, witty repartee to be an indicator of intelligence. The time delay that some Internet con- versations are subject to as individual messages span continents, and time zone differences can be large. This means that participants are not at their computers at the same time, and those not so quick with their minds can compose deliberate, incredibly accurate responses. A consequence of the lack of direct contact is that people feel far more free to say what they wish, and are normally therefore more hon- est. Of course, this is often abused and people are also more belligerent than they would be in the RL, but like every culture, its ups are counter- balanced by its downs. This concept of speaking your mind without fear of physical reprisal means that Net people have developed other ways of dealing with somebody who says something that really is ‘out of order’.The art of the written insult (The Flame) has been raised to Old Master levels, and old-timers take it upon themselves to compose the most insulting, yet still witty and intelligent, rebukes when needs arise. Although there is no Net Police’,the more experienced Netters are often found being judge, jury and executioner when a person fresh on the Net (a Newbie) makes a mistake. The punishment is often a Flame, but for a serious crime, a Spamming may ensue – thousands upon thousands of pointless, and often very large messages sent to the newbie’s

34 Demos Network wonderland address, often causing temporary damage to his computer system and thus pointing out the error of his ways. So, whilst there is freedom of speech (an idea greatly defended on the Net), there is also accountabil- ity for your opinions. See – even better than the Real Thing. Once again, because you cannot see the person you are talking to, it’s very possible that they are not at all who they claim to be. This hap- pens most often in Multi-User Dungeons (a.k.a MUDs), where people join an alternative reality for a time and play out an adventure scenario; or, more often, just stand around and chat. It is not uncommon to be talking to someone who claims to be female when the fingers on the keyboard across the world belong to a male (though it is less common the other way around – the lack of women is notable throughout the Superhighway). And because the description you receive of a person comes directly from them, it is again not unusual to end up talking to a whole gamut of tall, blonde, well-muscled Adonis characters when none are more than five foot eight and only two are out of puberty! The Highway allows people to enact their dreams, to be who they want to be, or at least not to look stupid trying. As the culture would have me say – Unreal! Net denizens build up their own hierarchy of class, normally equivalent to length of time on the Highway – although there are other factors considered; intelligence of messages, or otherwise; quantity of posting; or the outlandishness of ideas proffered. The opportunity to become, as Warhol said, ‘Famous for fifteen minutes’ is offered freely upon the Net. With people increasingly becoming their own publishers, either through the medium of the Electronic Mail, or through Bulletin Board Discussions, or even by creating their own magazines in electronic format (E’Zines), people all over the world are finding audiences who would never otherwise have seen them, and all for little more than the price of a ‘phone call’.That concept alone imbues the internet, and ultimately the entire Information Super-Highway with a kind of mystique, an allure that is almost too potent for the exhibitionists within our society. There are already famous figures on the Internet – a list of them is compiled and distributed regularly. More importantly, perhaps, the concept of reflected glory is already rife. One such luminary, James

Demos 35 Demos 4/1994

‘El Kibo’ Parry, has created a concept called the Kibo Number that is an indicator of your distance from him, not in terms of mileage, but in terms of e-mail stature.Any civilised culture has a Mad Hatter, a Queen of Hearts and all spectra of in-between. Real life. Just pointers perhaps, but these cultural milestones are all recognised on the road to civilisation and have all already been surpassed on the Superhighway. The Net is the world’s only functioning political anarchy but it could soon become a major tool for democracy. By allowing anyone, anywhere access to the information and opinions of anyone else, anywhere else, a morsel is being given to mankind with one instruction:‘Eat Me’,so that we may grow.

36 Demos Push button professionals Douglas Hague

“How would you like to buy a lawyer for less than $25?” With this opening, a recent article in a New England newspaper described books published by the Office of the Attorney General of Maine. They guide readers through the maze of law relating to consumers – hire purchase, house purchase, and soon – and go as far as enabling a consumer to prepare a submission to a court without professional advice from a lawyer. Such reports raise an intriguing question.Will the growing power of computers and of communications, together with the growing skill of software writers, mean that as we move into the 21st century information and communications technology will replace professionals like lawyers, doctors, accountants and educators? Shall we be able to handle for ourselves arcane issues on which we currently have to seek expensive professional advice?

Education Education is a good starting point for this discussion, not least because it allows us to point to a fundamental distinction between different kinds of what we have come to call knowledge businesses. Professionals in all knowledge businesses can advise clients only by drawing on a

Sir Douglas Hague is at Templeton College, Oxford.

Demos 37 Demos 4/1994 stock of knowledge built up by individuals, groups and whole professions over the years. But only some knowledge businesses deliberately set out to transfer part of that knowledge itself to clients who can then go on to use it for themselves. We can therefore point to a spectrum of knowledge businesses. While all professionals use knowledge to do their jobs, at the lower end of the spectrum what they provide for clients is information rather than knowledge.An estate agent provides clients with details of houses available but does not pretend to train clients to become estate agents. At the other end of the spectrum, schools, universities, and other training organisations explicitly set out to help students to acquire the ability themselves to use knowledge. Their whole raison d’ etre is to enable students to learn how to be lawyers, doctors, teachers, and so forth. Because of this, schools and colleges have the potential, in enabling learning to take place, to exploit every aspect of information and communications technology (ICT). It cannot be emphasised too strongly that computers, videos, and other technologies will not replace teachers or lecturers. ICT will take over part of their role allowing them to become more effective in the remainder. ICT will help students/learners in two main ways. First, television and video and audio tapes will make first-class presentations from world experts available to students at times and places convenient to them. We are familiar with the notion of video tapes allowing time- switching – enabling us to watch TV programmes when it suits us and not the television company. We talk less of place-switching, but this will allow us to watch educational programmes where it suits us – whether in the school, home or office. Because the UK is a small country, we underestimate the potential educational role of television and video. People do not make the same mistake in vast countries like the USA, Canada or Russia where the potential is huge. Teachers and lecturers fiercely resist the idea that students will choose to watch first-rate video presentations – which will in future be much more than mere “talking heads” – rather than to attend lectures of variable quality in their own schools or universities. In the end,

38 Demos Push button professionals students will make their own choices which may not go the way professors or teachers predict, however unmovable the latter may currently be on this issue. Those who believe that the traditional lecture is safe for ever need to recognise that it is as much under threat as, for example, the local amateur musical concert which has virtually van- ished, except as a charity event, under competition from high-quality broadcasts and recordings by the very best musicians. The second contribution of ICT to learning will be through the development of “multi-media” which is rapidly becoming widely available. Using a personal computer and a CD-ROM, this makes available text, charts, photographs, film clips and graphics leading students through a carefully designed programme of presentations. Because it uses a PC, interrogation and checking of the student is possible at each stage to ensure that he or she really has learned what is being taught. Once this kind of ICT is widely available new kinds of professional roles will develop, even as existing ones are taken over by technology. Again, education provides the widest spectrum. First, there will be the “guide”, who will help every individual student to pursue his or her own education as effectively as possible, drawing on the growing range of television, video and audio tapes on multi-media discs and computer databases as well as attending traditional lessons or lectures. Second there will be the “communicator/interpreter” who will appear on television and video in a new Hollywood age. There will be a fragmentation of the teaching profession, with the emergence of a relatively small number of highly paid international “stars” of television and video – a set of academic Nigel Kennedys. This is already happening in business training, where more money is available, with world figures such as Tom Peters, for example. Learning will become more effective and more exciting. In the classroom, the role of the teacher will increasingly be inter- pretation, and the importance of that new role for teachers cannot be over-emphasised. The two remaining roles will be backroom ones, where there will be virtually no direct contact with students, but these roles should not be

Demos 39 Demos 4/1994

underestimated for that reason. They will be crucial to the power and effectiveness of ICT. The third role will be that of “scholar/interpreter” developing knowledge and, whether this is aimed at 5 year-olds or 20 year-olds, making it as up to date, powerful and easily assimilated as possible. Some “scholars” will engage in conventional research, writing academic papers and books which provide material for communicators. Other “scholars” will be pulling together original research findings and other published material to provide an overview of knowledge in various fields. The fruits of the work of the scholars will go to the fourth group – the “assemblers”.What will be required in the future will be much more like a film or television production team, working with programme

40 Demos Push button professionals producers. As with television, these teams will include “researchers”. They must either link with the “scholars”, adapting their material for video or multi-media or may, perhaps, really be such people with a dual role. The whole production team will have to operate more at the level of the Open University than the normal television programme – even when their work is aimed at 5 year-olds.A similar production team will be needed for multi-media work, with software writers then playing a crucial role. A major new profession will develop. Already, very big teams are being used, even to produce multi-media programmes for entertainment.

Consultancy Moving on from education and training, there are important similari- ties with consultancy. There is an element of training in some consultancy – especially management consultancy – and, where there is, videos and multi-media have a role. The big difference with teaching will arise because consultants are usually concerned with advising on specific issues so that a generalised message is no longer appropriate, as it is in much education and training. Computers will help consultants in their work, but final recommendations will invariably come from man, not machine. One way in which ICT may well make a contribution will be in providing names of potential consultants to clients. Bill Gates, founder of MicroSoft, and arguably America’s most successful IT entrepreneur, told a recent convention of the Institute of Directors in London that computers in the next century will provide information needed to find consultants very easily, so ensuring “they are there in very high quality”.If Bill Gates is right, this is a new role for the computer as “guide”.

Law The example from Maine quoted earlier shows that there is also potential for computers to enable non-lawyers to understand aspects of the law which concern them and to enable them to prepare their own

Demos 41 Demos 4/1994 submissions. Because so much of it is in written form, the law is just the kind of discipline which multi-media programmes will be able to codify and analyze. Perhaps, as with consultants, computers will provide clients with lists of potential lawyers – though I doubt whether legal ethics or sheer practicalities will favour this. Where lawyers will not be under threat from IT will be where, even more than consultants, their advice is sought on narrow, often complex, issues where only the foolhardy would rely on a computer to give defin- itive advice. It is not surprising that the Attorney General of Maine and his colleagues have so far refused to give the kind of advice on capital crimes which they are offering on consumer law. Nevertheless, one can see computer programmes briefing clients very helpfully ahead of meetings with legal professionals. Where personal contacts are needed, inside or outside a court, human beings will prevail. One cannot imagine a computer, Dalek- like, addressing a jury or carrying out a cross-examination. Rumpole’s job is safe.

Accountants In big businesses and other organisations the fact that finance is a specialist function is likely to prevent non-financial managers taking over from accountants and preparing their own accounts. In smaller business and for the self-employed the position is different. Entrepreneurs and others can now use spreadsheets to carry out financial analyses which they could never have tackled as little as ten years ago, and such software can only become both easier to use and more powerful. In big organisations auditors are likely to retain their specialist position, and the law will support this. I expect more and more smaller companies to produce their own annual accounts and, at most, to ask their accountant to “repair” them for presentation to shareholders and partners. To this extent computers will replace accountants. This development will be reinforced by legislative changes easing reporting requirements, especially on very small businesses.

42 Demos Push button professionals

Tax A stronger move in this direction will occur when individuals are allowed to assess themselves for tax, with only a sample of their assessments being checked by the Inland Revenue. There will be a big increase in the demand from individuals for software to make the preparation of tax returns as simple and quick as possible. Software writers will respond. To this extent computers will take over from professionals in tax offices though it remains to be seen if the number of employees in the Inland Revenue falls.Whether it does or not, we shall see an extension of the (to me rather strange) twentieth century phenomenon seen in supermarkets of work being handed over to (unpaid) customers and the result acclaimed as increased productivity!

The GP The position of medical professionals appears rather similar. There is bound to be an increase in the number of computer programmes which allow self-diagnosis and even prescribe treatment or drugs. Some people, at least, will go on to treat themselves though the fact that in the UK only a doctor can provide all but simple drugs, or allow time off work, limits self-treatment. We should not forget that, for a century at least, the medical book at home has served the same purpose, though since the computer can directly interrogate the patient about his or her symptoms, its diagnosis should be more accurate. More interesting is the question of how doctors will react to this. Will they thankfully agree simply to double-check what the patient has told the computer before confirming or overruling the computer’s advice? Indeed, will the waiting room itself provide keyboards so that patients can consult the computer? Or will doctors give no credence to its findings? And if they do not, or if they question those findings, will there be disputes with patients – whom doctors already see as increasingly demanding? The most likely outcome must be that there will be erosion of the doctors’ position in diagnosis and, indeed, that many doctors will

Demos 43 Demos 4/1994 welcome a reduction in what is currently the least complex part of their work. (The same welcome may come from pharmacists, if it means less time spent in providing free diagnosis for customers.)

Hospitals Perhaps self-diagnosis will spread to out-patient departments of hospitals. Within hospitals, there will be a growing role for IT as a diagnostic aid for professionals – through brain scanners, electro car- diographs, etc. Telesurgery is now developing, so that 21st century surgeons will carry out operations at a distance, while the sensations they feel in manipulating instruments are the same as they would be on the spot. This will not reduce the role of surgeons though it may,as with education, lead to the rise of highly paid international “stars”. There may be startling changes in location, with surgeons performing operations round the world while remaining in their own hospitals, or even at home! A recent incident shows that the use of computers even as diagnostic aids will sometimes face irrational opposition. A suggestion in the media that a London hospital would use a computer to “decide” which terminally ill patients would be allow to die, by being deprived of expensive life-support equipment, was disowned by both the hospital and by a spokesman of the British Medical Association. The line they took was that there was perhaps a 5% chance of error by the computer and that this was too big to be acceptable where life or death was concerned. Since doctors are sometimes wrong too, the strange implication was that error by humans is more acceptable than error by computer. This confirms my long-held belief that an understanding of probability should be compulsory part of all professional education. Until things change, rational reasons why hospital professionals will face little threat from ICT will be reinforced by irrational ones.

Keeping up to date Two important points emerge from this broad discussion. First, not least because the threat of law-suits requires it, professionals like lawyers

44 Demos Push button professionals and doctors want to keep up to date. Increasingly, ICT will play an important part in the continuing education and training of such professionals. Keeping them up to date will be fundamental to their survival, though how big a role will be played in that process by conventional schools and universities will depend on how they meet the challenge of competition from newcomers making effective use of ICT, not least consultancy businesses. The second point is extremely important. Everything discussed above will be technically possible in the early 21st century. But will it be commercially feasible?

‘ICT will not replace professionals on a big scale but it will fragment professions’

Ultimately, the key issue will be economies of scale. As time passes, there should be little problem in covering the cost of providing telecommunications, computers and software so that even individual professionals and small groups of them can participate freely in the ICT age. The much more serious question is whether adequate data will be available either on television screens for human viewers, or for computer analysis. Even more important, will it be kept sufficiently up to date? I see reasons to expect that it will. Lawyers, doctors and accountants always keep themselves sufficiently up to date and, if information is already in print, it can quite cheaply become part of a database. At worst, there will be a relatively simple shift from paper to disc; in most cases, it will be from one disc to another. Similarly, since the diseases of mankind change little or rather slowly, keeping up to date a database to interrogate for diagnosis would not be especially expensive. Indeed, they already exist. The big challenge is for education. To provide all the material required so that every course in every school and university can contain an appropriate contribution from ICT will be a massive task. But, again, there are mitigating factors. Though this material should change

Demos 45 Demos 4/1994 more quickly than text books often have in the past, it changes much less quickly than does, for example, information about the law. Moreover, many academic subjects are relevant to the whole world – such as maths or science – so that there are international markets for universities,schools,and indeed businesses,which are prepared to fight for them.

Generation gaps? I say businesses, because a new breed of entrepreneur is appearing with the goal of exploiting such markets. It is estimated, for example, that up to 4000 substantial databases have already been created in the UK alone, many by young entrepreneurs. Though all are not relevant to professionals or their education, many are and more will be. More generally, ICT is very much the preserve of the young who have grown up with technology and use it confidently. The fact that many of us find the ideas in this article strange does not mean that the next generation will.

Conclusion The answer to the original question must be that ICT will not replace professionals on a big scale but that it will fragment professions. Some professionals – the stars – will have greater reputations and bigger incomes, especially where they can attract international audiences. New roles, especially in assembling databases, producing television programmes and writing software will be created. That will mean that there are in future more backroom jobs relative to those giving direct contact with clients, something which is already affecting service businesses like banks. Individuals’ roles will fragment too. For example, there will be an end to the pretence in universities that every individual must be part teacher, part researcher and part administrator. “Guides” will lead students towards material created and presented by others. Teachers will often have to interpret material which is not their own. “Scholars” who are pulling together research and ideas from big fields, will recognise that

46 Demos Push button professionals

“assemblers” can make it more intelligible to large, disparate audiences than they can themselves. And these backroom experts who will play such crucial roles in education will rarely meet those they help to learn. Professionals will not disappear in the 20th century, but all-rounders will be even rarer than today.The division of labour is moving confidently into the classroom, the surgery, the accountancy practice and the lawyers’ chambers. As for the Inland Revenue, taxpayers will do more of its work for it.

Demos 47

Plug-in politics Martin Bartle

All universities have some form of e-mail and Internet/JANET connection which is available to staff and students. The Open Business School has been running a computer conferencing network to keep in touch with its long distance learners for around seven years. Demos itself has been ‘piggy-backing’ on the OBS’s network to hold discussions on topics of interest for the last eighteen months. So where does this leave the world of politics? The main parties show varying degrees of interest in ‘Connectivity’. The Conservative Party HQ’s response was ‘e-mail, what’s that? We use cycle couriers from time to time’.The Labour Party’s HQ thought they had an Internet connection, but didn’t know what the address was. To be fair the Labour Party did use e-mail at the last election to link its constituency offices, and Tony Blair now has an e-mail address. The Liberal Democrats on the other hand have a more inspiring vision, perhaps as a product of their growing commitment to Direct Democracy. They run an open conference on CIX, one of the numerous network providers, for their members and a separate one open to the general public. They also run a conference specifically for councillors so that they can exchange information and discuss local council issues. A number of their MPs already have e-mail and the plan is to increase that number in the next few months alongside a link up with all of their constituency offices. There are plans to set up a World Wide Web page, and to include a daily press release services in with their general information services

Demos 49 Demos 4/1994 on the network.A Liberal Democrat spokesperson commented that the available technology could be used in an effort to increase open government for example making Hansard, Discussion Papers and Committee Reports available on a network. As for the Government, the Treasury opened a Web page in November 1994. Interestingly enough the Web page that the Treasury use only gives you speeches and data already available else where. It is also rumoured that British Politic’s bastion of archaic traditions the House of Lords has an Internet connection.

50 Demos The lean controller: The new patterns of regulation Martin Cave

At the September 1994 International Telecommunications Union meeting in Japan, delegates were treated to an address by Vice- President Al Gore, who argued that the development of communications facilities was indispensable to economic development. He called upon all governments in their own sovereign nations and in international co-operation, to build the necessary infrastructure. The message received a rather muted welcome from representatives of developing countries, one of whom was reported as saying that their task at the moment was closer to that of bringing the first telephone to large villages than to becoming a constituent part of the Global Informa- tion Infrastructure. Some of Gore’s ideas have received a similarly sceptical reception in Europe, in parts of which the roll-out of the basic telephone network is still the first priority. In Portugal, for example, telephone penetration is only one third of the level of France and the United Kingdom, which themselves still lag behind Sweden. However, I shall argue that certain elements of the US National Information Infrastructure (NII) proposal, notably its recognition of the necessity of the interconnectivity of networks, its emphasis upon standardisation and its emphasis upon a galvanising role for government do have important lessons for

Martin Cave is Professor of Economics at Brunel University and a special advisor to OFTEL.

Demos 51 Demos 4/1994

Europe. If the process is to work, the key is effective regulation, and I shall discuss what regulatory reforms are necessary to create the appropriate framework for the development of an advanced information infrastructure in the UK and Europe.

The US NII Initiative The back-drop to the US government’s approach is a communications infrastructure composed of local delivery monopolies and long- distance competition, following the break up of the Bell system in the 1980s. The Bell system came into existence in the early part of the century through an agreement between it and the government, which effectively gave Bell monopoly, provided that it undertook to connect up the whole country.As a result, most of the country was cabled both for telephone and for television, but neither could enter the other’s market. This hampered the development of interactive forms of communication. Given this inheritance, the US Government’s approach to the NII is based on a combination of limited direct expenditure, goading and regulatory reform. Direct action takes the form of limited financing of R&D, directing the Government’s own telecommunications spending in ways calculated to promote the NII, and encouraging local and state governments to follow its example. Goading has primarily taken the form of symbolic gestures, such as the availability of the White House on E-mail. This balance (or imbalance) between government state- ments and government funding has caused some observers to describe the NII as a “virtual” public works programme. Regulatory reform, by contrast, has proved much more difficult. The last major Communications Act in the United States was passed 60 years ago, and the period since 1934 has been littered with unsuccessful attempts to rewrite it. In the interim, regulatory policy has been made by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) or – more significantly – by the courts. Yet neither can be guaranteed to open up markets in a comprehensive way.Although earlier in the year prospects for a 1994 Communications Act seemed good, they have now receded. The current regulatory restrictions and uncertainties will seriously

52 Demos The lean controller: the new patterns of regulation hamper the private investment upon which the NII in the United States is to be based. Interestingly, the universal service issue is playing a great role in US discussions of the NII, and is being investigated by various task forces, including federal and state regulators. Despite the great predilection of American households for use of the telephone (leading to calling rates four times higher than in Europe), not all households will be able to justify commercially the upgrading of their communication facilities, for reasons either of household income or geographical remoteness. A US Government official has recently estimated that only 60–65% coverage would be delivered on a purely economic basis, whereas universal coverage would require access to 95% of households. Yet if that many households require subsidy the expense of a rigorous universal service obligation may blight the whole system. The cheaper alternative of providing services through public buildings such as schools and libraries rather than to homes may have to be adopted. Similar debates about universal service are occurring in Europe, where monopoly operators are using the universal service card as a weapon against competition. The higher they can get the obligations set, the stronger the argument for excluding competitors, unless the latter too have similar obligations, which they can ill afford. The US approach could be a means of resisting this argument.

First Principles Other countries and regions, including the European Union and Japan, are now following in America’s wake. I discuss the European case below, but it is useful first to identify the fundamental issues which arise in the debate about the new information structure. One concerns the role of government subsidy. Should these new developments be required to break even in commercial terms (whether they are in the public sector or in the private sector) or should they receive subsidies? Arguments for subsidies typically take three forms. The first is based upon a spin-off from the communications sector to the rest of the economy. Several new theories of economic growth have suggested

Demos 53 Demos 4/1994

that a significant proportion of economic growth is attributable not to the traditional factor inputs but to some additional element. This might be research and development, or education and training more generally. But it could also be the development of communications and transport networks. In any event evidence concerning the existence and source of this externality is ambiguous.

‘The back-drop to the US government’s approach is a communications infrastructure composed of local delivery monopolies and long-distance competition’

Second, there is the traditional argument for subsidising the connection of more subscribers, based upon the network externality: we all benefit from having access to more homes and businesses. Thirdly, there is the argument for subsidies on grounds of equity in the interests

54 Demos The lean controller: the new patterns of regulation of universal coverage. However both these expenditures can be covered from within the sector. The point is that telecommunications is so dynamic and profitable that the idea of external subsidy is highly unattractive. Next, there is the issue of competition versus monopoly. The recent UK Trade and Industry Select Committee inquiry into optical fibre networks heard a number of arguments in favour of monopoly. For example, it was suggested that BT should undertake the construction of a broad-band network, incorporating and upgrading the current cable TV networks. The new network would be jointly owned by BT and its competitors, and be subject to rate of return regulation. It would be obliged to carry the traffic of all service providers on a non- discriminatory basis. The issue of monopoly versus competition in network industries will never go away. It is clearly not enough to show that a fully efficient monopoly is potentially cheaper to operate than a number of identical competitors enjoying smaller economies of density, scale and scope. The merits of competition are that it imposes pressures on efficiency, but more importantly that it promotes innovation. Information and communications technologies are in a state of flux. Even wireless technologies, which were suppressed for generations, are now coming into their own. The penalty of adopting the monopoly solution would be the risk of premature standardisation and the elimination of incentives to innovate. The focus in the US is on competition, and it should be in Europe too. This obviously requires arrangements for mutual interconnection, and most governments or regulators insist upon implementation of an “any to any” principle. It would be foolish to say that problems of access pricing are easily solved, but experience suggests that access pricing arrangements can be made to work. Developments in broadcasting and telecommunications are now bringing the two so close together that the maintenance of separate regulation is becoming increasingly burdensome. Entertainment services in the UK can be provided by satellite, by cable systems and – in the near future – by telecommunications operators through video on

Demos 55 Demos 4/1994 demand. From the consumer’s point of view, the three delivery mechanisms are providing a close substitute. They should be jointly regulated. How then should a combined communications industry regulator seek to regulate industry structure? The key to this lies in the recognition that communication services involve a series of stages, beginning with creation of the message, in some cases involving a bundling or wholesale function and culminating in delivery to final consumers. Thus a movie has to be made, is then packaged as part of a TV channel and delivered to viewers. For the purposes of structural control, the regulator should seek to examine the degree of dominance at any stage in the process, and in the case of bottlenecks for essential facilities, mandate access, institute price control arrangements or take alternative actions. Where vertical integration exists, other problems may arise, and these should be investigated on a case by case basis. The point about the approach, however, is that it should be uniform across comparable activities and based upon standard economic analyses – although remedies such as price control may be required which fall outside the normal arsenal of competition authorities.

‘The American invention of a virtual public or social works programme, combining high-minded social goals and private sector innovation, built on the back of the profit motive, has much to commend it’

This is the blueprint for the regulatory arrangements for a mature communications sector. But extra difficulties arise when these are overlaid by problems of transition. The creative and service provision or wholesaling functions of communications networks are often readily contestable. The delivery systems have developed over a long period of legal monopoly, and many regulators respond to this by techniques of entry promotion, either to advantage competitors or to compensate them for advantages inherited by the incumbent (such as, in telephony, its traditional ownership of telephone numbers). This

56 Demos The lean controller: the new patterns of regulation means that the regulatory task is a great deal more complicated than suggested above.

UK Communications Regulation As far as the regulation of industry structure and conduct is concerned, the United Kingdom has already made huge strides towards a competitive environment which harnesses private sector incentives. Three areas of controversy remain. The first concerns current interconnection arrangements within telecommunications. These are based upon interconnection charges determined by OFTEL on a fully allocated cost basis, supplemented by contributions made by other operators to losses BT incurs as a result of restraints on the quarterly rentals the company can charge to subscribers. However, these contributions to BT’s access deficit can themselves be waived within limits by the Director-General of Telecommunications. The result is an increasingly discretionary and unworkable system which satisfies few. The system is now subject to a fundamental review by OFTEL. One possible way forward is to allow BT more control over the balance between its access and usage charges, thereby removing the so-called access deficit contributions (and their waivers) from the regulatory arena. This might only be feasible if methods could be found to avoid excessive tariff increases for low income households. If it worked through satisfactorily, most subscribers would pay more for access but very little for usage. The second key area of controversy concerns the restriction on BT’s provision of multi-channel entertainment services under its main licence. This now operates until 2002, with the possibility for an earlier review. BT could bid for local delivery operators’ licences as they are advertised by the ITC, and integrate their delivery systems for entertainment and telecommunications services to whatever degree they require. But, the company would obviously prefer an opportunity to undertake this task on a national scale. The problem is that the removal of this restriction would have a highly adverse effect upon the cable operators, and seriously restrict

Demos 57 Demos 4/1994 competition in the delivery of both entertainment and telecommunications services. So far, only the cable companies are targeting domestic telephony customers. The development of competition thus hinges critically upon the cable companies rolling out their networks. In my view, it is worth paying a price for dual-sourcing, although that price should be minimised. For that reason, the proposal of the Select Committee to mitigate, but not eliminate, the asymmetrical regulation which excludes BT from offering broadcasting services under its main licence is appropriate. Thirdly, there is the question of cross-ownership within the communications sector. This is the subject of a Government review dealing with the media sector, the results of which are expected shortly. Most of the controversy has focused upon cross-ownership between the press and broadcasting interests, where traditional issues of market dominance are combined with those of freedom of political expression. More conventional competition law approaches should, however, be enough to resolve cross-ownership issues in infrastructure. Thus what the UK needs is basically more of the same kind of policy. We already have burgeoning infrastructure competition, and improving arrangements for services competition, as a result of more transparent interconnection and resale arrangements. There is evidence that these are already paying off in terms of the international competitiveness of the UK’s telecommunications sector. Of course this does not preclude a US-style educational campaign in favour of the new technologies. This kind of vision is lacking in UK policy. Paradoxically the UK is so much more advanced than the rest of Europe, yet most of the innovative discussion of the information society is occurring in Brussels rather than in London. An ideal mix would be to combine selective funding of demonstration applications in the market, with liberalised infrastructure competition.

The European Aspect Political agreement has now been reached within the Union to liber- alise provision of services in 1998-or a few years later for the less

58 Demos The lean controller: the new patterns of regulation advanced countries. However, the issue of network or infrastructure competition is only now being addressed.A Commission Green Paper, which can reliably be expected to favour infrastructure competition, will be published in 1995, with a view to obtaining political agreement on the issue shortly thereafter. The Commission’s competition direc- torate is also raising the issue, reportedly threatening to prohibit global alliances among operators with domestic monopolies. Despite these delays, the report of the Bangemann Committee, considered at the European Council’s June meeting in Corfu, shows a remarkable faith in market mechanisms as a means of carrying Europe forward into the information age. The report emphasises many of the same themes as Gore – reliance on private sector funding, the importance of interconnectivity and of standards, and the attainment of social as well as economic objectives. However, for this vision to be realised, Europe’s regulatory structures clearly have a long way to go. The Bangemann Committee itself tenta- tively favoured European-level regulation in order to overcome national obstacles and to maintain uniformity within the Union. This view has been expressed even more forcibly by other observers, who have argued that national level regulation of telecommunications in Europe has failed, and that the issues need to be addressed at the Union level. It is doubtful whether this can be achieved, given the current state of the debate within the European Union about subsidiarity. Conservative governments may try to block the necessary changes. However, the Commission is currently giving the issue great attention, and has crucially recognised the need to integrate regulation of the telecommunications and audio-visual sectors. We must hope that its efforts succeed. The American invention of a virtual public or social works programme, combining high-minded social goals and private sector innovation, built on the back of the profit motive, has much to commend it. If it works in communications, perhaps it will work elsewhere too.

Demos 59

Open architecture: The case for separating networks and services Suzanne Warner† and Jonathan Solomon*

‘We know now that the separation of networks from services is technically and financially feasible, and viable’

The Americans have seen the political and economic advantages of raising the profile of the Information Superhighway, and they have certainly succeeded in getting everybody talking about it. The vision of the Vice-President Al Gore has been shared with the world. It is a great vision, expressed in simple, soul stirring language which captures imaginations, but there is some difficult terrain to be traversed if reality is to match up to the political rhetoric. The analogy of the highway is a useful way to explain something that people cannot see, but it ends there. The world’s great road systems were built with public money and often for military reasons. Mostly they carry a variety of traffic for which the user pays no direct charge. In contrast, the information superhighways are mostly owned by the former telephone companies who originally laid them. The owners are very

*Jonathan Solomon is executive director of strategy at Cable and Wireless. †Suzanne Warner is head of group government relations at Cable and Wireless.

Demos 61 Demos 4/1994 particular about the terms of access they grant to various users, rather like the great European landowners of the 18th century. The information networks do indeed offer a huge promise, but they are still a closed system with the charging policies that control makes possible. Although they strive to overcome it, and utter mantras about the importance of customer choice, the mindset of the old monopoly is deeply controlling and, at core, customer choice is regarded as threatening.While the behaviour of providers has been modified by legislation, regulation, and some competition, the model has not so far been fundamentally changed. Providers are still operating within a system which grew up at a time when access to telecommunications was a scarcity and having a telephone was a privilege. Now we have a situation of both material and technological abundance, in which the perpetuation of a system designed for a different era is constricting severely the blossom- ing of a multiplicity of creativity that the technology could facilitate if it was cheaply and easily accessible. New situations require new thinking.At the time of the privatisation of BT, which was the first national utility to undergo the great experiment of privatisation in the UK, it was foreseen that a conflict of interest could arise if BT was both the owner of the network and the service provider, with the result that service development would be constrained. At that time, thinking on the general principles of the purchaser- provider split was still at an early stage, and the outcome of the privatisation policy was still an unknown quantity. British Telecom did not want separation and its view prevailed that it would be too great a risk to separate the two. We know now that the privatisation of telecommunications has been a great success story. We know now that the separation of networks from services is technically and financially feasible, and viable.We have evidence to suggest that if access to the networks was as easy as access to the highway, it would generate a wealth of economic and social benefits. It would have a profound impact on the delivery of many public services, such as education and health – in US health care alone, savings in the order of $36 billion are being predicted. If the cost of communications is low, then databases, libraries, and information could be reach

62 Demos Open architecture: the case for separating networks and services by anybody, anywhere and they can respond. Imagine what this would do in making progress towards the achievement of the objectives of the Citizens Charter. It has been the responsibility of regulators to modify the old system and its structures, and they have done a sterling job within the constraints of the legislative frameworks in which they operate. However, they are not empowered sufficiently to do enough to deliver the political vision,either in part or in whole.Inevitably their approach is incremental, a lawyer’s paradise of arcane word-by-word interpreta- tion. In the USA, some network owners, or carriers, have seen a negotiating advantage in offering to separate their network from their services in exchange for regulatory easements, but this in itself will not produce the access to the network that politicians are talking about.

‘If governments do not act, it is possible that history will judge them for holding back from their electorates the economic and social benefits that they might otherwise have enjoyed’

If the vision of prosperity and well-being promised by easy access to the communication power, that is termed broadband, is to become practical reality, certain preconditions have to exist, similar to those which apply to the vehicle highway network. In outline these are:

Ownership of the infrastructure is not controlled by a single enterprise unless full and transparent structural separation of network and services is in place Access to the infrastructure is either free or easily affordable, with pricing related to the application/service rather than access No charges for interconnection between networks Resources which remain scarce, such as radio frequencies, are managed openly, fairly, and effectively to ensure maximum availability.

Demos 63 Demos 4/1994

Creating these conditions requires fundamental restructuring, ultimately on an international scale. It requires a bold strategy for implementation at the beginning of the 21st century. As we approach the millennium, we find ourselves with the abundance of the most enabling technology that mankind has ever seen. It is made from the cheapest and most plentiful materials: sand and silicon. Yet by accident this world resource is controlled in various ways by a cartel which enjoys the his- toric advantage of invisible charging practices and the negotiating power provided by its role in the national security strategies of governments.

64 Demos Open architecture: the case for separating networks and services

An internal study by one telecommunications company shows that if prices of access to a broadband network were to fall to a point where they were perceived as almost costing nothing, the economic and social activity engendered would have the following outcomes over a ten year period:

Reductions in unit costs of goods and services with an increasing number of units of sale Higher standards of education, accessed at the earliest possible age, and maintained and updated for continuing education throughout life Better health at lower cost for more people Greater access to remote working, with corresponding employment opportunities and reduction in corporate costs Reduction in bureaucracy and lower cost of central and local government administration Reduction in use of non-renewable sources of energy.

Demos 65 Demos 4/1994

No individual company or specialist regulator is in a position to deliver the fundamental changes necessary to reshape the existing system. Only governments can, by primary legislation, cause a step change of the order of magnitude required. If governments do not act, it is possible that history will judge them for holding back from their electorates the economic and social benefits that they might otherwise have enjoyed. In the US they have understood that increasingly, successful businesses run on information. They realised the value of the computer- comfortable young people currently working through their education system, who will be entering the workforce in the next ten years, and the need to have infrastructure in place on which these people can navigate to maximum advantage. The Gore vision is based on a clear appreciation. The real stake that the Democrats are playing for is sustained American competitiveness in world markets, ensuring the con- tinuation of the wealth creation the American people have become accustomed to. We should take note of both this, and the success that the political vision alone is having in raising individual spirits, in creating a climate which encourages experimentation and innovation and revels in the rewards. In the early 1980s, Britain led the world in liberalisation and in innovative legislation. In the ‘90s, there is an opportunity again to lead the way to next stage and reap some of the rewards of the initiatives put in place ten years ago. Taking the steps necessary to open access to the world’s networks is a worthy project for the Millennium. There is an opportunity for inspired and courageous leadership. Outside the walls of Jericho, the world waits for its modern Joshua.

66 Demos Netfacts Daniel Sabbagh

If one thing is certain, it is that predictions made about the uses of new technologies are wrong; when Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone, he thought its main function would be to pipe music to remote groups of people.1 When Marconi invented radio he believed it would be used for ship to shore telegrams.2 When the first computers were built, the early experts underestimated the numbers that would be used. In 1951, the physicist, Douglas Hartree remarked,“We have a computer here in Cambridge; there is one at Manchester and one at the [National Physical Laboratory]. I suppose there ought to be one in Scotland, but that’s about all.”3 Before the Second World War, a computer meant either something built by a physicist to solve a particular problem, or a human being who worked at a desk with a calculating machine.4 In 1977, the chairman of Digital Equipment Corporation said,“there is no reason for any individual to have a computer in their home”.5 The world’s first broadcasting service, the earliest by some years, was both cable and regional. It was Telefon Hirmondo, based in Budapest, and ran from 1893 into the First World War, utilising phone lines. During the day political and

Demos 67 Demos 4/1994

financial news was broadcast, followed by a concert or play in the evening, to wealthy subscribers.6 The Internet began life 25 years ago as an American military defence against nuclear war. It was believed that a non- centralised network as opposed to a single computer centre would be much harder to eliminate.7 People rapidly took advantage of the network to send each other electronic mail messages. In 1973, David Clark, an MIT professor, and Internet guru announced that the success of e-mail applications was ‘a complete surprise’.8 The Internet now has an estimated 3,898,233 host computers, a rise of 21% in the last three months. Of these 69% are in the US.9 Nobody knows how many people are connected to the Internet. The number of people connected to a host computer ranges from a single user to 2 million.10 Nobody owns or seriously administers the Internet, although there is a voluntary body, the Internet Architecture Board, that approves shared standards; and a voluntary users group,

68 Demos Netfacts

the Internet Engineering Task Force, which meets regularly to discuss operational problems, setting up working groups of volunteers to further investigate problems.11 There are several ways to get on the Internet, but the simplest is to get a computer, connected to a modem which in turn needs to be linked to a phone line.With the requisite technology, you can subscribe to a service that offers an Internet connection. Subscription costs around £10 a month after an initial outlay, plus ‘phone bills. The average age of Internet users is almost 31, while men outnumber women by more than 6 to 1.12 BT is currently engaged in technical trials of a new package of domestic interactive on-line services, including dial up video-on-demand. Next year they hope to begin 6 months of market trials involving some 2,500 people, and a wider range of services, including a community gazetteer and home shopping and banking.13 A typical fibre optic cable will contain 96 fibres. Each pair of fibres is capable of transmitting 93,000 phone calls, or up to 20 channels of information simultaneously.14 Just over 4 million homes have been passed by cable,15 19.1% of Britain’s 21.9 million households.16 By October 1994 in the UK, cable companies had 580,310 telephone subscribers and 778,680 television subscribers. In the case of the television subscribers this represents a take up rate of 21%.17 It is estimated that by the year 2000 there will be 6.36 million cable TV subscriptions, and that over 13 million homes will have been passed.18 125 cable franchises have been awarded since 1984, but building has only begun on 75.19 These are owned by 12 parent companies.20 Cable companies are expected to invest £10bn in laying cable networks. So far £1.5bn has been spent.21 67% of the money being invested in the UK cable industry is American.22

Demos 69 Demos 4/1994

One of the largest cable operators in Britain, TeleWest, will have to spend £1 billion to complete its cabling work. The company does not foresee making a profit until 1998.23 BT estimate that it would take £15 billion to take optical fibre to the majority of the population, rising to £20 billion if the most remote parts of the UK are reached.24 BT remains the largest telecoms player in the UK, with 27 million lines and 85% of the market. BT is laying 60,000 new lines a month, a rate 50% faster than the combined effort of the cable companies. Meanwhile the chief executive at Telecential, a cable company, has claimed,“We are installing two and a half times more optical fibre cable than BT”.25 The largest subscription channel in Europe is French-based Canal Plus, with 5.8 million subscribers. Canal Plus is currently a terrestrial broadcaster.26 The Birmingham Cable corporation, covering the city area, has the largest number of subscribers for a single cable franchise, at 59,231. Its proportion of homes connected is the second largest, behind the franchise covering Swindon, which has a connection rate of 32.4%.27 The quickest way to get involved with multi-media is to purchase a multi-media personal computer, usually priced at around £1200. These contain a CD disc drive, which runs specially prepared CDs which can be purchased for £30–50. A CD-ROM can store over 200,000 pages of printed text or around 10,000 high quality photographs. There are 10–12 million CD-ROM drives worldwide.28 Sales have risen by 366% in the first quarter of this year,29 but it has been estimated that only 7% of PCs have a CD-ROM drive.30 A recently published set of 4 CD-ROMs contained every poem published before 1900 in the English language. This amounted to 165,000 poems. The set costs £30,000.31

70 Demos Netfacts

A VideoCD can currently store 74 minutes of film.32 Early next year a new generation of CDs is anticipated, able to store full length films on a single CD.33 Currently there are only 50,000 VideoCD players in Britain. Countries differ widely in their respective technological levels, and the ways in which technology is used. A British residential telephone is used for an average of 8 minutes a day. In the US the average for a residential telephone is three times as much.34 In terms of minutes of outgoing international telephone travel traffic, per inhabitant, the OECD average is 22.1 minutes. The African average is 1.6 minutes.35 Between a third and a half of the world’s population still lives more than two hours away from the nearest telephone.36 Only 4.5% of Japanese homes are connected to cable, compared with over 60% in the US; and PC penetration currently stands at 10%, compared with a figure of 42% for the US.37 In Russia, meanwhile, cable is mainly confined to Moscow, where penetration is estimated at 20%.38 Japan is rated as top of the World Competitiveness League for scientific and technological capacity. The US is second, Switzerland third, while the UK is 13th.39 Americans prefer renting videos: 66% of US households rent at least one video a month; while only 22% of Europeans do.40 The UK has the highest penetration of video recorders in households in the EU, at 72%. However, the UK is only 7th highest in terms of the penetration of remote controls, at 76.6%. Greece, at 94.3% has the highest penetration of remote controls.41 In the US there are 34PCs per 100 citizens, while in Europe there are only 10 per 100. The UK’s PC concentration is greater than the European average, at 22 per 100.42 Since last July Paddy Ashdown can be reached via e-mail. You can write to him on [email protected].

Demos 71 Demos 4/1994

Tony Blair can be reached on: [email protected]. According to 10 Downing Street, at the time of enquiry John Major could not be contacted in this fashion. Meanwhile, the UK Government has just gone online, as of 16.11.94.You can reach it on: www.open.gov.uk. The Treasury is one of the few departments that supplies information there, including recent ministerial speeches and press releases. The Japanese Prime Minister’s official residence has just opened a connection to the Internet.Visit him by going to www.kantei.go.jp.43 The US president can be e-mailed at [email protected], but e-mail is treated just like ordinary correspondence – you will only get a reply on paper. Anne Campbell, MP for Cambridge, held the first on-line constituency surgery on 4.11.94, between 5 and 7pm. Campbell estimates that her constituency contains the highest proportion of Internet connected users.44

72 Demos Netfacts

The first video-conferenced House of Commons select committee meeting occurred on May 18th 1994. The link was between the Trade and Industry select committee and two officials in Washington.45 Visa Net is the computer network that processes the world’s visa transactions, from cashpoints and high street shops to your branch and back again. It handles some 80 transactions per second.46 Only one-third of Fortune 500 companies had registered an obvious version of their company name on the Internet. 14% had obvious versions of their names registered by somebody else. MTV are taking a former employee to court, because he has registered mtv.com (com is the suffix that normally denotes a company) in his name.47 The potential size of the global information market has been estimated at $3 trillion.48 Projected employment forecasts for the US over the next 15 years reveal that the second and third largest growing vocations are for systems analysts and computer scientists (78.9%), and computer programmers (56.1%). The largest growing vocation was for home health aides (91.7%).49 The share telecoms has had of GDP climbed from 1.8% to 3.2% in the US, during the 1980s, but it fell in France and Germany over the same period.50 Employment in software more than quadrupled in Japan in the 1980s, from 75,000 to 350,000; in the US it doubled, from 304,000 to 835,000.51 The amount of software personnel in the OECD, by the year 2005, has been estimated on an optimistic scenario to be greater than 10 million.52 The Usenet discussion group uk.jobs.offered, a listing of some job vacancies available in the UK, has global readership of 19,000.53

Demos 73 Demos 4/1994

Telecommunications services and equipment are expected to account for 6% of GDP across the EU in the year 2000.54 In the US, for one dollar, you get 20 minutes use from an online service, and also from a magazine.You get 25 minutes use from a movie, 44 minutes from a video rental, 49 from a book, 69 from cable TV,and 125 from a CD-ROM. Meanwhile, you would have had 456 minutes of usage for your dollar from a CD.55 Handling an electronic requisition cost only one-tenth of its paper equivalent, while an e-mail massage can save 95% of the cost of a fax.56 An Internet database, complete with concert dates, photographs and video and audio clips, was created to accompany the recent ‘Voodoo Lounge’ world tour of those rock-dinosaurs: The Rolling Stones.57 You can also find art galleries or magazines on the Internet. Amsterdam now has an on-line twin, set up with a grant from the city council. It can be accessed by anybody from home, with a computer and a modem, or from free, public-access terminals in libraries, museums and hospitals. Using it you can retrieve Dutch MPs voting records, CVs, or even their photographs and send them e-mail messages you can also obtain information from charities; read selected articles from an evening newspaper; chat in one of the digital bars; or even wander down a dark alley. Down the alley you will find a drugs dealer (with information on the history, use and composition of Ecstasy), and a sex shop, offering a range of pornography related discussion groups. If all this bothers you, you can e-mail two policeman with complaints or tip-offs. Interested tourists can visit the digital city on the World Wide Web on dds.nl.58 In Friesland, a Dutch province, the police have installed computers on street corners which allow people to type in details of minor offence against them. Apparently this service has been a runaway success.59

74 Demos Netfacts

Cyberia in London is Britain’s first cybercafe (cafe ϩ 7 terminals connected to Internet) opened in September.60 Using the terminals costs £2.50 per half hour, with a concessionary rate of £1.90. From next January, a 24 hour radio station will be broadcast from Washington over the Internet, featuring not only live speeches from the US Congress, but also text and picture files. However only those with computers with high-speed data capabilities will be able to ‘tune in’.61 Of the numerous bulletin boards dotted around the Internet, the most popular single topic is Star Trek, with some 30 boards.62 11 of the 25 most used discussion groups on the Internet are pornography related.63 The United States’ most profitable bulletin board is called Event Horizons. It offers digitised pictures, including a huge catalogue of pornographic images. 64 telephone lines are needed to handle the 2,000 calls it receives each day.64 Advertising too has gone multimedia: What Car? magazine and Saab have produced an interactive CD-ROM that includes a BBC2 test of the car with technical information.65 An ability to comprehend and use acronyms, as well as neologisms is crucial to understanding the telecommunications revolution. Common ones to watch out for include FAQs. Frequently Asked Questions; ftp, file transfer protocol; and IRL, In Real Life. A recent trial of the uses of interactive TV,conducted by AT&T among some of their US employees, revealed that the most popular channels delivered entertainment not information as the company had predicted. People preferred to use interactive TV communally, rather than individually. Finally, in 40% of the trial households, the instruction books were still wrapped in their plastic covers.66 The president of AT&T,Walter Gifford, recalled in 1944 that, “Nobody knew in 1921 where radio was really headed.

Demos 75 Demos 4/1994

Everything about broadcasting was uncertain. For my own part I expected that since it was a form of telephony, and that since we were in the business of telephony, we were sure to be involved in broadcasting somehow.”67 Julian Hawthorne predicted in 1893 that by July 1993, all America’s cities would have disappeared bar four. People would commute to them via flying-machines traveling at 75 to 100 mph. As a result people could live in villages, far away from work, on evenly divided ten acre plots. The absence of city life results in the loss of boring social occasions, fashion, and of politics; while the even land distribution results in an end to crime. New communications technologies make direct democracy a literal truth, and allows like-minded people to live together.With enhanced communications and an absence of governments, wars would cease, until,“by and by there were no longer any foreigners”.68 The half life of statistics concerning information superhighways ranges from 1–9 months.69

76 Demos Notes

1. New Scientist, 16 April 1994 17. CCA. The percentages are calculated 2. Independent, 6.10.94 from the amount of homes passed 3. ‘An unforeseen revolution: by cable and available on the Computers and Expectations, market, a figure half a million less 1935–1985.’Paul Cerruzzi, p.190 In, than the total numbers of homes Imagining Tomorrow,edited by passed J.J. Corn, 1987 18. CCA 4. Ibid, p.188 19. House of Commons, Trade and 5. The Networked Economy, USA, Industry Committee, July 1994, Proceedings of a conference held in p. 18 Washington DC, 1993, p. 12. The 20. Broadcast 21.10.94 remark was cited in a speech given 21. FT 4.10.94 by Ron Brown, US Secretary for 22. Internet and Comms Today, Commerce November 1994 6. When old Technologies were New, 23. Sunday Times 13.11.94 Carolyn Marvin, 1988; p. 222–8 24. The Independent 25.10.94 7. The Guardian, 19.5.94 25. FT 4.10.94 8. Internet and Comms Today, 26. FT 4.10.94 December 1994 27. FT 4.10.94 9. The Guardian, 17.11.94 28. Broadcast 23.9.94 10. The Guardian, 17.11.94 29. The Guardian 1.9.94 11. Ed Krol, The Whole Internet, 30. FT 11.10.94 1994, p. 16 31. Chadwyck-Healey 12. The Independent, 24.10.94 32. Broadcast 23.9.94 13. BT and Sunday Times, 18.9.94 33. FT 26.9.94 14. The Times, 28.10.94 34. BT 15. Cable Communications Association 35. FT 17.10.94 (CCA) 36. According to the International 16. Social Trends 1994 taken from the Telecommunications Union 1991 census results 37. FT 4.10.94

Demos 77 Demos 4/1994

38. Television in Europe to 2004, Zenith 53. The Guardian, 6.10.94 Media Worldwide, 1994 54. House of Commons, Trade and 39. World Competitiveness Report, 1993 Industry Select Committee Report, 40. The Guardian, 26.10.94 July 1994, p.12 41. Television in Europe to 2004,Zenith 55. Wired, October 1994 Media Worldwide, 1994 56. Europe and the Global Information 42. Europe and the Global Information Society:Recommendations to the Society: Recommendation to the European Council, (the Bangemann European Council (the Bangemann Commission), 1994 Commission), 1994 57. FT, 10.10.94 43. Internet and Comms Today, 58. The Guardian, 24.11.94 November 1994 59. The Face, October 1994 44. The Guardian, 3.11.94 60. The Guardian, 8.9.94 45. House of Commons Trade and 61. Internet, November 1994 Industry Committee, Volume II 62. The Guardian, 30.4.94 Memoranda, p. 100–7 63. The Guardian, 19.5.94 46. The Guardian, 8.9.94 64. The Economist, 25.12.93 47. Wired, October 1994 65. The Independent, 24.10.94 48. FT 3.10.94 The figure is attributed 66. FT, 14.11.94 to the deputy chairman of Olivetti 67. When Old Technologies were 49. US Bureau of Labor Statistics, 1992 New, Carolyn Marvin, 1988, 50. The Times, 4.10.94 p. 230–1 51. Work for all or mass unemployment? 68. The Cosmopolitan: An illustrated Chris Freeman and Luc Soete, monthly magazine, February 1893, 1994, p. 60 p. 450–8 52. Work for all or Mass 69. Demos, 1994 Unemployment?, Chris Freeman and Luc Soete, 1994, p. 45

78 Demos Architechnology? John Welsh

Architects understand both space and volume. But the dimension of time – how an office, factory or home can respond to change – interests them not a bit. How existing or new buildings will absorb the new technology of the information superhighway is an urgent question but one which architects are scarcely capable of answering. There is little financial reason for such architectural blindness. More money is being spent on changing buildings than building new ones, according to the only figures on the issue,‘Some 200 billion dollars (5% of the gross national product) was spent on renovation and rehabilitation in 1989 … Nearly all architects (96%) are involved in some of form of rehab … and a quarter of architects’ revenue comes from rehab.’ Nor should there be a cultural problem with change. The architects on the so-called cutting edge of the profession boast of their daily liai- son with technology. Take Future Systems. This British-based practice is the mouthpiece for an architectural vision of the future. Products, some developed by NASA for space research, are absorbed into their designs. Why then this apparent conflict between an obsession with technology and an inability to use it to change? The modern movement, when it struck architecture in the late 1920s, early 1930s, was at first

John Welsh is editor of the RIBA Journal.

Demos 79 Demos 4/1994 seen as a step naturally developing out of technology. Concrete, steel and glass allowed architecture to assume the abstract forms, spatial qualities and level of natural lighting impossible with earlier building techniques. Yet all this changed with the publication of Pioneers of the Modern Movement by Sir Niklaus Pevsner (1934) which argued that the change in style, far from a technological revolution, was, in fact, a natural progression in architectural history – Le Corbusier’s villas, for example, being the successors of Palladio’s villas, though in somewhat abstract form. Such opinions held until the 1960s when a whole generation of architects and critics demolished Pevsner’s thesis. Architectural groups such as the British Archigram or the Japanese Metabolists, and writers such as Reyner Banham and Martin Pawley, argued, once more, that modern architecture was an expression of technological progress. Their arguments have influenced architecture ever since, justifying an entirely new, postwar generation of architects. Now actions are seen in technological terms: what matters is the tech- nospeak or techno-appearance even if your building is less flexible than a nineteenth century predecessor. The truth, though, lay with Pevsner. Much of the vaunted technological revolution occurred not in the twentieth but the nineteenth century: skyscrapers appeared in Chicago in the 1880s, steel buildings in 1860s London and Paris. Today’s architects, far from exploiting technology for architectural means have, in fact, been acquiring it merely for stylistic purposes. Future Systems, for example, have just completed their first new building, a private house in Islington. The dramatic glass block façade of the front is matched by the huge sweeping glass curve at the rear. The image is one of powerful futurism, yet the house relies on traditional hot water radiators. The south glass facade relies on roll down blinds for solar protection. And the interior products are a jumble of office or airport features from the mid-1960s. Technology, therefore, has always been something of a confusion for architects. So when it comes to new buildings the only response to increased cabling has been suspended ceilings and raised floors. It is

80 Demos Architechnology? a dumb response because ten years’ technology has already rendered such massive space for cabling unnecessary. There is massively rouged lip service paid to flexibility. Take Richard Rogers: the Beaubourg in Paris (with Renzo Piano, 1976) and the Lloyds building in London (1986). The former was intended to be like a series of easily replaceable sheds, yet this year a multi-million franc reconstruction has been announced. And Rogers, for all his interest in flexibility, has fought hard against any alterations to the insurance headquarters by interior consultants. Why, then, do architects run shy of such qualities? Can they cope with the kind of changes necessary to the existing building stock to cater for the information superhighway? Brand2 argues for three kinds of architecture: the ‘No road’,the ‘Low road’ and the ‘High road’. The first is the architecture produced for completion day, photo- graphed shortly afterwards, published in magazines and never examined five years later. Such buildings have an almost built-in inability to respond to time, designed, as they are, to express the architect’s interest in the appearance of technology rather than the performance of technology. The ‘Low road’is more interesting: railways arches, war-time hangars, old garages. Such ‘buildings’ do change over time, railway arches once housing car-wash companies, then car repair shops, now design companies and health clubs. Many of these types of buildings never involved an architect but are flexible precisely because they are low tech: cabling, lighting, whatever, can be changed without the original usefulness of the space being harmed. The ‘High road’ includes buildings such as libraries or headquarters. Here there is a built-in institution to oversee their preservation at whatever cost. Technology, whatever the awkwardness of installation, is just another problem in the intrinsic ambition of an institution’s self- preservation. But there is one sector of the built environment that has proved it can benefit from architects. That is the postwar city. Take Baltimore, where architects and politicians have worked together to revive the city center since the 1960s. This suggests an understanding that the city is constantly evolving and changing. Another example would be

Demos 81 Demos 4/1994 landscape architects whose very material – plants – never stop growing, and therefore changing, overtime. But two skills scarcely suggest a profession on the change. As Brand says, ‘Architecture, we imagine, is permanent. And so our buildings thwart us. Because they discount time, they misuse time’.

Notes 1. From How buildings learn, Stewart Bland,Viking, New York, 1994 2. Ibid

82 Demos McJobs or MACJobs: will the network make work? Ian Christie* and Geoff Mulgan†

For 200 years new technologies have been associated with fears of redundancy. In practice, the effects of radical innovations on jobs usually turn out to be more complex, less predictable and more amenable to the policy choices of governments and employers than the pes- simists expect. The process of diffusion is uncomfortable for many but ultimately it creates many new opportunities. The same is likely to be true of the Information Superhighway (I-way). We can expect it to undermine many existing jobs, but also to make it possible to redefine some, and create others. Many displaced people will be unable to slot easily into new work without extensive training and new education; but the changes will not happen overnight. The key point, however, is that the employment effects of new technology are not forces of nature. They can be shaped by competent governments, by organisations of all kinds, and by individuals.We argue below that they could lead not only to the development of new forms of work, but also to the revival of many jobs lost or threatened by recent changes in public service provision. We can already be reasonably confident about the I-way’s capacity to reinforce many existing trends in employment. Increasing use of networked computer systems and advanced software will continue to

* Ian Christie is a Senior Research Fellow at the Policy Studies Institute. † Geoff Mulgan is Director of Demos.

Demos 83 Demos 4/1994 erode low-skill jobs, not only in manufacturing but increasingly in services as productivity gains are at last achieved. As the table on page six shows, many roles, ranging from insurance claims assessors to cash register suppliers, are likely to be replaced or superceded as I-way applications develop. At the same time there will also be new opportunities: indirect ones like continued growth in security jobs and career consultants, to supplement stretched police services and advise the newly unemployed, and more direct ones for skilled IT people. The latter will be a large and varied group, reflecting the pervasiveness of new IT applications: system designers, network engineers, programmers, interface designers; jobs in software design and production for the growing world of ‘infotainment’ – business analysts, graphic designers, animators, software authors, documenters; and many new openings in service delivery, training and consultancy for those who can guide others around the I-way and devise new online services. In manufacturing there will be opportunities for the creative use of networking in improving process quality, R&D, supply chain coordina- tion, logistics, distribution and marketing. And in all industries, growing complexity of technologies, markets and competition may also mean more demand for strategic policy and operations development in all kinds of services. The sheer complexity and overload associated with much more information coming from many more sources may require an increase in the number of minds on tap, IT-assisted employees and consultants to help filter, edit and choose in the face of an exponential increase in possible problems, solutions and issues to think about. There are also other foreseeable effects in work organisation. The I-way will reinforce existing tendencies among employers to decen- tralise work, promote homeworking for at least part of the week, and seek ever greater flexibility in working time. We can anticipate a slow but steady rise in telework (both freely chosen and enforced), but this will only take off when several factors combine: easy cheap access to interactive tele-services, and incentives not to travel (such as chronic road congestion and significantly higher fuel costs or road taxes.) We may also see ‘telecottages’ spreading as a congregating place for

84 Demos McJobs or MACJobs: will the network make work? isolated independent workers which could become a hub for the location of other services: shops, childcare, business services, nursery schools (the new sub-Post Office.) There are, however, several significant unknowns. The first is whether the apparently remorseless cuts in lower skilled jobs throughout manufacturing, and now in many services, will continue. Orthodox economics would predict that technologies should develop to replace the most expensive factors of production: in this case skilled labour and capital. In other words the logic of technological development should be to create more lower skilled jobs, as is already in evidence in garages and retailing. At the very least we should be sceptical of the conventional wisdom that jobs in the I-way culture will all be high-skill ones. The second is whether the ‘delayering’ of middle management will continue. Most of the signs are that it will, given the increasing power of networked computers and executive information systems. What we do not know is how far corporate delayering and re-engineering can go before the impacts become destabilising. Some major firms now fear that they have lost too many core skills in the rush to cut costs in the early 1990s recession.Although they can buy in most of the expertise they need from external sources – including former employees turned consultants – there is inevitably a loss of control and security involved in wholesale IT-driven ‘outsourcing’. The third is whether the ultimate net effects of I-way innovations will be positive or negative. Unfortunately most offcial forecasts beg too many questions: for example, forecasts on managerial employment seem remarkably optimistic given current trends towards corporate delayering and outsourcing. The fourth question is whether trends towards a growing informal economy, fuelled by high unemployment, will continue. One possible effect of further managerial delayering will be the rise of an professional informal economy, helping with everything from tax self-assessment and conveyancing to expert tuition. If the I-way simply facilitates job substitution, then many people will be forced into the informal ‘shadow’ economy, perhaps stimulating a faster rise in the use of non-monetary exchange systems (see article by Nick Rowan on page 91).

Demos 85 Demos 4/1994

The fifth is the question of which groups will prove most successful in what can be called IT enhancement – the use of IT by professionals to boost their capacities to prempt their substitution by new technologies and to gain individual competitive edge either within or outside organisations.

‘The model of lean management and empowered frontlines might in the long-run prove a good deal more socially efficient and attractive, as well as creating a growing demand for relatively unskilled unemployed people’

The difficulties involved in any forecasts of employment effects are obvious in a field such as software. During the 1980s employment in software and information services was estimated to rise from 75,000 to 350,000 in Japan, and from 304,000 to 835,000 in the USA. Most observers estimate the real figures to be at least 2–3 times as high, and most expect growth rates of 8% to continue. Others have suggested a very different picture, with automation of coding and testing of new software, the spread of Object-Oriented Programming, and wider access to standard packages, all sharply cutting labour needs. As Chris Freeman and Luc Soete have argued, these factors may be overridden by the remarkably rapid pace of IT diffusion. Few forecast the sheer scale of the computer games industry, the rise of Internet use, or the growth of First Direct. Many may now be underestimating the potential scale of the home education industry, and the speed with which well-conceived new services can spread, creating, almost overnight, wholly new industries. New technologies generally take two decades from innovation to widespread adoption: but given the availability of a market framework that favours rapid infrastructural investment, and the convergence of technologies that underpin the I-way, applications such as interactive TV and multimedia software could diffuse much faster. What scope is there for public policies to make an impact on these trends? Writers often discuss technological change as if it was akin to

86 Demos McJobs or MACJobs: will the network make work? the weather, and certainly beyond the reach of any conscious decision. We can identify three key levers for policy makers. The first is taxation. This can, as in the past, have a major impact on how work is organised. A substantial, albeit steady, shift in the tax burden away from income to consumption (particularly of energy) would have major effects.Apart from assisting the shifts to telework and telecottages, this would promote an environmentally and socially benign relocalisation of production within firms. Shifting the tax burden away from work would also, more generally, help with employment creation (although some economists would dispute the effect on incentives to create jobs). The second lever is even more important. In recent years the public sector has followed a crude business model in applying technologies to make its frontline service functions ever leaner. Service delivery jobs have been sharply cut back and processes automated, while management costs have escalated. Judged by throughput alone, this often leads to improvements in efficiency. But lean service delivery has been accompanied by heavier management, especially in areas such as health.And it has led to a depopulation of the world of service delivery, as shown by rising teacher-student ratios, declining numbers of nurses, and the loss of railway staff. Experience from automation in the manufacturing sector shows that there are a much wider range of choices available. Similar technologies can be used to achieve almost reverse effects: empowering frontline workers, and sharply cutting back office and managerial functions. Use of the potential of the I-way to reduce the labour-intensity of management could free many more resources for the development of appropri- ately labour-intensive service delivery jobs that will incorporate a higher level of managerial and specialist skills. For example, I-way technology could be used to transform university teaching by taking advantage of networked ‘superlecturers’ to replace conventional lecturing, thus releasing existing lecturers to do far more one-to-one and group tuition. Hand-held devices could be used by nurses or police to access diagnostic information or records, while keeping them in face-to-face relationships with the public. In

Demos 87 Demos 4/1994 social security the transfer of number-crunching and administration to IT could release staff for personal mentoring, job search and coun- selling roles. One important means of ensuring such a shift from top-heavy service management to enhanced service provision is to develop more appropriate indicators of success.At the macro scale, this requires governments to move away from crude GDP-based measures of growth to more sophisticated welfare indicators, such as the Genuine Progress Index.At the micro scale, it calls for replacement of crude quantitative, throughput-based performance indicators with more qualitative and inclusive ones that register users’ satisfaction with services. Some have argued for a straightforward automation of the public sector (eg social security assessment and payments) and use of new technologies to pass costs on to the public (eg encouraging self-diagnosis in health, or self-assessment in tax). The problem with such approaches is that, although they make sense in narrow efficiency terms,they often lead to a feeling that the quality of service has diminished. Moreover, they accelerate the desertion of public spaces by public figures – parks, railway stations, streets. The alternative model of lean management and empowered frontlines might in the long-run prove a good deal more socially efficient and attractive, as well as creating a growing demand for relatively unskilled unemployed people, and for many of those displaced by negative impacts of I-way development. In public services, unlike in many businesses, labour intensity at the point of delivery may be less a sign of inefficiency than of suitably customer-focused services. The key point is that I-way technologies should not be applied to public services as if these were akin to business processes in all respects. Finally, government has an important third role in relation to jobs: to help with the ‘first mover’ problem. It usually takes many years for any major innovation to become mainstream. Often the key barriers are organisational ones – social innovations are needed before the full benefits of a technology can be exploited. In many ways government has a more useful role to play, not as a funder of high science and hardware research, nor as a direct employer, nor even as an intervener into industries, but rather as a first mover in the adoption of new IT and

88 Demos McJobs or MACJobs: will the network make work? the promotion of new social forms, including such innovations as telecottages. Government can also play a key role in encouraging and funding experimentation with the I-way, piloting innovative software and exploiting technologies for beneficial social results. Such public investment in pilot projects and market-creating investments in software and hardware should also embrace programmes of education and training for people displaced by new technologies. In the business world it has become common to talk about the ‘killer applications’ which will transform the I-way from a cult pastime to a fundamental feature of the economy. In the public sector too it is important to distinguish the key levers that can help promote as many benign outcomes as possible from the rise of I-way technologies. We have identified tax, public sector organisation and ‘first mover’ roles as critical. Properly designed and implemented, these types of policy have the capacity to stimulate job creation, new forms of work organisation, and a cost-effective repopulation of the public service world. We can expect the I-way to eliminate many jobs and create opportunities for many others: it would be a profound mistake to think that public policy cannot help to shape this process and in so doing reinvigorate our thinking about the world of work.

Demos 89

Down your superhighway: shopping in the electronic parish Nick Rowan

Ask Information Age gurus to predict the state of our internal trade in Britain a few years from now, and they will tell you,“there’s going to be a vast gulf between those organisations that have trading computers and those that do not.” The oracles of the superhighway can easily see the day when we do our shopping using the phone and TV; keying into central computers run by Marks & Spencer, Woolworth’s, Harrods, Toys R Us and so on. This style of shopping should be cheap, with no high street premises, very few staff and no unnecessary stock movements. True, there’s no human contact for the shopper but you only have to look at the meteoric growth of companies like Direct Line Insurance and First Direct Banking to see that the promise of low prices can quickly triumph over conventional service. French consumers already have a limited taste of tele-shopping with their Minitel system. Now companies like QVC, television’s home shopping channel, are pouring millions into developing the sophisticated software that will drive a new era in tele-shopping along the superhighway. It is, conventional wisdom tells us, a fait accompli. Major retailing conglomerates are putting up the development money now and they will reap the rewards of being unchallenged at the hub of our trading system when high street stores have all but passed into history.

Nick Rowan is a Television Producer based in Newcastle.

Demos 91 Demos 4/1994

However, with a little foresight and seed money there could also be a modest computer trading system set up around a British city that would be programmed firmly for the public benefit. This core computer would operate as an alternative to the tele-shopping giants. It would ensure a vigorous and flexible free market for that city, in which all citizens could play their part. Here’s how it could work.A core computer is established somewhere in the city, which anyone in the area can access using the phone/TV. Once on-line they are presented with an electronic “High Street” and click along to the “shop” that conducts the kind of trade they wish to enact. Let’s assume it’s a sunny summer evening, friends are coming round and you want a barbecue set.You would travel along your screen to the “Garden Centre”, click “barbecue” on the list of items for trade then say whether you wanted to buy, sell, rent (for specified dates) or hire your outdoor sizzle maker. Whichever option you select, the system asks you to click through a few questions about barbecues so it can establish your exact requirements. Then it sets out to match you with your needs. To do this it checks against every option that has been fed in by other users – it may suggest a hire from someone else across town, or match you with someone who has a second-hand garden griddle for sale, or even

92 Demos Down your superhighway: shopping in the electronic parish consult any retail systems it is allowed access to in search of the cheapest buy. The five options that correspond closest to your requirements are presented on a map in which your house is the epicentre. [See illustration 1.] Whichever choice you make, the system will offer an electronic contract for you to “sign” using a secret PIN number. The cost agreed

Demos 93 Demos 4/1994 in the contract is then transferred electronically from your account to that of your co-signatory.

‘Trading would be available to anyone in the computer’s catchment area. The system would be self-financing, deducting a small commission from each transaction to cover its own running costs’

Trading like this would be available to anyone in the computer’s catchment area. The system would be self-financing, deducting a small commission from each transaction to cover its own running costs. Before long, this could be as little as 1%, plus the local phone call charge. The contracts offered for signature would be legally binding, with both parties’ names and addresses automatically added.You would be able to trade with complete strangers in total confidence. I have christened this putative system the Local Network or LocNet. It is not a gathering of random access bulletin boards like the Internet, nor a mere conduit to retailers’ computers like CompuServe. The LocNet is a self-contained trading system open to anyone who regis- ters their name and address, verifies any information they will be using in their contracts (a clean driving licence for instance) and deposits however small an amount in a LocNet trading account. Other immediately available applications for a local trading system programmed for public benefit could include:

An electronic “Job Centre” where prospective employees can answer questions about their experience, qualifications and aspirations. These will then be matched with the requirements of employers to draw up shortlists. New ways of working become easy to administer. The LocNet could search through lists of qualified job applicants and match those whose desired work patterns were complementary. They would be put in touch and could offer themselves – on the system – to employers as a pair.

94 Demos Down your superhighway: shopping in the electronic parish

Opportunities to branch out as self employed with no risk and no cost are available to anyone. Register with LocNet as, say, a qualified driving instructor, tell the electronic “Driving School” the hours you want to work and the patch you are willing to cover. It will match you with pupils in the area, collect payment, construct the most logical lessons schedule to avoid wasted travel time and handle all the contracts between you and your learners. Other people could hire themselves out as babysitters, house cleaners, gardeners, messengers, and so on. LocNet could run a parallel economy. Every user would be given, say, 500 points when they registered to get a PIN. The points, called POETs (Parallel Official Economy Tokens), could be used to buy, sell, hire and pay for labour. They would be freely convertible with the pounds in users’ accounts. The system itself would act as a central bank in the POET economy, again enabling users to trade in good faith. Long-term searches become possible. Let’s say you dream of a city centre top floor flat, within 10 minutes walk of a swimming pool, including covered parking, away from any main roads and near a Catholic Primary School. The system will keep searching through entries in its “Estate Agent” until a property with those specifications turns up, the search will go on for years if necessary. And, for you, it’s effortless. The system has social applications as well. Go to the “Sports Centre” and tell it you would like to play football. It will match you with ten other users of comparable skill who have made the same entry, calculate a period when you are all free, consult its data banks for a pitch equidistant from all your homes that will then be booked (you all share the cost) and prepare a training schedule that best suits everyone’s availability.A LocNet could perform similar functions for religious gatherings, youth groups, daytime activities for the elderly, professional networks and evening classes. A revival of support networks like friendly societies, loan circles and

Demos 95 Demos 4/1994

shopping co-operatives – all administered by the LocNet – could particularly benefit the less well off. Each user’s LocNet terminal would double as a diary, recording all the commitments they had made on the system and keeping track of their spending. Illustration 2 shows a possible on-screen diary for a single mother, who had only entered into a handful of obligations. The corresponding diary for, say, a small business that allowed LocNet to schedule its incoming workload would be considerably more complex. Local industry too could benefit. An electronic “Industrial Estate” would be available to companies who could then lease, hire, buy and sell from each other. For barbecue set read fork lift truck, industrial food mixer, or time on a spectrophotometric test rig. Like the visionaries of QVC, the city that set up a LocNet would need to invest considerable upfront cash in development and programming. This should be recoverable over the long term, as the completely different economy made possible by the system began to operate. But if it was seen to work the pioneer city could lucratively export its software and expertise. Like the National Lottery, the opportunity to run a first LocNet could be put out to tender.

The irony about the trading revolution is that a few companies with the resources to fund the necessary sophisticated programming and hardware are stifling the free market by dominating the lines of supply in the near future; the chairman of QVC, Barry Diller, admitted as much at Edinburgh television festival this year. It’s going to be a bitter pill for free marketers to swallow but – in the information Age – the only way to ensure a free market in which everyone can play their part is by communal action to launch trading systems programmed for the public benefit. Watch this conundrum move centre stage in the next few years as buying and selling moves to the Superhighway.

96 Demos Dial B for banking Ian Courtney* and Kevin Morgan†

In the mid 1990s, the services sector is undergoing the same experience of resturcturing and labour shedding that hit manufacturing in the 1980s. A position in banking can no longer be regarded as job for life. Facing the future handicapped by overcapacity, pressure on margins and poor profits performance, the banks have been in no condition to respond to competition. The 1986 Building Societies Act has introduced new rivals into the market. The big four high street banks, with average cost-income ratios of 65%, compared unfavourably with the leaner operations of the building societies, whose cost income ratio stands at 44%. The banks have responded by reorganising local branch networks into ‘satellite banking groups’, clusters of branches where management and supervisory functions now cover a much wider area. The impact of this on employment has been profound: the Banking Insurance and Finance Union (BIFU) estimates that among the four clearers alone, over 1200 branches have closed, and well in excess of 100,000 job losses have occurred in the 1990s. However, in spite of the industry’s long experience of using information and communications technologies, its record is not a particularly

* Ian Courtney is an independent consultant in economic development and telecommunications. † Kevin Morgan is Professor of city and regional planning at the University of Wales.

Demos 97 Demos 4/1994 impressive one. With estimates mates suggesting a decline of finance industry unit costs for hardware and transmission of 90% in the last two decades the productivity of this investment has been remarkably low. Nevertheless, as banking orthodoxies disappear, new tele-mediated banking solutions are emerging. The siting of standardised, high volume tasks such as credit card and cheque processing in bank offices is not new. Telecommunications technologies enable those operations to be located remotely from the main business functions and from head offices, but still allow them to be integrated within the overall business process and leave them amenable to overall central control. The most impressive new trend, emerging on the back of the adoption of advanced telecommunications, is the relocation of front office sales and service activities to the back office. The application of sophisticated relational databases, holding records of customer transactions on host computer systems enables call centre operators, known in the industry as banking representatives, to anticipate spending decisions before the account holder and so increase sales and revenue opportunities. This use of computer integrated telephones is a potent source of competitive advantage. In moves that mirror the impact of Toyota on the motor industry, the Midland Bank launched First Direct – the first discrete telephone banking operation in the United Kingdom, on October 1 1989 (by no coincidence a Sunday). First Direct now offers account holders a 24 hour service through out the year. The operation represented a considered response on the part of Midland to competitive pressures that were eroding profits and market share.Aimed specifically at groups A, B and C1, research showed that customers were less interested in face to face contact with their manager (only 1 in 4 customers knew the name of their branch manager), but demanded a high level of service and were amongst those familiar with telecommunications gadgetry. Currently First Direct has 480,000 customers – about 2% of the UK’s personal banking market, but 12% of the A, B and C1 market, and is growing at a rate of 10,000 per month. Having been launched with 150 staff, First Direct now employs 1,800 full and part time staff on two sites in Leeds.

98 Demos Dial B for banking

Recruitment procedures, which in the initial phase involve a telephone interview, place an emphasis on telephone manner, mental resilience and technical tolerance as well as basic numeracy. As a front end operation First Direct have eschewed a policy of recruiting individuals with previous banking experience. The ideal candidate will have worked in the retail sector and have considerable transferable skills. Kevin Newman, First Direct’s Chief Executive, said “we recruit from behavioural skills rather than banking skills, because you can acquire banking skills through training”. As the implications of First Direct are felt by their competitors and employees in the industry, spare a thought for future developments. In the course of our work it emerged that MicroSoft was considered a potential rival. Bill Gates’ access to customers, organisational innovations and techological competence, could constitute a major threat during the next century.

Demos 99

Self-health and the virtual health service Daniel Sabbagh

For many decades forecasters have predicted that new information technologies will dramatically change health care: smart cards will hold health records, remote diagnosis will enable distant doctors to help patients, and expert systems will replace the medical profession. In practice however, although each of these has gone most of the way from science fiction to fact, their application has been far more complex than anyone expected. The crucial issue is trust. In a widely reported story in late August, Guy’s hospital disowned a doctor who had used a computer program to predict whether, after ninety days of intensive care, patients would live or die. The predictions had been used to help decisions about continuing to administer medication, but a hospital statement said, ‘The computer system should be used to record details of patients admitted to the unit but not to direct patient management’. The other reason for ambivalence is that few technologies deliver what they promise – at least initially. One example is keyhole surgery – a micro-communications technology application whereby a tube with a miniature camera on the end is inserted into the body through a small, keyhole sized, incision. Surgery is conducted by the use of long instruments, guided by the image from the camera relayed upon a screen. The small size of the incision considerably reduces the trauma

Daniel Sabbagh is a research assistant at Demos.

Demos 101 Demos 4/1994 of open surgery. But despite the hype about its potential, a recent Department of Health investigation has told doctors to restrict its application. Only one out of twelve applications examined proved its worth in controlled testing. The most important use of networks in the short term will probably be more mudande: making information more widely and effectively available. In 1993, the NHS began setting up a national communications network, coordinated by the NHS-wide networking group. It aims to ensure that by 1996, 90% of NHS organisations are able to exchange data electronically using BT’s telephone network. Eight regional management groups will be responsible for defining networking needs, making the necessary purchases, and monitoring the services provided, while a central group develops standards, policies, and provides support for the regional groups. Other important standardis- ations have also been achieved,such as the recent introduction of national personal NHS numbers and the standardisation of clinical terms in various fields. Only recently, the editor of the British Medical Journal (BMJ) said, ‘Few decisions made in the health services are made with good evidence. This applies particularly to decisions on how the health services are structured and managed, but is also true of decisions made every day by doctors and nurses. The failure stems from those who work in health services being unaware of evidence that is available, from the evidence being disorganised and inaccessi- ble, and from the evidence simply not existing’.1 Effectively networking the NHS will significantly improve information flows, enhancing existing research databases such as the Cochrane Collaboration, which collects a register of reliable medical trials, pooling comparable ones together. Ultimately the aim is to make all its data available on line. Medical students would benefit from multimedia libraries of rare complaints and infrequently performed operations; or from simulated surgery, using ‘virtual reality’. The significance of the human element in health care will ensure that medical professionals will not be replaced but rather empowered by information technology. It remains unclear how many people will feel safe with ‘tele-presence surgery’ (where a surgeon situated some

102 Demos Self-health and the virtual health service miles away operates on a patient by controlling a robot surgeon via an appropriate viewing and operating device), or with diagnosis by expert system. In each case public trust depends on the presence of another expert. Similarly, it is difficult to imagine a home diagnosis programme with the legal responsibility to issue prescription, or for an early end to the personal role of the GP which may have inherent heal- ing qualities in its own right. The question of trust also arises in relation to health records. France, Norway, Japan and the US have all used smart cards to store medical data. Smart patient records (SRPs), an electronic medical record stored both on a smart card held by a citizen and on the databases of their GP and any other medical professional currently caring for the patient, make possible a new relationship between people and their health. To make an SPR system work, terminals would be needed throughout the NHS, in ambulances and GPs surgeries and beyond to sites such as pharmacies. Guarantees willl also be needed to protect the confidentiality or information, particularly from employers and insurance companies. The BMA has persuasively argued for legislation to safeguard the confidentiality of medical records, covering non-medical NHS staff, arguing that the current informal code of practice is an insufficient discipline. The essential principle is to ensure that medical information held about individuals cannot be used for or held jointly with nonmedical purposes and information – for instance in a national indentity card system. There could, of course, be some exceptions to this rule (eg in criminal cases), but these would need to be clearly defined in advance. A related issue is the need to ensure the integrity of records held on networked computers, an issue currently being considered by the NHS-wide networking group. Perhaps the greatest impact of technologies will come where it goes with the grain of the shifts in culture away from dependence on professionals and towards greater self-reliance. In health, rising self-reliance is demonstrated by the increasing public interest in alternative medicine, and the acceptance by many of the ideal of ‘keeping fit’.A recent survey2 discovered that younger people were far more likely to agree with the statement,“The public should take greater responsibility for their health

Demos 103 Demos 4/1994 as long as they continue to consult a doctor or pharmacist for illnesses and problems” – the significant divide in attitudes emerges around the age of forty five. Increasing numbers of people use the pharmacist as their first port of call when ill: over 66% do so today, compared with only 40% a decade earlier. Other technological developments will, grad- ually, foster self-reliance. As techniques of keyhole surgery or image- guiding improve, the time spent by patients in hospitals will decrease, encouraging an overall shift in emphasis from secondary to primary medical care. Much greater access to genetic information provided by the Human Genome Project will also make it easier (and more pressing) for people to customise their own lifestyles and healthcare. Storing a person’s medical record on a smart card, would signal that a person’s health is the joint responsibility of the citizen and their GP. The SPR could only be updated by medical professionals (perhaps by only legally permitting medical professionals to hold a writing device, while anybody else would be permitted read-only equipment), where possible, in collaboration with the patient. Some information would have to be included on an SPR, such as allergies, or currently pre- scribed medication; while other data would be optional, such as, perhaps, a genetic fingerprint, or even an internal image of the body.What would be mandatory, and optional should be subject to an annual review, by a regulatory body composed of professionals and the public. Meanwhile to foster self-reliance, an SPR system could be used to encourage citizens to take further interest in their own health, by allowing them the right to update their SPR every six months – a check up handled by a nurse either at the increasingly important primary care centres, or by making house calls. People could monitor improvements in their health after, say, giving up smoking, an operation or during a pharmaceutical treatment. Sophisticated SPRs could also help provide information to track diseases and conditions. For example with widespread SPRs it could have been possible to monitor the incidence of asthma around the country in recent years, examining the degree of correlation between asthma and levels of traffic pollution; or to monitor the outcomes of health treatments such as hip replacements, where the number of

104 Demos Self-health and the virtual health service

treatments is increasing, but where 18% of the expenditure on hip replacements is on revision surgery. Ultimately trust is the essential pre-condition if citizens are to believe that ultimately they will control what information is stored. If that trust exists, there is the potential for the gradual emergence of a system of health care composed both of well informed medical professionals and citizens enabled to take greater responsibility for their own health.

Notes 1. BMJ, 23 July 1994 2. Audience Selection, 1994

Demos 105

The ABC of educational multimedia Mark Edwards

‘Parents concerned with their child’s education will purchase a multimedia platform (currently a PC) for the home – yet already the UK is behind the US market as the penetration of multimedia into homes is about 1/6th of US figures’

What is multimedia? Broadly speaking multimedia is a combination of traditional communication media such as CDs, videos, radio, pictures and books in one. Information is presented on a video screen and controlled by user input, via an adapted TV remote control. Multimedia technology is evolving towards the natural modes of communication that humans use with one another. Whilst the technology is still a long way from offering true human-like interaction, there are other benefits that compensate ‘for this: breadth of information, accessibility, quality of presentation, cost and consistency. Nevertheless the technology is only a means to an end.At the moment a CD-ROM facility on personal computers is the most viable delivery platform, until somtething better and cheaper is developed. On-demand systems using cable will ultimately become significant, but there is a considerable amount of plumbing to install first.

Mark Edwards works for CRT Multimedia and was previously head of marketing for MicroSoft UK.

Demos 107 Demos 4/1994

The ability to select your route through information interactively makes multimedia particularly suited to educational applications, since the user can control the pace of delivery. As a result, children are more likely to be engaged by the information because they, rather then their teachers, are in control, while at the same time they learn to be familiar with the computer technology which will form part of their everyday working and leisure lives in the future. Multimedia will play an important role in primary/secondary education, particularly as the increasing complexities of the world constantly make demands of students to learn more in shorter time scales. However, multimedia will not be a substitute for other forms of learning but serve as an addition, a complement and a reinforcement. Enlight- ened schools will have these facilities available for pupils. Meanwhile many parents will see multimedia education as a complementary opportunity to supplement their children’s curriculum. Home study, tradi- tionally limited to books, has always formed a significant portion of school-work, while the home is often a far more significant environment for learning. Increasingly, parents concerned with their child’s education will purchase a multimedia platform (currently a PC) for the home – yet already the UK is behind the US market as the penetration of multimedia into homes is about 1/6th of US figures. There is a danger that multimedia will only benefit privileged or gifted, bright children, while the less capable miss out. Both groups are important.A multimedia education could make the difference between failure and success for the latter group, and success and further success for the former. Multimedia will also have a considerable impact on the university. Currently, lecturing standards at most universities are variable (to say the least) – but this could solved by a virtual university, where students could attend classes given by their favourite lecturers, at the location of their choice – through multimedia. The student could interact with the lecturer, asking questions, or subsequently reviewing sections they did not understand. Lectures could be enhanced with diagrams, photographs, film clips, and extra text, available at the touch of a button. Undoubtedly, an essential part of the experience of a university is

108 Demos The ABC of educational multimedia social interaction. Whilst I do not foresee that this should be replaced, the need to channel more students through the university system cost effectively, in particular as the burden of funding moves from the state to the student, should lead to a better use of resources. It will not be possible to ignore the mass market. Turning a given set of materials into a multimedia course is a costly exercise. The cost is the same irrespective of whether it is done for the consumption of 20 million American students or 1 million British students. However, the respective market sizes determine the commercial returns, and hence the prices charged for course material. If the prices are only slightly different then nobody minds, but if there is a significant difference, then it is obvious what will happen. Therefore we need to think about the world market – which in reality means the United States. We need to develop materials that are locally marketable in the US market, almost before we think of our own. It is a painful lesson in economies of scale that the UK has ignored too many times. As with so many mass consumer markets, Europe is used unwittingly to subsidise aggressive competition in the US. Consequently American consumers enjoy lower prices for consumer goods despite higher market penetration. The economies of scale achieved by American multimedia companies mean that they will always be positioned advant- ageously.The solution should be to restrict American companies from selling products in Europe at a higher price than they do elsewhere. Meanwhile we must build an infra-structure in the UK that enables us to be early adopters in multimedia for education, taking advantage of the fact that the language of the largest multimedia markets will be English by developing products for the American market and subsequently exploiting them elsewhere. Of course there are costs associated with doing this. In the first instance it means equipping schools with multimedia PCs, and ensuring that teachers are trained and com- mitted to make effective use of such resources. Finally multimedia software will require careful design to be as good, and better than, traditional teaching methods; equipped with materials that need to be both relevant, and of a standard that meets educational objectives. Without this teachers and trainers will not become involved in the

Demos 109 Demos 4/1994 idea of multimedia as an educational tool. Raw multimedia technology alone cannot be a panacea for educational ills. Otherwise, this could lead to poor courses, and ultimately the defamation of multimedia computers as teaching aids. Of all European countries the UK is best placed to capitalise on the information revolution. Yet what will really matter, is not so much the actual resources produced, but effective leadership operating within a coherent policy framework.

110 Demos Regional is beautiful Andrew Davies

Across the world the major industrial nations are rapidly moving towards the creation of advanced telecommunications infrastructures. Clinton’s policy framework – the so-called ‘National Information Infrastructure’ – has given a new energy to the USA, while in Europe the Commission has proposed that the development of a trans- European information highway would be funded almost entirely by private capital, while the EU and member states would supply modest public subsidies for infrastructural investment. In January 1994, Japan’s Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications announced plans to accelerate the construction of its national broadband information network, called the Integrated Network System. These new approaches leave two important issues unresolved. The first is who will pay for networks, and how future revenues will be guaranteed. The second is what the appropriate scale for networks is – and whether other countries experiences might actually prove more relevant to the development of information superhighways than countries like the US, France and the UK which are generally taken as models. First, investment. It has always been the case that one of the most important issues in telecommunications policy is the inherent conflict between a financial commitment to sunk capital investment and the

Andrew Davies is a research fellow at the Science Policy Research Unit at the University of Sussex.

Demos 111 Demos 4/1994 decision to adopt superior technologies with improved performance capabilities. The decision to wait for future superior technology delays investment in today’s technology. At these critical moments, or brief historical turning points, political forces have the power to direct the flow of technological change along one path rather than another.1 It is estimated that $50–100 billion in private sector investment is needed over the next decade to build the US national information infrastructure. Yet there is no private firm or private sector alone that can afford such huge expenditures, and no firm is prepared to shoul- der the risks of making the investment. Because there is no broadband network, there is no demand for its services. Drawing an analogy with the rapid development of America’s privately-owned telegraph system in the 19th century, Vice-President Gore believes that private capital should build and operate the information infrastructure but limited public funds should be provided to help demonstrate the huge potential demand for information services. He points out that although Congress refused to build a national telegraph system with Federal funds, it did finance Samuel Morse’s first demonstration of the telegraph in 1844. It is unlikely that demand for the telegraphs would have taken off as quickly as it did but for the availability of initial government subsidies. Public subsidies and tax concessions are among the range of incentives offered by the Clinton administration to spur private sector investment in the information infrastructure. The administration’s policy builds on the 1991 law sponsored by the then Senator Al Gore, which won the support of the Bush administration. Whereas the emphasis of the 1991 law was on linking high- performance supercomputers through the Internet computer network to research projects in universities and government laboratories, the new proposal is for $1–2 billion in public subsidies over five years for research and development in the infrastructure hardware and for a pilot grants programme to illustrate the potential social benefits in fields such as transport, healthcare and education. However, just as the European Commission’s proposal to offer public subsidies for the European version of information highways has been held up by member states on the grounds that it would inflate

112 Demos Regional is beautiful overstretched state expenditurers, so Clinton’s plans to use public money have run into political opposition. In March 1994 the Clinton legislation to accelerate investment in the information superhighways was blocked by Republican opposition in Senate. Republicans criticised such measures on the grounds that they constituted an industrial policy with the power to ‘pick winners and losers’. Republican opposition to Clinton’s technology development programmes forced the Democrats into a compromise. Public funds for the measures have been cut from $2.8 bn to $1.9 bn (£1.3 bn). Although the Clinton legislation increases public aid to industry, it still represents only 2% of the $70 bn US expenditure on R&D (of this, about $40 bn goes to the military).2 The other key determinant of investment is market position. There are strong indications that companies will exploit opportunities to enter each other’s business areas in local communications. Cable companies are specialised in programming and have transmission lines carrying digital pictures, voice and data to 94.2 million homes with televisions. Telephone companies have large reserves of capital, operate long-distance fibre optic networks which carry only 1% of their capacity, and have the switching technologies to interconnect local with long-distance networks. For example, in 1994 Viacom Inc. purchased Paramount Communications Corp. in order to establish a local cable television, programming and broadcasting network, and MCI Communications announced in January 1994 that it would invest $20 bn before the end of the century, to set up its own local networks to bypass America’s local telephone monopolies.

‘Studies by the OECD and European Commission show that regional companies in Finland and Denmark are amongst the most efficient operators in the world’

Similar complexities surround the investment question in other countries. But although most countries now assume, based on the US model, that private investment combined with modest public pump- priming is the model, few have looked seriously at the other dimension

Demos 113 Demos 4/1994 of the US networks – the regional structure which was created in the breakup of AT&T into regional operating companies. The conventional wisdom still expects limitless competition at all levels of the network, including at least two broadband connections to each home, plus a multiplicity of radio-based networks. But there is some evidence that progress might be faster in the US if the essential form of the regional structure was retained, but with a new balance between quasi-monopolistic regional information infrastructures (no complete cable-based monopoly is conceivable so long as radio always offers a competitive network), competitive provision of broadband services by separately-run service companies, and national or international carriers offering competing long-distance networks. In the long-run, technological improvements are likely foster the re- emergence of local geographical monopolies able to satisfy entire local markets at lower costs, replicating the temporary phenomenon of an earlier transition from competition to monopoly in local telephone markets between 1893 and 1913.Within local territories served by telephone and cable television companies, a single company using high- capacity fibre optics technology could enjoy economies of scale by handling vast flows of traffic and economies of scope by offering a range of services over a single highway. Risky investment in duplicate capacity in broadband networks, problems of inter-connecting competing networks, and the difficulties of creating a universal service under a competitive regime, would be avoided if cable TV and telephone companies cooperated in the creation of a single regional broadband network. Telephone companies and cable TV companies would join together – forming joint-ventures or separately-run holding companies – to provide universal broadband access within the defined geographical areas of the existing Regional Bell companies. Stringent anti-trust regulation would prevent excessive monopoly power by dis- allowing mergers between regional entities. Competition in the provision of telephone, television and multimedia services transmitted over regional infrastructures would foster choice for the consumer. Companies wanting to provide broadband services would be permitted to use the common infrastructure, paying

114 Demos Regional is beautiful charges for their use of the network to the cooperating companies. Cable TV and telephone operators of the regional networks would be allowed to create independently-run service companies to compete over the infrastructure for markets in broadband services. The Federal Communications Commission would be responsible for developing new rules similar to those contained in the 1992 Cable Act, which provide that the wire is open to all programmers. Regional structures offer a different route to efficiency and innovation. Each level in the regional structure is kept to its particular functions and made accountable to customers. Long-distance calls, together with corporate demands for global network capacity, are satisfied by separate companies, and local consumer demand for broadband services is met by regional operators under decentralised ownership or management who are closer to their customers in their area of coverage. A culture of managerial rivalry between the companies, which is reinforced by the use of the press to stimulate critical public judgement of the performance of regional operators, has been a powerful incentive to the best operator in the eyes of the public. The two leading examples of the regional system are Finland and Denmark. Throughout this century, regional companies in these Nordic countries have cooperated in building interconnected regional communications infrastructures. Since the late 1980s, the Finnish and Danish regional systems have been reorganised to speed up the introduction of advanced digital switching and transmissions technologies. By the beginning of 1994, Finland introduced competition in local and long distance telecommunications. A group of 49 regional companies cooperate in the provision of local telephone and cable TV communications, and cooperate with Telecom Finland (the traditional state-owned long-distance carrier) while Telecom Finland is installing optical fibre networks in the areas of the regional telephone companies. Denmark, by contrast, has chosen to consolidate its four independently operated regional companies and single long-distance carrier under the ownership and control of a holding company called Tele Denmark. Strategic decision-making is in the hands of Tele Denmark,and the regional companies retain their decision making responsibility for investments in local networks.

Demos 115 Demos 4/1994

Studies by the OECD and European Commission show that regional companies in Finland and Denmark are amongst the most efficient operators in the world. Both countries have maintained low rates for public telephone services.A study by the European Commission (1988) concluded that the Danish regional network was around twice as efficient – in terms of total factor productivity – as Europe’s largest national operators – BT and Deutsche Telekom. In 1989 Denmark was ranked third and Finland seventh in the OECD for low-cost business line charges (Britain was ranked ninth third and fourteenth). By 1992, Denmark was ranked third and Finland fourth in the OECD for low cost business services. The regional systems perform well according to the standard industry measure of lines per employee. In 1987 for example, the ratio was 142.71 in Denmark and 113.05 in Finland compared with only 99.23 in Britain. The US regional system created in 1984 is also highly efficient. In 1991, all seven US regional Bell operators were more efficient than BT in terms of lines per employee. Bell Atlantic, the most efficient regional Bell, had 217 lines per employee compared with BT’s rate of only 112 lines per employee. so regional can be beautiful even in the most global industry of all.

Notes 1. A. Davies, (1994), Telecommunications and Politics: The Decentralised Alternative, Pinter Publishers, London 2. N. Dunne, (1994),‘US technology aid bill blocked’, Financial Times, 18 March 1994

116 Demos Making vice a virtue Jon Norton

Both the 1960s and the 1980s were decades when the politics of liberation advanced. Neither decade had unambiguous results. The sense of individuality they fostered, and the resulting breakdown of cohesive forces in society, also led to rising crime, and increasing social unease, as people felt the fundamentals of their lives – their jobs, their homes, their marriages and children – were at risk. The political reaction to this has been inevitable: the Tories have sought to return to a mythical early fifties, when the beer was warm, when sex only happened within wedlock, and when our culture was uniform prior to the rush of immi- gration by the end of that decade. The Labour Party, under both John Smith and now Tony Blair, have responded by looking back to its roots in Christian Socialism and a romantic notion of community. For the left, part of the problem has been an acceptance that libertarian ideas are fundamentally right-wing, a view that glosses over the fact that for thinkers as diverse as Bakunin, Oscar Wilde and Karl Marx, the essential idea of socialism was the liberation of the individual.Yet in the 1990s, for both left and right, there are important ways in which libertarian ideas can help us solve intractable social problems. One example is how we cope with vice.Apart from drinking, smoking, and gambling, two other activities which some would characterise as vices exist prominently in our society, despite being illegal. These

Jon Norton is a merchant banker in the city.

Demos 117 Demos 4/1994 are the sex industry, in particular prostitution and pornography, and the use of drugs such as marijuana and cocaine. These activities share three features: firstly some people believe them to be morally wrong and that soiciety has a duty to stop them. Secondly, despite the high prices, negative propaganda against possible negative effects, and fear of prosecution, they remain very popular. Thirdly, they tend to be private activities that in most cases have no harmful effects on those not indulging in them. Due to the uniform imposition of some people’s moral views we have an irrational mosaic of taxes, restrictions and prohibitions relating to all these activities. There is little rational explanation as to why one activity is legal and another illegal, why one is taxed and another allowed to thrive without any funds going to the Exchequer. On moral grounds this situation is unattractive since it often involves not only the imposition of one world view on others, but also widespread hypo- crisy. On practical grounds it means that huge industries of sex and drugs raise no revenues to pay for the social costs they generate. A more rational approach would be to legalise or decriminalise all widespread vices of this kind and bring them within a framework of taxation and regulation. If we look at the examples of alcohol and tobacco we can see the huge potential from the legalisation and taxation of other vices. In 1992/3 the British spent £24.86 billion on alcohol and £10.24 bn on tobacco – the £35.10 billion is almost as much as was spent on the National Health Service that year (£36.2 bn). What is perhaps even more interesting is that total taxes raised on these products alone, excluding for the moment taxes on breweries, cigarette companies, publicans, and other businesses that profit from these activities, was £16.4 billion – almost half of the cost of the NHS, or 9 pence on the standard rate of income tax. How much revenue could be raised if these othervices were legalised? Accurate assessments are very difficult, although most attempts estimate that both the cannabis industry and prostitution account for several billion pounds each year. A conservative estimate would be that their turnover is between £5–10 billion (or roughly 0.8–1.5% of GDP), although some estimate the figures to be at least twice as high. Were

118 Demos Making vice a virtue these activities to be taxed at a similar rate to other vices such as ciga- rettes and alcohol, the Treasurey would most likely raise an equally large sum in revenue, roughly equivalent to 3–6 pence on standard rate income tax. But what of the costs? Evidence suggests that the costs are more than mitigated by the revenues raised. Government has given estimates that smoking related illness costs the NHS about £435 million a year, and drinking about £150 million a year. Currently, soft drugs and prostitution generate no compensatory revenue to cover their social costs: moreover they generate massive indirect costs,both on citizens and police forces, through their influence in sustaining organised crime. It would be a brave government which moved in this direction. But not only would it probably have the support of many law enforcement officers, and of many millions who are currently treated as criminals. It would also generate substantial sums to be spent on the real priorities, such as health and education.

Demos 119

Project Working Papers

The future of charities and voluntary organisations in the UK This study, conducted in collaboration with Comedia has now produced six working papers and an interim report.All are available from Demos post-free, priced at £5 each: The Interim Report. Beyond Charity: A new settlement to harness the potential of voluntary action, by Charles Landry, Director of Comedia, and Geoff Mulgan, Director of Demos. ISBN 1 898 309 95 7.

Working papers 1. Themes and Issues, by Charles Landry and Geoff Mulgan. ISBN 1 898 309 65 5. 2. Rethinking Charity Finance, by Geoff Mulgan and Charles Landry. ISBN 1 898 309 50 7. 3. The Question of Independence: The case for pragmatism in public policies towards the non-profit sector, by Perri 6, Lecturer in European Studies at the University of Bath and Associate Research Director, Demos. ISBN 1 898 309 60 4. 4. The Future of Civic Forms of Organisation,by Paul Hoggett, School for Advanced Urban Studies, Bristol University. ISBN 1 898 309 55 8.

Demos 121 Demos 4/1994

5. The Acceptable Face of Capitalism: Corporate involvement in the Charitable and Voluntary sectors,by John Griffiths, freelance consultant and writer. ISBN 1 898 309 85X. 6. Restricting the freedom of speech of charities: do the rationales stand up?, by Perri 6. ISBN 1 898 309 90 6.

Forthcoming 7. The non-profit sector worldwide, by Lester Salamon, Professor, Johns Hopkins University.

The study is financed jointly by the Charities Aid Foundation and the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. The final report will be published around March 1995. Further information is available from Joanna Wade at Demos.

The Seven Million project Following the publication of No Turning Back, one working paper has recently been published and several are forthcoming, all of which can be obtained at Demos for £5 post-free:

1. Generation X and the new work ethic, by David Cannon, Director of Research at PRL Consulting and academic at the London Business School. ISBN 1 898 309 01 9

Forthcoming 2. Gender, feminism and the future, by Helen Wilkinson (Demos), and Gerda Siann, Reader in Psychology at Glasgow Caledonian University. ISBN 1 898 309 06 X 3. The Future of Equal Opportunities, by Angela Coyle, Organisation Development Centre, City University. 4. Women’s Employment and the Value of Caring, by Rosemary Crompton, Sociologist at University of Kent.

122 Demos Project working papers

5. Managing the work-home interface, by Professor Cary Cooper and Suzan Lewis, authors of The Workplace Revolution: Managing Today’s Dual-Career Families. 6. The Future of Fathering, by Dr Sebastian Kraemer, The Tavistock Clinic.

The project is funded by: Northern Foods, National Westminster Bank, BT, IBM (UK), Coopers & Lybrand, BBC and Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust. For further information contact Helen Wilkinson at Demos.

The future of public parks in the UK This project, undertaken jointly with Comedia, has now produced 8 working papers, with 4 forthcoming.All cost £5 each, and are available post-free from Demos or Comedia, The Round, Bournes Green, Nr Stroud, Glos GL6 7NL.

1. The study brief and objectives. ISBN 1 873 667 55 8. 2. Law Money and Management, by Alan Barber. ISBN 1 873 667 55 8. 3. Lost Childhoods: Taking Children’s Play Seriously, by Bob Hughes, editor International Play journal, with an introduction by Colin Ward. ISBN 1 873 667 70 1. 4. Calling in the Country: Ecology, Parks and Urban Life, by David Nicholson Lord, Environmental Editor, The Independent. ISBN 1 873 667 75 2. 5. Parks, Open Space and the Future of Urban Planning, by Professor Janice Morphet, Secretary of SERPLAN. ISBN 1 873 667 26 4. 6. Lost Connections and New Directions: the private garden and the public park, by Martin Hoyles, ISBN 1 873 667 31 0. 7. Reclaiming the Night: Night-time use, Lighting and Safety in Britain’s parks, by Carl Gardner (with Jonathan Speirs). ISBN 1 873 667 36 1.

Demos 123 Demos 4/1994

8. The Politics of Trust: reducing fear of crime and urban parks, by Jacquie Burgess, Reader in Geography, University of London. ISBN 1 873 667 41 8.

Forthcoming: 9. The popular culture of city parks, by David Crouch, Lecturer at Anglia University. 10. Age and Order: the public park as a metaphor for a civilised society, by Hilary A. Taylor. 11. The Sporting Life: sport, health and active recreation, by Michael F.Collins, the Institute of Sport & Recreation Planning & Management, Loughborough University. 12. Urban Parks in Germany: Current Issues, by RalfEbert, member of Stadtart, a Dortmund based cultural planning agency.

This project is being funded by a consortium of UK local authorities, together with the Corporation of London, The Baring Foundation, the GMB, and the ESRC. For further information on the project contact the project directors Liz Greenhalgh and Ken Worpole via Demos. The comments given at the end of the questionnaire were interesting. There were suggestions for us to ‘include contributions equally from’ women, ground research in qualitative elements and take a more practical and activist stance’ and to produce a more frequent journal. A considerable number felt there should be more emphasis on Europe; one complaining of ‘continual reference and deference to the USA. Most respondents wanted meetings and regional activity. Perhaps the most revealing statistic compiled, however, was that only 20% of respondents adhered to the questionnaire’s directions, suggesting independence above and beyond the call of duty.

124 Demos Subscriber survey

Interesting Readable Useful Total (%) (%) (%) (%)

Reconnecting Taxation 79.4 77.6 77 78 An End to Illusions 81.6 77.2 70.8 76 Transforming the Dinosaurs 73.4 72 67 71 The Parenting Deficit 75 79.4 68 74 Sharper Vision 70.4 75 66 70 The World’s New Fissures 76.4 78 71.4 75 The Audit Explosion 69.2 69.8 67 69 The Demos Quarterly 85.6 80.6 75.6 81

This table shows the results of a questionnaire completed by subscribers earlier this summer. Each book was marked out of five for the three areas and then given an aggregate score.

Demos 125

Media watch

The Mosaic of Learning: Schools and Teachers for the Next Century by David Hargreaves Published June 1994 Over the last twenty years waves of reforms have washed over schools with little real effect. David Hargreaves argues that schools policy in recent decades has been undermined by the twin effects of ill-conceived revolutions imposed from above and inertia from below. As a consequence standards have not risen and the revolutions have largely failed. In this book Hargreaves set out an achievable agenda for change, including radical ideas on standards, far-reaching reforms of the role of teachers, and a new balance between pluralism (particularly religious pluralism) and the needs of social cohesion. Melanie Phillips described it in The Observer as ‘a quite brilliant pamphlet’.The Times called it ‘a brilliant pamphlet which advocates a radically different approach to educational assessment, leaping years over the sterile debate on opting out versus opting in’.It was excerpted in The Sunday Times, The Guardian and both the TES and THES.

Demos 127 Demos 4/1994

Demos Quarterly Lean Democracy Published July 1994 This issue of the quarterly included calls for Constituents Charters, Voter Vetoes and extending the jury system into politics. It also included lengthy analyses of the crisis of political leadership and rep- resentative democracy. It was excerpted in The Independent, The Guardian, and The Financial Times, and featured in articles for The Economist, the Financial Times and Parliamentary Monitor, as well as on television and radio.

Alone Again: Ethics after Certainty, by Zygmunt Bauman Published July 1994 This pamphlet offered an original argument about ethics at a time when politicians are seeking to rediscover a moral language. Bauman asks where we are to find the sources of moral renewal. He shows how modern business and government act to ‘neutralise’ morality, and are thus unlikely candidates. He argues that the attempt to restore an ethi- cal base in the community, family or tradition will not work, and how most of modern history has been about the liberation of the individual from these overarching moral authorities. Finally he shows why in an age when the texture of everyday life is radically more uncertain, more concerned with contingent relationships and more privatised lives, the only possible foundation for morality is the individual, seeking to make sense of life without the certainties of the past. Andrew Marr described it in The Independent as ‘a brilliant moral tract’.

No Turning Back: generations and the genderquake by Helen Wilkinson Published in September 1994 The first of a series of publications to come out of the ongoing Seven Million Project this pamphlet details the deep-rooted shift in the relative

128 Demos Media watch power of men and women brought about by cultural and economic changes. It outlines the fundamental value shift that has occurred amongst the generation who grew up during the post-equality legislation period. The book was covered extensively in all of the broadsheets, including a page and half in the Daily Telegraph and Guardian, a leader in the Times, and two edited extracts in the Independent. The Late Show covered it in a special feature on value shifts and advertising, and it was featured twice on Newsnight. Helen Wilkinson was also interviewed by ‘Anne and Nick’ on morning TV as well as on Australian radio.

The Common Sense of Community by Dick Atkinson Published November 1994 This publication sets out a personal vision of how Britain’s communities could be rebuilt. The pamphlet draws on experiences in Balsall Health in Birmingham and elsewhere in Britain, and on the communi- tarian ideas being developed in North America. Atkinson argues that it is now time to turn the fashionable rhetoric of community into practical policies to address public concern about the state of communities, fear of crime, physical deterioration, and mutual indifference. The book was also covered in the Independent and Guardian, and Atkinson’s work was covered in a piece in the Economist.

Demos 129 Signs of the times

browsing net Radio Times Wired outer space cyberspace novel hypertext trespass hacking real time asynchronous transfer mode post code @ understanding interstanding crossed wires crossed wires Bretton Woods World Wide Web analysis synthesis boffins nerds entertainment infotainment cycle couriers cycle couriers Rugby MUDding Junk mail Spamming experience simulation punk cyberpunk reality RL etiquette netiquette Screaming Lord Sutch James ‘el Kibo’ Parry Couch Potato Microchip Robots Microbots universal truth virtual truth deception disinformation author ether index gopher metropolis netropolis

130 Demos Publications to date

Reconnecting Taxation by Geoff Mulgan and Robin Murray Geoff Mulgan is Director of Demos. Robin Murray works for the government of Ontario. ISBN 1 89830 900 0

An End to Illusions by Alan Duncan Alan Duncan is Conservative MP for Rutland and Melton. ISBN 1 898309 05 1

Transforming the Dinosaurs by Douglas Hague Sir Douglas Hague is an Associate Fellow of Templeton College,Oxford, non-executive director of CRT Group plc and President of Corporate Positioning Services. ISBN 1 898309 10 8

The Parenting Deficit by Amitai Etzioni Amitai Etzioni is Professor of Sociology at George Washington University. He has previously worked at Harvard Business School, the Brookings Institute and the White House. ISBN 1 898309 20 5

Demos 131 Demos 4/1994

Sharper Vision by Ian Hargreaves Ian Hargreaves is Editor of the Independent. He was previously head of news and current affairs at the BBC. ISBN 1 898309 25 6

The World’s New Fissures by Vincent Cable Vincent Cable is Director of the International Economics Programme at the Royal Institute for International Affairs. ISBN 1 898309 35 3

The Audit Explosion by Michael Power Michael Power is lecturer in Accounting and Finance and Coopers and Lybrand at the London School of Economics and Political Science. ISBN 1 898309 30 2

The Mosaic of Learning by David Hargreaves David Hargreaves is Professor of Education at Cambridge University. ISBN 1 898309 45 0

Alone Again by Zygmunt Bauman Zygmunt Bauman is Emeritus Professor of Sociology at Leeds University. ISBN 1 898309 40 X

No Turning Back: generations and the genderquake by Helen Wilkinson Helen Wilkinson is currently on sabbatical from the BBC. ISBN 1 898309 75 2

132 Demos Publication to date

The Common Sense of Community by Dick Atkinson Dick Atkinson developed the St. Paul’s community education and development agency in Balsall Heath before founding the Phoenix Centre in Birmingham which encourages good practice in urban regeneration. ISBN 1 898309 80 9 All books may be bought direct from Demos, or ordered through bookshops. The distributor is Central Books. Additional copies are available for Demos subscribers priced at £3.95.

Demos 133