"Computer as a device for communication" or how the future of the Internet was seen in 1968
April 13, 2017 Robert William Taylor, one of the pioneers of the Internet, team leader who made a great contribution to the development of a personal computer and other related technologies, passed away. In the late 1960s, Bob Taylor persuaded the US Department of Defense to develop the ARPAnet network, which became the predecessor of the Internet. Together with Joseph Liklider, Taylor wrote the legendary essay Computer As a Communication Device, published in April 1968. Today, after 49 years, we would like to discuss a conceptual part of this essay in which the problem of the effectiveness of communication is solved. Let us recall for what specific purposes the outstanding IT innovators wanted to create what has become the Internet.
In a few years, people will communicate more effectively through the car than face to face. This is amazing, but we have come to this conclusion. As confirmation of this, our participation in a project meeting held via computer a few weeks ago. Within two days, the group communicated using a computer, usually a week would be spent on this process.
')
We will talk more about meeting mechanics later; It is worth noting that we were all in the same room. But we could repeat all of our interactions in this room from thousands of miles from each other without losing effectiveness.
We focus on people deliberately. The communication engineer considers communication the transfer of information from one point to another in the form of code and signals.
But communicating means more than just sending and receiving messages. Two tape recorder communicate when they are reproduced together and recorded on each content of another medium? Not really. We believe that communicators should do something non-trivial with the information they send and receive. We believe that we are entering a technological age in which we will be able to interact with a wealth of live information, not only in the passive way we are used to, using books in libraries, but also active. We will be participants of the continuous process of interaction with information, and not just its recipients.
To people who call the airline information service to find out about flights, recording an answering machine does not just seem like a passive depository. This is a frequently updated model, changing depending on the situation, synthesizing the collected, analyzed, evaluated information to describe the situation or process in an organized way.
However, in this case there is no direct interaction with the information service of the airline. The tape recording does not change during a client call. We want to emphasize something that goes beyond the one-sided data transfer, to talk about the growing importance of the joint, constructive, mutually supportive aspect of communication. To talk about the part of communication that goes beyond the paradigm of "now we both know a fact that only one of us knew before." The interaction of minds creates new ideas. We want to discuss the creative aspect of communication.
For creative interactive communication requires a plastic environment that can be modeled, requires a dynamic environment in which the prerequisites will flow into the effect. And, above all, such an environment should be shared and used by all people.
Such an environment is at hand - a programmed digital computer. Its existence can change the nature and value of communication deeper than the printing press and the kinescope, because, as we see, a well-programmed computer can provide direct access to both information resources and the processes of using resources.
To understand how and why a computer can have such an impact on communication, we must explore the idea of ​​modeling on a computer and using a computer. In our opinion, modeling is the basis and center of communication. Any communication between people about something is a revelation about the information model of this thing. Each model represents a conceptual structure of abstractions, originally formulated by the mind of one of the persons who will communicate. If concepts in the minds of one potential communicator are very different from concepts in the minds of another, then there is no common in the models and there is no communication.
The most numerous, most complex and important models are those that are in the minds of people. The mental model has no equal in wealth, plasticity, power and economy, but in other respects it has drawbacks. It does not freeze for careful study. Cannot repeat run. No one knows how it works. It serves the expectations of its owners more than the true reasons. She has access only to information stored in the head of one person who can see her and manipulate her.
Society rightly does not trust modeling performed by one mind. Society requires consensus, agreement, at least, the majority. In essence, it comes down to the requirement that individual models be compared and to some extent be consistent. This requirement of communication, which we now briefly define as “collaborative modeling”, is cooperation in building, maintaining and using mental models.
How can we be sure that we are modeling, collaborating, that we communicate if we cannot compare mental models?
When people communicate face-to-face, they give material form to their models, to be sure that they are talking about the same thing. Even such a simple external model as a flowchart allows you to focus on the subject of discussion. The nature of communication is complicated when communicators do not have such a framework. They just give speeches to each other. But when there is a manipulated model in front of them, they let into communication only a few words, points, sketches, nods or additions.
The dynamics of such communication is so focused on the model, which allows to make an important conclusion: perhaps the reason that modern telecommunications two-way communication still loses so much to in-person communication is that it does not provide opportunities for externalization of models. The ability to look into the interlocutor's eyes makes communication face to face so much more productive than a telephone call, or is the reason for this the possibility to create and change materialized mental models?
At the technical design meeting, one can quite clearly observe the modeling process, which, we argue, is communication. Almost every reader can recall a meeting held during the formulation of a new phase of the project. Each project participant introduces a somewhat different mental model of a common cause to such a meeting - their goals, plans and improvements. Each of these models is interconnected with his past, present, and future states of affairs (1); (2) the group he represents; (3) his boss; (4) project.
Many of the primary data that participants bring to the meeting are in undigested and uncorrelated form. Each member of his own data sets are interesting and important in themselves. And this is more than fact files and repetitive reports. It is highly dependent on insight, subjective feelings and conjectures that have arisen. Thus, the data of each person is reflected in his mental model. The essence of the task of communication is that his colleagues include his data in their mental models.
Suppose you could see patterns in the minds of two potential communicators at this meeting. You might say, observing their models, whether the communication took place or not. If at first two of their models were similar in structure, but differed simply in the values ​​of certain parameters, then communication could lead to an approximation to the general scheme. This is the easiest and most frequent form of communication.
When mental models differ from each other, a change in the structure of one of the models or in both of them may indicate that the state of communication has been achieved.
If the two mental models were structurally dissimilar, the achievement of communication will be indicated by structural changes in one of the models or in both of them. We assume that an understanding came to one of the interacting parties or new hypotheses were tested, which led to an understanding of the other side, or that both communicators rebuilt their mental models to achieve commonality.
The meeting of many interacting minds is a more complicated process. Suggestions and recommendations can be received from all sides. Interaction can generate not just a solution to a problem, but a new set of rules for solving a problem. This, of course, is the essence of creative interaction. The process of using such a model includes a set of changing or changing rules for processing and placing information.
The project meeting we have just described is an example of a broad class of human activity that can be described as creative informational activity. We differentiate it from another class, which we will call the information organization of work. The latter is what computers are mainly used for today: processing checks, tracking bank balances, calculating the orbits of spacecraft, monitoring repetitive machine processes and calculating debit and credit accounts. Mostly computers are not used to create a detailed view and to clarify incomplete situations.
Previously, we talked about a meeting in which participants interacted with each other through a computer. This meeting was organized by Doug Engelbart of the Stanford Research Institute and was in fact a conference reviewing the progress of a particular project. The topic under discussion was rich in details and large enough in size so that none of the participants, even the receiving party, could know all the information relating to this project.
The tables were arranged to form a square working area with five participants on each side. In the center of the work area there were six television monitors that displayed the alphanumeric output of a computer located in another room of this building, but remotely controlled using the keyboard and pointer of an electronic controller, called a mouse. Any participant in the meeting could use the mouse to control the movement of the pointer on the TV screen to attract the attention of other participants.
Each person who worked on the project prepared a thematic plan for his presentation. These plans appeared on the screens during the presentations, allowing a wider look at the models of speakers. Many presentations contained the names of specific files. The speaker could open them in the computer for display on the screens, since the project participants had previously placed their files in the memory of the computer system.
Thus, the meeting began just like any other meeting in the sense that there was a general list of questions, and each speaker brought with him the material about which he will speak. The computer system has provided substantial assistance in the in-depth study of the material. More detailed information was displayed when details were required, more generalized information appeared on the screens to answer questions about relevance and relationships. The future version of this system will allow each participant to scroll through the speaker’s files on his own TV screen during a report, and thus find answers to the questions that have arisen without interrupting the presentation.
At a project meeting held with a computer, you can study the speaker’s background data without interrupting it for substantiations and explanations.
The communication system should make a positive contribution to the discovery and awakening of interest.
Obviously, the primary data set may be too large to be aware of. There comes a time when the complexity of the communication process exceeds the available resources and abilities of the mind. At such moments, you have to simplify and draw conclusions.
Frightening is the awareness of how early and dramatically we simplify, how early we draw conclusions, even when the stakes are high and there are extraordinary means of information transfer and processing resources. Deep modeling for communication and understanding requires a huge investment. Perhaps even the government budgets can not cover it.
But one day governments will have to go for it. For, although we are talking about the communicative process as a joint modeling effort in a mutual environment, there is also the aspect of communication with the opponent who refuses to communicate or against it. As we can judge from reports of recent international crises, of the hundreds of alternatives faced by decision makers, there are, on average, only a few, and never more than a few dozen, solutions in each decision point or could be explored. And only single alternatives could be studied deeper than two or three levels of the “game” before making a decision. Each side was busy trying to simulate what the other side was up to. This takes time, and the pressure of events makes it easier to simplify, even when it is dangerous.
Regardless of whether we are trying to communicate without sharing interests, or we are joining forces, it becomes clear that we need to be able to model faster and deeper. Not only in the government, but in all areas of business and professions, the importance of improving the decision-making process is so great that it justifies all efforts.
With sincere and firm conviction, we can say that a certain form of organization of a digital computer with programs and data, which is a dynamic, convenient environment, can cause revolutionary changes in the art of modeling and at the same time can dramatically increase the efficiency of communication between people.
But we must immediately clarify that the computer itself cannot make any contribution, and that a computer with programs and data that we have today can do little more than suggest a direction of development and provide some basic examples. We do not say exactly: “Buy a computer and your communication problems will be solved”.
Our statement is that we, along with many colleagues who have had experience working online and interactively with computers, have already felt more responsiveness, ease and "strength" than we expected, given the poor applicability of modern machines and the primitiveness of their software. security Therefore, many of us are sure (some of us are on the verge of religious zeal) that truly significant achievements that will noticeably improve our efficiency in communication are still ahead.
Many communication engineers are also delighted with the use of digital computers in communication. However, the function they want to implement is the function of the switch. Computers will either switch communication lines, connecting them together in the required configurations, or store and transfer data. The storage and shipping function is important, but it is not something that will revolutionize communication. We focus on the simulation function, not the switch function. The transfer of information and the processing of information have always been carried out separately and has been separately organized. There are significant intellectual and social benefits that can be achieved through the merging of these two technologies. However, there are serious legal and administrative obstacles to such an association.
We saw the beginnings of computer communication between people located in the same room or on the same campus or even in remote laboratories of the same research organization. This type of communication through a single computer with multi-user access via telephone lines begins to stimulate cooperation and improves the consistency of mental models more effectively than current measures for sharing computer programs by exchanging magnetic tapes via courier or mail. Computer programs are very important because they are superior to just “data” - they include procedures and processes for structuring and manipulating data. These are the main resources on which we can now focus and share using computer and communication technologies. But they are only part of the whole. The whole includes raw data, processed data, data location data, documents, and, of course, models.
To evaluate how a new type of communication can develop through a computer, it is necessary to take into account the dynamics of the “critical mass”, since it also applies to cooperation in creative activity. Take any problem worthy of the name, and you will find only a few people who can effectively contribute to its solution. These people must be involved in a close intellectual partnership so that their ideas can come into contact with each other. But by combining these people in one place physically to form a team, you will get problems. The most creative people are often not the best team players, and in one organization there are not enough high positions for everyone to be happy. Suppose they go their separate ways, and each creates his own empire, large or small, devoting more time to the role of the emperor than the role of problem solver. Leaders are still going to meetings. They still visit each other. But the time of their communication stretches, and the correlation between mental models falls between meetings. So it may take a year to get the results of a weekly conversation. There must be some way to facilitate communication between people by combining them in one place.
A single computer with multiple access devices would solve the problem, but with a single computer and separate communication lines connecting several geographically separated consoles one cannot avoid paying an unreasonably large bill for data transfer. Partially economic difficulties are connected with our current communications system. When a computer is used interactively with typewriter consoles, the signals transmitted between the console and the computer are intermittent and not very frequent. They do not require constant access to the telephone channel. Most of the time, they do not even use the maximum information transfer rate in such a channel. The difficulty lies in the fact that ordinary telecom operators do not provide such a service that they would like to have. Need a service that would allow access to the channel for a short period of time and pay only during the use of the channel. It is likely that for this purpose it is best to use a message service with the principle of "instant save and send immediately." However, conventional providers offer instead a service with the installation of a communication channel for individual use for at least one minute.
The problem is further complicated by the fact that interaction with a computer through a fast graphic display, which for most purposes far exceeds the interaction using a typewriter with slow printing, requires significantly higher information transfer rates. It is not necessary to transmit more information, but necessarily with greater frequency.
You may not be surprised that there is an incompatibility between the requirements of computer systems and the services provided by modern telecom operators, since most public services have been designed to support voice transmission, not digital communication. However, the incompatibility is frustrating. It seems that the best way to overcome the problems and accelerate the development of communities consisting of geographically distant people is to create an experimental network of several computers. Computers sending simultaneous, intermittent messages from many users and their programs that continuously and efficiently use broadband data transmission channels with a noticeable reduction in the total cost.
Further, the essay reveals the details and mechanics of the implementation of such a network for communication. Almost all of them formed the basis of the modern Internet. Also, the authors make some assumptions about the changes that will occur in the structure of society after creating a single space for communication. These forecasts came true to a lesser extent compared with the technical component.
In the forecast on the use of personal devices only for access to shared computing resources and data storage, we see an analogy of using cloud infrastructure. IaaS only in the last decade began to occupy a significant share of the industry, but continues to grow at a very high rate. Even after many years, the thoughts expressed in the essay do not seem outdated.
Using the Internet as a means to achieve a common mental model, enriched by all participants in communication, was the goal of the people who were at its source. Today we would like to urge the IT community to discuss, jointly model, exchange details of their mental models about the future of communications. What will be the communication in the next 49 years?
Computer as a communication device
In a few years, people will communicate more effectively through the car than face to face. This is amazing, but we have come to this conclusion. As confirmation of this, our participation in a project meeting held via computer a few weeks ago. Within two days, the group communicated using a computer, usually a week would be spent on this process.
')
We will talk more about meeting mechanics later; It is worth noting that we were all in the same room. But we could repeat all of our interactions in this room from thousands of miles from each other without losing effectiveness.
We focus on people deliberately. The communication engineer considers communication the transfer of information from one point to another in the form of code and signals.
But communicating means more than just sending and receiving messages. Two tape recorder communicate when they are reproduced together and recorded on each content of another medium? Not really. We believe that communicators should do something non-trivial with the information they send and receive. We believe that we are entering a technological age in which we will be able to interact with a wealth of live information, not only in the passive way we are used to, using books in libraries, but also active. We will be participants of the continuous process of interaction with information, and not just its recipients.
To people who call the airline information service to find out about flights, recording an answering machine does not just seem like a passive depository. This is a frequently updated model, changing depending on the situation, synthesizing the collected, analyzed, evaluated information to describe the situation or process in an organized way.
However, in this case there is no direct interaction with the information service of the airline. The tape recording does not change during a client call. We want to emphasize something that goes beyond the one-sided data transfer, to talk about the growing importance of the joint, constructive, mutually supportive aspect of communication. To talk about the part of communication that goes beyond the paradigm of "now we both know a fact that only one of us knew before." The interaction of minds creates new ideas. We want to discuss the creative aspect of communication.
For creative interactive communication requires a plastic environment that can be modeled, requires a dynamic environment in which the prerequisites will flow into the effect. And, above all, such an environment should be shared and used by all people.
Such an environment is at hand - a programmed digital computer. Its existence can change the nature and value of communication deeper than the printing press and the kinescope, because, as we see, a well-programmed computer can provide direct access to both information resources and the processes of using resources.
Communication: comparison of models
To understand how and why a computer can have such an impact on communication, we must explore the idea of ​​modeling on a computer and using a computer. In our opinion, modeling is the basis and center of communication. Any communication between people about something is a revelation about the information model of this thing. Each model represents a conceptual structure of abstractions, originally formulated by the mind of one of the persons who will communicate. If concepts in the minds of one potential communicator are very different from concepts in the minds of another, then there is no common in the models and there is no communication.
The most numerous, most complex and important models are those that are in the minds of people. The mental model has no equal in wealth, plasticity, power and economy, but in other respects it has drawbacks. It does not freeze for careful study. Cannot repeat run. No one knows how it works. It serves the expectations of its owners more than the true reasons. She has access only to information stored in the head of one person who can see her and manipulate her.
Society rightly does not trust modeling performed by one mind. Society requires consensus, agreement, at least, the majority. In essence, it comes down to the requirement that individual models be compared and to some extent be consistent. This requirement of communication, which we now briefly define as “collaborative modeling”, is cooperation in building, maintaining and using mental models.
How can we be sure that we are modeling, collaborating, that we communicate if we cannot compare mental models?
When people communicate face-to-face, they give material form to their models, to be sure that they are talking about the same thing. Even such a simple external model as a flowchart allows you to focus on the subject of discussion. The nature of communication is complicated when communicators do not have such a framework. They just give speeches to each other. But when there is a manipulated model in front of them, they let into communication only a few words, points, sketches, nods or additions.
The dynamics of such communication is so focused on the model, which allows to make an important conclusion: perhaps the reason that modern telecommunications two-way communication still loses so much to in-person communication is that it does not provide opportunities for externalization of models. The ability to look into the interlocutor's eyes makes communication face to face so much more productive than a telephone call, or is the reason for this the possibility to create and change materialized mental models?
Project meeting as a model
At the technical design meeting, one can quite clearly observe the modeling process, which, we argue, is communication. Almost every reader can recall a meeting held during the formulation of a new phase of the project. Each project participant introduces a somewhat different mental model of a common cause to such a meeting - their goals, plans and improvements. Each of these models is interconnected with his past, present, and future states of affairs (1); (2) the group he represents; (3) his boss; (4) project.
Many of the primary data that participants bring to the meeting are in undigested and uncorrelated form. Each member of his own data sets are interesting and important in themselves. And this is more than fact files and repetitive reports. It is highly dependent on insight, subjective feelings and conjectures that have arisen. Thus, the data of each person is reflected in his mental model. The essence of the task of communication is that his colleagues include his data in their mental models.
Suppose you could see patterns in the minds of two potential communicators at this meeting. You might say, observing their models, whether the communication took place or not. If at first two of their models were similar in structure, but differed simply in the values ​​of certain parameters, then communication could lead to an approximation to the general scheme. This is the easiest and most frequent form of communication.
When mental models differ from each other, a change in the structure of one of the models or in both of them may indicate that the state of communication has been achieved.
If the two mental models were structurally dissimilar, the achievement of communication will be indicated by structural changes in one of the models or in both of them. We assume that an understanding came to one of the interacting parties or new hypotheses were tested, which led to an understanding of the other side, or that both communicators rebuilt their mental models to achieve commonality.
The meeting of many interacting minds is a more complicated process. Suggestions and recommendations can be received from all sides. Interaction can generate not just a solution to a problem, but a new set of rules for solving a problem. This, of course, is the essence of creative interaction. The process of using such a model includes a set of changing or changing rules for processing and placing information.
The project meeting we have just described is an example of a broad class of human activity that can be described as creative informational activity. We differentiate it from another class, which we will call the information organization of work. The latter is what computers are mainly used for today: processing checks, tracking bank balances, calculating the orbits of spacecraft, monitoring repetitive machine processes and calculating debit and credit accounts. Mostly computers are not used to create a detailed view and to clarify incomplete situations.
Previously, we talked about a meeting in which participants interacted with each other through a computer. This meeting was organized by Doug Engelbart of the Stanford Research Institute and was in fact a conference reviewing the progress of a particular project. The topic under discussion was rich in details and large enough in size so that none of the participants, even the receiving party, could know all the information relating to this project.
Face to face using a computer
The tables were arranged to form a square working area with five participants on each side. In the center of the work area there were six television monitors that displayed the alphanumeric output of a computer located in another room of this building, but remotely controlled using the keyboard and pointer of an electronic controller, called a mouse. Any participant in the meeting could use the mouse to control the movement of the pointer on the TV screen to attract the attention of other participants.
Each person who worked on the project prepared a thematic plan for his presentation. These plans appeared on the screens during the presentations, allowing a wider look at the models of speakers. Many presentations contained the names of specific files. The speaker could open them in the computer for display on the screens, since the project participants had previously placed their files in the memory of the computer system.
Thus, the meeting began just like any other meeting in the sense that there was a general list of questions, and each speaker brought with him the material about which he will speak. The computer system has provided substantial assistance in the in-depth study of the material. More detailed information was displayed when details were required, more generalized information appeared on the screens to answer questions about relevance and relationships. The future version of this system will allow each participant to scroll through the speaker’s files on his own TV screen during a report, and thus find answers to the questions that have arisen without interrupting the presentation.
At a project meeting held with a computer, you can study the speaker’s background data without interrupting it for substantiations and explanations.
The communication system should make a positive contribution to the discovery and awakening of interest.
Obviously, the primary data set may be too large to be aware of. There comes a time when the complexity of the communication process exceeds the available resources and abilities of the mind. At such moments, you have to simplify and draw conclusions.
Frightening is the awareness of how early and dramatically we simplify, how early we draw conclusions, even when the stakes are high and there are extraordinary means of information transfer and processing resources. Deep modeling for communication and understanding requires a huge investment. Perhaps even the government budgets can not cover it.
But one day governments will have to go for it. For, although we are talking about the communicative process as a joint modeling effort in a mutual environment, there is also the aspect of communication with the opponent who refuses to communicate or against it. As we can judge from reports of recent international crises, of the hundreds of alternatives faced by decision makers, there are, on average, only a few, and never more than a few dozen, solutions in each decision point or could be explored. And only single alternatives could be studied deeper than two or three levels of the “game” before making a decision. Each side was busy trying to simulate what the other side was up to. This takes time, and the pressure of events makes it easier to simplify, even when it is dangerous.
Regardless of whether we are trying to communicate without sharing interests, or we are joining forces, it becomes clear that we need to be able to model faster and deeper. Not only in the government, but in all areas of business and professions, the importance of improving the decision-making process is so great that it justifies all efforts.
Computer - switch or interactor?
With sincere and firm conviction, we can say that a certain form of organization of a digital computer with programs and data, which is a dynamic, convenient environment, can cause revolutionary changes in the art of modeling and at the same time can dramatically increase the efficiency of communication between people.
But we must immediately clarify that the computer itself cannot make any contribution, and that a computer with programs and data that we have today can do little more than suggest a direction of development and provide some basic examples. We do not say exactly: “Buy a computer and your communication problems will be solved”.
Our statement is that we, along with many colleagues who have had experience working online and interactively with computers, have already felt more responsiveness, ease and "strength" than we expected, given the poor applicability of modern machines and the primitiveness of their software. security Therefore, many of us are sure (some of us are on the verge of religious zeal) that truly significant achievements that will noticeably improve our efficiency in communication are still ahead.
Many communication engineers are also delighted with the use of digital computers in communication. However, the function they want to implement is the function of the switch. Computers will either switch communication lines, connecting them together in the required configurations, or store and transfer data. The storage and shipping function is important, but it is not something that will revolutionize communication. We focus on the simulation function, not the switch function. The transfer of information and the processing of information have always been carried out separately and has been separately organized. There are significant intellectual and social benefits that can be achieved through the merging of these two technologies. However, there are serious legal and administrative obstacles to such an association.
Distributed Intellectual Resources
We saw the beginnings of computer communication between people located in the same room or on the same campus or even in remote laboratories of the same research organization. This type of communication through a single computer with multi-user access via telephone lines begins to stimulate cooperation and improves the consistency of mental models more effectively than current measures for sharing computer programs by exchanging magnetic tapes via courier or mail. Computer programs are very important because they are superior to just “data” - they include procedures and processes for structuring and manipulating data. These are the main resources on which we can now focus and share using computer and communication technologies. But they are only part of the whole. The whole includes raw data, processed data, data location data, documents, and, of course, models.
To evaluate how a new type of communication can develop through a computer, it is necessary to take into account the dynamics of the “critical mass”, since it also applies to cooperation in creative activity. Take any problem worthy of the name, and you will find only a few people who can effectively contribute to its solution. These people must be involved in a close intellectual partnership so that their ideas can come into contact with each other. But by combining these people in one place physically to form a team, you will get problems. The most creative people are often not the best team players, and in one organization there are not enough high positions for everyone to be happy. Suppose they go their separate ways, and each creates his own empire, large or small, devoting more time to the role of the emperor than the role of problem solver. Leaders are still going to meetings. They still visit each other. But the time of their communication stretches, and the correlation between mental models falls between meetings. So it may take a year to get the results of a weekly conversation. There must be some way to facilitate communication between people by combining them in one place.
A single computer with multiple access devices would solve the problem, but with a single computer and separate communication lines connecting several geographically separated consoles one cannot avoid paying an unreasonably large bill for data transfer. Partially economic difficulties are connected with our current communications system. When a computer is used interactively with typewriter consoles, the signals transmitted between the console and the computer are intermittent and not very frequent. They do not require constant access to the telephone channel. Most of the time, they do not even use the maximum information transfer rate in such a channel. The difficulty lies in the fact that ordinary telecom operators do not provide such a service that they would like to have. Need a service that would allow access to the channel for a short period of time and pay only during the use of the channel. It is likely that for this purpose it is best to use a message service with the principle of "instant save and send immediately." However, conventional providers offer instead a service with the installation of a communication channel for individual use for at least one minute.
The problem is further complicated by the fact that interaction with a computer through a fast graphic display, which for most purposes far exceeds the interaction using a typewriter with slow printing, requires significantly higher information transfer rates. It is not necessary to transmit more information, but necessarily with greater frequency.
You may not be surprised that there is an incompatibility between the requirements of computer systems and the services provided by modern telecom operators, since most public services have been designed to support voice transmission, not digital communication. However, the incompatibility is frustrating. It seems that the best way to overcome the problems and accelerate the development of communities consisting of geographically distant people is to create an experimental network of several computers. Computers sending simultaneous, intermittent messages from many users and their programs that continuously and efficiently use broadband data transmission channels with a noticeable reduction in the total cost.
PS
Further, the essay reveals the details and mechanics of the implementation of such a network for communication. Almost all of them formed the basis of the modern Internet. Also, the authors make some assumptions about the changes that will occur in the structure of society after creating a single space for communication. These forecasts came true to a lesser extent compared with the technical component.
In the forecast on the use of personal devices only for access to shared computing resources and data storage, we see an analogy of using cloud infrastructure. IaaS only in the last decade began to occupy a significant share of the industry, but continues to grow at a very high rate. Even after many years, the thoughts expressed in the essay do not seem outdated.
Using the Internet as a means to achieve a common mental model, enriched by all participants in communication, was the goal of the people who were at its source. Today we would like to urge the IT community to discuss, jointly model, exchange details of their mental models about the future of communications. What will be the communication in the next 49 years?
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/326912/
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