Telecommunications
Price of Paradise · Hawaii Public Radio · aired 1994-12-11
Guest host: Peter Adler. Guests: Larry Cross (former Vice President for Academic Affairs, Japan-America Institute for Management Science; President, Hawaii Online); Philip Bossert (former President, Hawaii Loa College; President, Strategic Information Solutions); Richard Turner (Executive Director, Olelo, Corporation for Community Television)
Duration: 01:08:56

[Note: Music outro 336s (no speech after sign-off at 01:03:20).]

[00:00:01] Peter Adler: Good morning. This is the Price of Paradise Radio show, and I'm Peter Adler, director of the Hawaii Justice Foundation and guest host for the out-of-town Randy Roth, who would normally be with you this morning. Someone once asked that great American philosopher Yogi Berra what lies ahead for the Yankees, for baseball, and for himself, and in his always peculiar, always profound way he said, well, the future just ain't what it used to be. Today, we're going to tease out a few ideas about the future, generally, and more specifically about Hawaii and the information superhighway. What it means for you, your family, your community, and the state as a whole. Now under certain conditions, this could be a deadly dull topic filled with a lot of arcane discussion about gigabytes and downloading, but stick with us in the next hour we'll be exploring some of the political and social and economic implications that will impact you, your family, your job, and your wallet.

[00:00:51] Peter Adler: With us this morning in the studio, are three local experts. We have Larry Cross, who is the former Vice President for Academic Affairs at the Japan-America Institute for Management Science, and he's now President of Hawaii Online, which is a new startup company that provides direct home and business linkages to the emerging worldwide internet. Richard Turner is Executive Director of Olelo, the Corporation for Community Television. And if you have cable TV and watch any of the programs on Channel 22, 24, and 26 on Oceanic, you're seeing Richard's handiwork. Finally, we have Phil Bossert, former President of Hawaii Loa College, and now President of Strategic Information Solutions. Phil has been and continues to be a major force in education and in the wisest possible use of advanced technology in education. Gentlemen, good morning.

[00:01:41] Phil Bossert: Good morning.

[00:01:42] Peter Adler: Let me start by uh telling you, paraphrasing a few clips from the last two weeks of newspapers that I've been trolling through in preparation for today. I'll be real brief about this, but first, this one. Last week Microsoft Corporation gave its initial public demonstration of its planned virtually seamless one-click online service that will be integrated with Windows. Users will be able to send electronic messages, get technical technical support, look up words in far away databases, yak it up with strangers, shop for socks, or exchange mail with the White House. Then this: within the next four years, we will see cellular service that costs as little to use as a corner phone booth. Handheld communicators that will let us scribble notes with an electronic pencil and zap them anywhere on earth, and networks that will automatically deliver our calls to the people we want to reach, wherever they are.

[00:02:34] Peter Adler: Travelers will commune with the office network as easily as if they were sitting at their desk, and workers with computers will commingle video, voice, data, and images on a single line. And finally, this one. Chris Fusco sits in a swivel chair in his home and watches his favorite TV show Fox Networks, the X-Files. One minute he is riveted to the TV and then the next minute he swivels around to his computer and types in a message to several other fans who are watching in other parts of the country. Mr. Fusco, who described himself as an online addict, is in fact an electronic couch potato. Now something interesting is going on here. Richard, what's the big deal? What's going on? What is all this?

[00:03:15] Richard Turner: Well, that's a good question. Um, part of the problem I think with all this is how do you get a handle on it? Um, you know and what does it mean for us? Uh, you know, people try to break it down into something uh that they can really grasp. Um, and uh it's probably hard for me to come up with anything profound this early on Sunday morning about this whole process.

[00:03:34] Peter Adler: You're not the first person to say that. Let me take a shot at it.

[00:03:37] Richard Turner: Um, I think first of all, we have to sort of begin to filter all the information that's coming at us because uh in fact, we are presented with a significant amount um where we're essentially being bombarded by the marketing folks from all these things, all these companies, new tech companies that are telling us, uh this is the information superhighway. So I mean how far can we go, or how long can we go before we we hear the term again, information superhighway and what does that really mean? Um, I think it's really a a flag of talking about how technology is going to change in a revolutionary way. We're used to things changing in an evolutionary way, step by step. Uh, and we can get accustomed to it fairly quickly. Uh, we go, you know, we graduate from one thing to another, rotary to touch-tone telephone service, uh, or we begin to use faxes. Um, and that fax becomes a commonplace kind of a technology or an ATM becomes a commonplace technology, but that the marketplace is introduced those in in rather evolutionary, step-by-step process.

[00:04:36] Richard Turner: I think what we're confronted with now is something that has the potential for being revolutionary and changing very rapidly over a very short period of time, and this is coming about by these rapid changes in technology. Uh, certainly you see this in the computing industry, whereby what you were able to get today, uh you know, if you were to compare it in, in the in evolutionary terms of of what would have changed in in the automotive industry, um, uh you know, the changes that have happened in PC technology, uh you would now see in a car, you'd have something that probably uh be able to go 500 miles an hour on uh 200 miles per gallon, uh, uh, kind of a kind of technology.

[00:05:12] Peter Adler: And that seems to be the metaphor, cars.

[00:05:14] Richard Turner: Yeah, yeah exactly. Um, and and it's an interesting one. I think one that that bears, um, good exploration because that's what we use for people to get a grasp on the whole concept. Um, we don't know how to even ask the questions of how what this will do for us. Um, and so as uh people begin to market this, they do come up with analogies, so we can compare it to something today. Um, and of course all of the things that you mentioned are really today's things, and we're trying to figure out what will come tomorrow that we can really apply and really can use. So the issues become with this paradigm shift, uh what will the impact be on our community? Uh, will it allow us to better govern ourselves, better teach ourselves, uh, better relate to one another? Um, and uh as it comes about, who is going to be in control of it? How will that be shaped? Will it be the marketplace, will it be the consumer, uh, will it be the research and development firms that'll be doing that, and uh you know, in fact, um, um, how can we best use this to improve our society? What what shape will it take?

[00:06:16] Peter Adler: Larry, take this a little farther. If it sounds like the superhighway is a metaphor. Can you describe it in more tangibly? Richard's talking about the the revolution. It sounds like a revolution that's in the making here. What's the highway?

[00:06:30] Larry Cross: Well, that's a good question. Uh, there's been over 40 books published on the internet just in 1994, so everybody's looking for the appropriate metaphor and analogy. Information Superhighway is a place to begin. Some people don't like it, but it does give us useful analogies like on-ramps and off-ramps, uh, speed bumps, and road kill on the information superhighway. Um, but, uh, some people would say maybe the in-information ocean is a better metaphor or maybe even information web, and we can talk about the world wide web later on. But everybody I think would agree that the core of the information superhighway is the internet. That's where the action is, 10% growth rate per month. And if you were to oversimplify, maybe you could say that the internet is a network of networks and the large attraction is that you get global access for the price of a free local phone call, and that's pretty exciting.

[00:07:26] Peter Adler: Phil, tell us a little bit about what the leading edges of this change are technologically. I'm presuming that we're talking about computers, but what else is what's in the mix here? What's taking us where we're going?

[00:07:38] Phil Bossert: Well, I think it's a mix of of some old technologies like computers, and some of the new technologies that we can't even see. I I think the, um, you Richard mentioned that the the the cellular, uh, types of technologies that are coming in and and Larry mentioned the web analogy. I really want to uh second that uh change in analogy. I think we're caught, as you say, in this, uh, car mentality that sort of dominates our lives in the old transportation uh mentalities. And when we moved from horses to cars, we uh they for many years called cars horseless carriages, in terms of what they lacked, and that metaphor slowed things down. I think the information superhighway will slow the whole movement down because it's not a highway, it is, as Larry says, a a web or an ocean or something like that. And that ocean is more the the invisible spectrum, the uh, I go back to the a book that I really like from about 10 years ago, Neuromancer, which was a science fiction book that looks awfully real these days, but it's essentially in which the net, the networks all eventually get connected, and it becomes almost a an aura of electronic services and, um, many of them wireless. Uh, Motorola, for example, has this Iridium system planned where they're going to put 70 or 80 satellites, low orbit up, and allow you to have a cellular phone that, in your home, or your office, you're walking around, it's just a cordless phone, but if you walk out of your office, then it becomes a cellular phone, and then if you're out in the middle of the Sahara Desert, it talks to the satellite. Essentially, one phone number, one for voice data and video any place in the world.

[00:09:23] Peter Adler: My guests this morning are Richard Turner, and Larry Cross, and Phil Bossert, all experts on the uh information highway and lots of different aspects of it. And if you have a question or a comment, please give us a call at 955-8821. Don't forget to call collect if you're on a neighbor island. Richard, back over to you. Who who are the big players? Phil mentioned Motorola is developing uh some pretty sophisticated satellites or uh who who are the big players in this highway altogether, nationally, and then maybe locally too. We can talk about that.

[00:09:45] Richard Turner: Probably Larry or Phil can answer that question better than I can, because my applications end up being very localized in in looking at what the ways in which impacts uh our local communities. But let me let me touch back for a moment on some of the some of the aspects of the sort of the paradigm shift uh that's occurring is that really how as this shift begins to occur, um, how how are we going to really, um, take control of it, or will it control us? Um, and the extent to which this sort of technology actually is somewhat neutral, um, is important. Um, and now, let me let me throw that into what's what some of the companies may be doing with it. Is that now you'll be hearing people say, well, um, the cable industry for example will say, well, we have the information highway today. I mean, if you're hooked up to cable, you've got the information highway because you can get, um, you know, 75 channels and we have data streams on the on the technology. Um, and that's where the point's about how it is can be limiting in these descriptions uh these descriptors can be limiting. Um, and uh we have sort of have to break through that process. Um, all of these companies are bringing um are trying to impress upon us their particular um applications uh as being the information superhighway. And what's the beauty of something like the internet is the internet isn't something that is actually real. Uh it it doesn't in fact exist, even though people think it does, because it has its has a name. Um, so um I think one of the cautions that we have is that as as these large players um present or try to advance their particular technology or platform or what have you as the choice, I think it's that they are trying to get dominance in the marketplace, uh and that that has a potential for influence on what occurs.

[00:11:32] Peter Adler: Phil and Larry, who are these big players, nationally, locally? I mean who are the companies that are competing to get position in this and and

[00:11:41] Phil Bossert: I think uh certainly uh the AT&T, GTE, Time Warner, TCI, the big telecommunications companies all over the United States and the world, NTT, uh France Telecom and so on, also all right now because they have the market and as Richard says, they want to tell you we're it. We are the information superhighway and and we're the we are the players. But I think also what you're seeing is that as you mentioned, uh all of the the computer companies, all of a sudden Microsoft and Apple both have their own uh online email services, and there's small little wireless companies popping up, the the electric company here is talking about uh maybe getting into telecommunications.

[00:12:25] Larry Cross: Well, maybe from the local standpoint, also tying in with online companies, America Online, CompuServe, all the big boys are here in addition to Microsoft which we're watching very closely. But one of the exciting things is there's so much in this uh information revolution that there are niche markets for local uh internet access providers to play. And so in addition to uh my own company, there's several a handful of other local people that have come up and I think that's one of the exciting things it can provide a lot of jobs locally, a lot of uh industry stimulation, economic development, diversification. So I think that's one of the exciting things from the standpoint of Hawaii.

[00:13:06] Peter Adler: Is this really a a kind of an open playing field and an open competition in which a company like yours, a small startup company, Hawaii Online, can compete with uh Prodigy? I mean is is that are we really

[00:13:17] Larry Cross: Absolutely, it's uh really very much like the Wild West, the digital frontier. And uh we're pleasantly surprised that even in the last week, uh GTE, uh has called us, several of their divisions, Oceanic uh communications in addition to Oceanic cable. Um, so it's it's an area that uh you can move very rapidly. In fact, you have to move very rapidly to stay on top of some of these things. I see that the internet's growing at 10% a month, but some of these applications like Mosaic and Netscape are growing at 40% a month. It's just uh you know overwhelming. The main job right now is to prioritize, work on the most important things first.

[00:13:56] Phil Bossert: Yeah, I think uh there's a a upside and downside to it too. You've got companies like Larry's that have been in the business for two or three years, they know the business, they if you call up and and we just subscribed with them too. Uh in our business, call up, you get an account, they've got engineers, they understand how to get you there, but there's a whole group of people in both good and bad faith out there that uh a friend of mine and I are calling the new carpet baggers that essentially don't understand the internet. I mean they can give you physical connection if they're lucky, but they're out there selling services that they don't understand, and they're and some of them are selling services that don't exist. And so paperware, you need to, yeah, vaporware and paperware is the best. But it's uh, so we have to be careful that because it is this market hype and everybody's out there and everybody wants to start their own shopping center.

[00:14:46] Peter Adler: Well, who's watching? Are there regulators out there that are are government traditional government regulation agencies having any oversight of this or is this moving faster than they can move? Richard, what's going on?

[00:14:56] Richard Turner: Well, I think that's part of the uh careful analysis we need to do in terms of how can we provide a regulatory structure that accommodates something that has that is a that is revolutionary. We are used to regulating something that is evolutionary. And if we try and come up with a regulatory structure that is evolutionary, we will just kill the industry. It will never grow, never service in ways that are effective until something comes along and really makes the thing explode. So, um, I think we have to be careful in those regulatory structures. There is a major push right now towards a um highly competitive marketplace and that can be effective. Uh, provided that the kinds of safeguards are out there that that look at it. But internet came about not through a regulatory structure whatsoever. It came out of a very free form uh stimulative process under which everyone sort of provided their own piece of the infrastructure.

[00:15:45] Richard Turner: So, um, I I think the the component that that is that we need to pay attention to is the the sort of power shift that will occur um in technology and of course, there is a desire uh it overlaps many technologies. Um, high definition television is a dialogue that's happening about the information superhighway, and whether or not Japan will continue to have dominance in the in the technological uh manufacturing area. All of a sudden folds out of that. Um, so as we begin to shift now from something that was an industrial age, um, there are some who say that we've already passed out of the information age, even though most of us are just trying to catch up to the information age, and there are those who are saying that we're already in the communication age, that that is the most dominant now uh industry, if you will, that that we need to pay attention to is this something that's of a communication nature. So now you see it calling into these players uh in these major uh companies that are combining, like Time Warner uh combining with US West. These are regional bell operating companies who previously said and made it very clear in their business plan that they wanted to be the one wire into the into the household. So we have to separate the infrastructure, how we get the information into your home from the services that are offered in our dialogue about it. Uh of course those companies are interested in providing both and that's why you see now a someone like a Microsoft talking about getting in uh cahoots with delivering things via satellite and also having the online services.

[00:17:12] Peter Adler: You're listening to the Price of Paradise Radio Show. My name is Peter Adler, and with me this morning are Phil Bossert, Larry Cross, and Richard Turner, three experts on the emerging Information Superhighway. If you're uh listening and you'd like to get a word in or make a comment or call in a question to one of our experts, call 955-8821. If you're calling from the neighbor islands, call collect and Hawaii Public Radio will accept your call. Let's keep going. I'm interested from your perspectives, what you think are the most exciting applications that people are going to see in their home soon. I mean, I've heard for example about physicians doing digital prescriptions and there's lots of interesting things but what are people going to see that's going to be really big big time different in their own homes in the near future, Larry?

[00:17:58] Larry Cross: But uh to me the most exciting thing going right now is the World Wide Web. A lot of people just call it the web and um from that graphical user interface which just means like a Macintosh, point and click, you can get full motion multimedia. Uh you can watch uh previews for Walt Disney's programs, uh see Star Trek as well as uh you know, get a lot access to a lot of useful information. So, to me that's an application that we're just beginning to sense uh how revolutionary it is.

[00:18:29] Peter Adler: So, so let me see if I got that. So what you're going to have is a TV set perhaps in front of you with some kind of device, um, a mouse, one of those little mice, or a pointer stick, or something, and that's going to help you be able to access other people, uh TV, radio, all of those, is that is that what you're saying?

[00:18:45] Larry Cross: Right, but actually I don't think it's a TV, I think it's a computer monitor that looks like a TV.

[00:18:50] Peter Adler: Aha. So it's a lot of things all integrated into one. Those things are merging.

[00:18:55] Phil Bossert: Yeah, the the if I can jump in there. Um, the as on the education side,

[00:19:00] Speaker 1: And uh just the other day, um over at the Maui High-Performance Computing Center, uh a man from Cornell was giving a a demonstration of the web uh for teachers and uh school, heads of schools here in Hawaii. And he just went ripping all over. People in the audience would call out, 'Well, I want to see something on this.' and then he bang, he was at the Louvre in Paris, downloading a picture of the Mona Lisa, and somebody said, 'Well, how about music?' He went to Osaka and went into the some national music center in Osaka, Japan and and played Beethoven's symphony over the internet. And then somebody said, 'Well, how about physics and technology?' and he was at the University of Kansas, and a web server for science and technology there.

[00:19:41] Speaker 1: Just in an instant. Now, he had a very high-speed connection, but in an instant, he was all over the world and and pulling down resources in multiple languages and and art and physics and video clips that showed uh the impact of uh the uh comments into Jupiter and all of this stuff that uh basically would have been in textbooks, you know, five, six years from now, is real-time, online. And I think what will happen is it it gives what we're thinking education is just for students. It's going to make normal television so boring compared to what you can do that most people are going to be jacked into the internet 80% of the time and then turn to Monday Night Football occasionally.

[00:20:25] Speaker 2: And you don't need a supercomputer to do that. You can routinely access it in 65 milliseconds round trip to the United States. That's like 10 uh to the mainland, 1/10th of a second. So it's like just being on your own computer or local area network to access these resources. And the course that you want to take, if you want to learn about the internet, it's online right now, and it's free.

[00:20:48] Speaker 1: But you, what about you? Well, it, you know, it there's a constant dialogue in the industry of what is the killer app. That's what they'll call it. You know, this is the new application will come along like spreadsheets revolutionized the the PC uh you know, that really made the uh the personal computer something that you wanted on your desktop in your business. What is going to be the application that's going to take this newly converged device that's maybe your fax, your your uh telephone, your your PC, and your television set and put it into one device that you'll use in your home on a regular basis. It's it's it's the $100 million question, and I won't even begin to think that I can answer it.

[00:21:25] Speaker 1: Um, but uh I think one of the exciting areas that I think we'll see will come about as a result of our ability to communicate more effectively through technology will actually be a shift in governance. Uh that this is an area under which now, before we needed a process by which we sent leadership up, and the word came about through some process, uh and the communication was, um, was very, uh, stagnate. Um, it took a while for uh any process to sort of build and any kind of grassroots effort to have any kind of impact. That's going to change dramatically when all of a sudden you can instantaneously communicate to millions of people with a push of one button.

[00:22:01] Speaker 2: So, so paint a picture for us about an image of what that might look like, that kind of electronic interaction with government, instead of going down to the state capital and seeing your legislator, what's going to happen?

[00:22:12] Speaker 1: No longer necessary. You certainly would be able to give testimony from your home or from your business directly. Uh you would be able to, um, create and collect a mass of individuals of common concern and interest, instantaneously because you would already be able to have their lists available, you'd be able to send out broadcast faxes to these thousands of people, or local constituents. So you would be able to inundate your uh leadership with information. Uh and so uh that at some point we'll become to a critical factor as to how we create a filter for this, um, you know, it's like uh people have fashioned it that they're trying to take a drink from a uh uh um, a faucet, I mean, from a fire hydrant, because there's so much information out there.

[00:22:53] Speaker 1: But I I think governance is really an area for me that we we have to focus on how this technology can make government more effective.

[00:23:00] Speaker 2: Larry, Yeah, that fire hydrant, I think is a good analogy. We're downloading 254 MBs a day of new information. That's like 254 new novels every day just coming into Honolulu. But I want to go back to the killer app just for a moment. Most people would say that uh so far two major killer apps on the internet. One is email, internet email. So wonderful, it it it's it works and it's a lot of fun. Uh the web we already mentioned, and I won't go into that, but the current issue of Wired magazine, December '94, which I encourage everybody to subscribe and re- and read Wired if you're interested in these sort of topics, says that the third killer application is Digi dollars, bit bucks, whatever it is you want to call it, cyber cash, some first virtual, we're going to be able to do money online and it's going to make it a lot easier for this to be commercially viable.

[00:23:49] Speaker 1: Phil, Yeah, and and I want to follow up on two things. One uh that uh uh Larry just said, when Wired put a new service online, last month I think, um, and they just wanted to try out a new digital service out there, they had 500,000 people distinct, uh users, hit that service in the first month, and 100,000 of them subscribed. And so, in one month, they had 100,000 new subscribers, and on an electronic service that they had not advertised except to put it on the World Wide Web. I want to go back to what Richard was saying on the government uh and thing, because as a really good example of that, when the uh National Security Agency tried to implement this Clipper um service or not service, this uh clipper chip that would require that any electronic service on the air had this sort of back door that the security agency and CIA could look in on your stuff, um, always have a back door so that they would know what's going on.

[00:24:49] Speaker 1: Um, the internet itself, the users on the internet, came out in just, they publicized that and there was just a fire storm of of um, conversation on the internet uh about this and how terrible it was, and it just flooded the White House and Congress and the agencies with, you know, you cannot do this, this is not in a democracy and so on. And so essentially, it was one of the more recent examples where this electronic uh network, worldwide network was used to literally overwhelm a um a government uh action and and prevent it from happening.

[00:25:25] Speaker 2: You're listening to the Price of Paradise Radio Show. We're talking about the information superhighway, what it means to you, and if you'd like to participate in this discussion, please give us a call at 955-8821. Questions or comments are all welcome. Um, Larry, go ahead. I just like to go back to what Richard was saying in terms of the social impact. To me the the broadest trend that you could identify is disintermediation. We're basically cutting out the middle person, whatever that is, in government, in business, and so forth, and it gives more power to the people to go direct. You don't have to go through editors, you don't have to go to stock brokers, you don't have to go through travel agents, politicians, and so forth. You can communicate directly with the people that you want to and I think that's a profound change.

[00:26:09] Speaker 1: You guys are obviously enthusiastic about this. There's no question about that. How can you tell? Well, I I want to explore a little bit and see if there are some dark sides to this because I think there might be, and I I think we might need to kind of explore that. One of the things that uh has happened in previous technological revolution is it it has in fact disempowered people. It uh local cultures get disempowered in some ways, local communities geographically get disempowered. Do you see the prospects of that? I mean what what will this do to the sense of community, which is so uh critical in different ways to different groups? Well, I'll I'll I'll treat that initially. I mean, if we if we stick with the roads technology, um the highway systems came through and obliterated communities in urban areas. I mean, just totally destroyed them. They they um brought up uh properties and rights of way and and had a significant impact under which they couldn't participate.

[00:27:02] Speaker 1: Um, and I think the that analogy holds true for the information superhighway. If there aren't um sensitive ways of treating the way in which information can be accessed and delivered. I mean it's both ways and in right now, I think most of the debate is on accessing the information when I think part of the debate needs to be focused on delivering the information as well or being or creating information providers. Um, that it has the great potential of creating and the society there are information haves and information have-nots um and that this will have I think a significant impact uh on where where we could head as a society. Um, I think it's absolutely critical um that uh we ensure that there are um um systems that make it possible because the jobs are going to be there, the economic development is going to be there, the self-determination is going to be there, uh and if it is not available on some kind of um equitable basis, uh we're just creating more problems.

[00:27:58] Speaker 2: What would this mean for a black community in Chicago, a Hawaiian community in Holo on the Big Island, a Pueblo community north of Santa Fe, New Mexico? These are cultural communities as well as geographic communities. And again I'm I'm I'm wondering what you see the impacts on on these kinds of uh somewhat intact and thriving and vibrant communities in many ways?

[00:28:19] Speaker 1: I I I think um it it transforms somewhat the nature of community. I mean it doesn't have to be a physical community, well physical. I mean people exist, but they don't all have to be geographically located, and so indeed Hawaiians can talk regularly with Los Angeles Hawaiians. And in and one of the most uh active bulletin boards uh that's out there right now on Hawaii FYI which is sort of a local off-ramp on the internet is a Hawaiian language bulletin board that has wonderful graphics and language and is very well subscribed to and it can be accessed from most from almost any place in the world. A second uh side of that too is that you have um communities that are expanded to previously disempowered people. Hawaii FYI here locally again, that the uh the Hawaii Ink I guess did the ran the program, they gave terminals to um hearing impaired students all over the state.

[00:29:14] Speaker 1: And these kids basically could not communicate uh with each other except when they were physically present and could sign uh to one another, nor with their colleagues but who were um not hearing impaired. These kids once you know, I think there was 50 or 60 of them across the state got these terminals, they were able to go online for hours at a time and talk with both hearing and hearing-impaired students all over Hawaii. You create a community.

[00:29:43] Speaker 2: We got a phone call from Judy here in Honolulu. Judy, you're on the air.

[00:29:47] Speaker 3: Uh good morning, gentlemen. I would like to know as a new client and a very enthusiastic one if you could recommend a book or some kind of shortcut because once I'm on the internet I don't know how to get anywhere. And it's very confusing and help.

[00:30:04] Speaker 2: Larry. I would suggest you go out to Borders uh bookstore and look at the internet section. As I said there's about 40 of them. Um, there are several that uh we recommend and and other people would uh talk about the internet, how to get on the internet and so forth. They're fairly thick and they include some software with it. It sounds like maybe you're already on there, you don't need the software, but just go look those over and find the one that speaks to you.

[00:30:30] Speaker 3: Will will they be able to even just give me basics like how to open my mail?

[00:30:34] Speaker 2: Oh yeah, open your mail should be pretty easy. You should just be able to click on that, um Call your information provider on that one.

[00:30:44] Speaker 1: But Judy raises an important question. I mean the question is, how do people move into this since the technology itself still presents certain barriers. I mean how do we is this going to get user-friendly, but in the in the in during this transition, where do people go to get help?

[00:30:59] Speaker 2: Honolulu Community College I think runs one of the best programs. Our family got on the internet that way. Uh two evenings, uh Tuesday, Thursday evening, three hours at a time, uh nominal price. And last time I checked it was like $75 and they have some very excellent instructors there that'll help you get going and then choose an an internet access provider that can provide the customer support that you need and want to answer questions like how do you open your email.

[00:31:05] Speaker 3: Very much.

[00:31:07] Speaker 2: Thank you, Judy.

[00:38:00] Speaker 1: should have access to a telephone in some form or fashion. Now it's hard to believe that today universal service still means that it's a party line that's rotary service. So that means, you know, the party line is when you've got a couple homes that are on the same telephone service. Well, you can't put a modem on a party line because anybody at any point picks up a telephone, you don't have a connection anymore. So, uh, we've got a long way to go in the various areas which are probably most uh in need of these services, rural areas, uh, because they don't have the kinds of modern uh telephone infrastructure. How do you get that infrastructure out there? Is competition the way?

[00:38:35] Speaker 1: Well, universal service says that there's some basic minimum service that's going to be available and that the, um, the rest of the market is going to subsidize that most costly area to deliver services. Obviously, it takes a lot more dollars, many more dollars to service the rural areas where you've got uh great separation of homes than you do in the urban areas. So the concept is is that the uh economies of scale that the urban areas provide, you shift those resources out to service your rural areas.

[00:39:04] Speaker 2: And and presumably the the companies that are competing to get into this are obviously going to want to try and develop the markets in the the areas where they're going to make a lot of money and the areas where they're not, they're saying, well, we'd rather not. We'd rather have somebody else do that.

[00:39:16] Speaker 1: Yes, and and it brings the question is how much risk is involved with these new technologies when they're not proven and you don't have a monopoly anymore. A monopoly is able to tell you exactly what you're going to do with your telephone service and your technology. You open this up to competitive technology now, they're going to be less likely to take that risk unless they obviously, unless they've got some guarantee of return.

[00:39:36] Speaker 2: Top interesting question. We have a phone call Glenn from Honolulu, Glenn.

[00:39:40] Caller: Yes, um I wonder if it concerns me the term that's being used, the killer app. I I first didn't understand it and then found out it was killer application. I'm wondering with all the creativity in this exciting new new development for all the people the world whether we're going to carry the violence of the old, you know, of the old industrial society and the one we're in, we're going to carry that concepts and language into the new world. So I was wondering, you have so much creativity in among you and the whole profession, can you think of another word other than killer that would describe the kind of thing that you're talking about? Thank you.

[00:40:23] Speaker 2: Phil, are there are there better terms or more gentler, kinder, gentler terms we could use?

[00:40:28] Speaker 1: Um, I hadn't thought of that until that's a very good point and that carrying that uh I think it's killer app is more like a marketing term that's used for uh and that you're right that it's this doggy dog world out there and you've got to get in and and make your money and um and be the first. And as Richard was saying, make sure there's no competition and you already lock it in. Um, I'm going to work on that. I don't have a a different uh term right now, but I maybe that's one we need to invent. Larry? Larry, you have a turn?

[00:40:56] Larry Cross: Well, I think I recognize the voice there and uh you caught us Professor Page but this is the uh this is the common commonly used term and I think we do have to shift this uh not only on the internet but uh throughout our communication process. Uh so we will search for a better word and look forward to your suggestion.

[00:41:17] Speaker 2: Thank you Glenn. Thank you. Um you're listening to the Price of Paradise Radio Show. My name is Peter Adler. I'm talking with Phil Bossert, Larry Cross and Richard Turner, three experts on the emerging information highway and what it's going to mean to us in Hawaii. If you'd like to call in and participate in this discussion, call 955-8821 and call collect if you're calling from a neighbor island.

[00:41:37] Richard Turner: Richard, Well I just wanted to follow up the concept of the killer app comes from companies such as Microsoft that want to dominate the the the site. They want as much of the share as possible of the marketplace and so they want the application that will consume everybody and will be accepted as the standard, that there's no competitive standard. And so you have such dominance in the operating system, they can potentially do it.

[00:42:00] Speaker 2: Steve, we we have Steve from Waikiki calling. Steve?

[00:42:03] Caller: Hi there.

[00:42:04] Speaker 2: Good morning.

[00:42:05] Caller: Morning. Good morning. I have uh two questions / observations um rather contradictory nature. First one is uh for a long time, people have bandied around the fact that uh the city of London is extremely powerful in the world of finance. Of course, for historical reasons, but also for geographic reasons, in that it sits aswarth the the New York to Tokyo access in such a way that it can do business half the day with New York and the other half with Tokyo. And people have said that, well, the only other major urban center in the world that has that same location and it's exactly opposite is Honolulu. And that Honolulu sits sits thwart the same access and can do the exact opposite of London.

[00:42:56] Caller: So why not have Honolulu developed as a similar financial capital? And so my first question has to do with the whole question of the internet and the communication super highway as probably the the means for making this kind of an use of Hawaii um come true, but not necessarily just in finance, but in in any number of ways where a central communicative position would link us into um two or three areas of the world and our ability to do business when other people couldn't.

[00:43:34] Speaker 2: Let's let's try and get an answer. Larry, will it, can it do that?

[00:43:37] Larry Cross: Yes, now we have the technology that it can do that. And I think you're onto a very excellent idea. Uh some other people have kicked around for a while. Uh I'm not sure that finance is the one that we should focus on because in effect these things are open 24 hours a day now. But if you take and take advantage of our unique information and cultural relationships for doing business in China. There's some people around the table that know about that, uh Japan and elsewhere. We have a lot of multi-ethnic, multilingual, multicultural people and combined with this information technology, I think it's a very high probability growth strategy.

[00:44:10] Caller: I I'd like to suggest that uh that uh a lot of talk has been going on about the I'm up at the University and I sat for 25 years listening to people talk about how we're unique and how we've got this great access. I also watched as they built bigger gas tanks on 747s and flew right over the top of us. We're totally irrelevant unless we make ourselves relevant. The uniqueness of Hawaii, we all realize, but we're about alone in the world to realize it. We have to make a concerted statewide effort or all of this will continue just to be dribbling away as talk and uh and I I think uh we in fact have a deficit because our educational system at least our secondary and primary educational systems are so poor, we don't produce the kinds of people locally out of our schools in our current situation that can take advantage of this situation, or take advantage of the information revolution.

[00:45:07] Caller: So for for us to actually be able to do this, it requires a coordinated statewide effort. I think someone there with a lot more clout than me ought to be talking to Governor Cayetano, who has talked a little about this kind of thing in his campaign and making Hawaii an an export of services kind of place, but for the moment it's just going to be talk on the radio.

[00:45:30] Speaker 2: Good point, Steve. We're going to move on. We we have a number of other calls. Thanks for calling. Brett from Honolulu.

[00:45:35] Caller: Hello, good morning. Really enjoying the show and I'm just a very beginner like the lady who called in earlier who's learning to just get on, get her email. I'm just past that point and I have friends who are or going leaps and bounds and uh um it's quite phenomenal. But the point I I want to ask about is um say there's a for people sharing a house and we have a common phone line and then one by one each person's getting their own personal phone line brought in for their modem and this is like $150 to, you know, and for people who are, you know, lower income, you're just scraping along paying rent and yet you want to be a part of this.

[00:46:15] Caller: I'm wondering is there going to be some downward pressure on the cost of linking up by the cable system or other systems in the future so that it is easier for the small guy to get in.

[00:46:29] Speaker 1: Yeah, well, it's it's a good question. These are the issues they're trying to address today by rewriting the um uh Communications Act that will set federal policy. And the extent to which right now there are court challenges that are saying that the telephone companies should be allowed in the cable business. And of course cable is saying the exact opposite, the inverse, which is that they should be allowed into the telephone business to allow to compete. The question is is what areas are they going to be competing? Probably the high volume areas initially where there are businesses um who want that kind of services. Residential will be the last to benefit from that in my particular view, but maybe Larry can help.

[00:47:05] Larry Cross: Well, yeah, residential may be last, but stay tuned and I would encourage you to go to the Computer Expo in January and see some of the technologies, as well as the PTC exhibits also coming up in the third week of January. In particular, the technologies that I think will bring this down very, very rapidly are ISDN and fiber optics and uh Hawaii is in good shape on both of those. We're not quite there yet, but we're moving very rapidly. And Can people participate in those electronically? Yes, those are are delivery mechanisms that will make a dramatically lower price possible. I I should have added one more competitor in there, which is cellular packet. This is a new technology that's about to be licensed uh which will allow for your cell you'd have essentially an individualized phone service that is cellular. Uh maybe Phil. Well sit tight and let it happen for a year or so. Uh put your seatbelt on.

[00:48:02] Speaker 2: Let's take another phone call. Janet from Makiki. Janet?

[00:48:06] Caller: Okay. Uh I think I'm interested in knowing uh how the basic residential user who only wants basic telephone services is going to fare in this great big deal. Uh there are a lot of people who want it, and there are a lot of people who aren't going to be able to afford it. And to what extent is it going to affect the bills that ordinary people will get from the telephone company?

[00:48:29] Speaker 1: Yeah, I basically, I mean, you can log in on over your telephone line, I mean a modem now, probably costs about $98 for the low speed one, but maybe 200 for a high speed modem that you just plug into your phone, and and you're on the internet. And um basically, since the phone service is a flat rate, and you dial a local number uh to get in, I mean, Larry's service right downtown is just a local number. So your your telephone bill doesn't change unless you log into a service that has a cost. And and usually they ask you for your credit card for that, so it doesn't go on your phone bill.

[00:49:06] Speaker 2: So there should be, there should be for the average phone user today, there should be no additional increases to the regular phone charges they're paying now.

[00:49:14] Speaker 1: That's that's right, but let me let me make a point. I think the question more is the the the term is used as pots, plain old telephone service. And some people are going to say, I don't want all this high-tech stuff. All I need is to be able to call my neighbors, the store, whatever. I don't need this new technology stuff. Uh and why should I have to pay for it? And in fact, there is going to potentially be a potential impact, which is if they change the rate of service and GTE wants to change your rate of service to be incremental, meaning that as you, you pay as you go. Metered meter service essentially.

[00:50:02] Speaker 1: Yeah, but what about the funding though for the development of all of these additional things that are going to obviously take money. Isn't that going to be reflected in the basic uh telephone? It it has it has the potential to be, although that's currently under the regulatory structure, that's what the um PUC is charged to do, and the the consumer advocate is to be looking out for your interest. Now, certainly right now, in fact, it actually costs less to provide services over for your touch tone phone than a the old style rotary phone. Yet, there were rate charges that said your rotary phone should be cheaper than a touch tone phone. Now it costs virtually the same. So, the technology is actually becoming cheaper and cheaper as it goes along. It is not a more expensive technology, in fact.

[00:50:57] Larry Cross: A lot of the internet now is being built by private funds so it doesn't, in in unregulated areas. In other words, in our own instance, our connection is entirely through private companies, not tax subsidized and not regulated. So it shouldn't have an impact.

[00:51:17] Speaker 1: I wanted to go back to the question earlier about, um, you know, Hawaii becoming a center for finance or something. One of the things as came up in our discussions of electronic communities earlier that those communities can be any place and you're there, the obverse or the inverse of that is that the whole notion of place becomes almost irrelevant in on the internet. And I think the notion that there's going to be a place like London or Honolulu in the future that people go to in order to do business is is going to be totally wrong. And London and New York are going to suffer uh quite a bit.

[00:52:17] Speaker 2: Let's take another phone call. Walter.

[00:52:21] Caller: Okay. I am concerned about privacy. Uh-huh. And as long as you watch television, even if you don't have a modem and you're not on the internet, I think that you can be penetrated from the outside because or and if not yet, the the the the tech the the uh it will come about. The possibility to do so will be very soon. What about Big Brother being able to listen in to you?

[00:52:52] Speaker 1: I'd say that they already have more information about you than than that potential intrusion that you're worried about right now, uh uh exists. Uh they know your buying profile, and that's how you get all those various catalogs you get in the mail is because they sell that buying profile to the various specialty catalogs. So if we're we're purchasing through this the new technology, um, you know, we're we're buying everything like they say that home shopping is going to be driving this technology and buying um home movies, pay per view movies. You don't have to go to Blockbuster, you'll get it right over the television set. Well, they they're already effectively uh uh in your home because as you buy things from home or use credit cards, like I said, they have that information.

[00:55:59] Caller: Uh I wanted to correct uh a statement made a little earlier by someone there. I think Mr. Bossert, I'm not sure, uh concerning the Maui Super Computer. Uh, the statement was that uh nobody's coming to it because of all the connectivity and the the fact that people don't necessarily have to be on site to use it. And something about a lot of empty office space, which is not true. Uh, a lot of people are coming. Um, but it is also true that there's a lot of people connected that that uh aren't on on site. Um, so I think there was two points being mixed together there in the statement.

[00:56:39] Speaker 1: My apologies, and I I think it's important however to pick up on those those concepts, which is the extent to which the one of the benefits of having full connectivity or the ability to communicate with video, voice, and data from anywhere, would in fact eliminate some of the heavy infrastructure cost, capital costs that we have, potentially in schools, universities, and in businesses. where we have to set up offices in such a way that requires and road community infrastructure where we have to support people, moving people to the businesses, rather than moving information to the people.

[00:57:11] Speaker 2: Yes, and that's certainly correct and that is also going on with the Maui supercomputer, because as I say there are so many other people connected that aren't on site.

[00:57:18] Speaker 3: So it it it definitely works that way.

[00:57:20] Speaker 1: And just true to the technological revolution that we're talking about, it should be noted that Tom, I think you're calling from a car phone, is that right?

[00:57:27] Caller: That's correct.

[00:57:28] Speaker 1: Wow. Tom, thank you for calling and coming. Just a couple of footnotes in terms of the privacy issues, there are technological fixes. Encryption is here today, it's fairly economical, it's going to get cheaper. A lot of people send encrypted messages over our system. And the other thing I wanted to mention, going back to the universal access, I think the people in Hawaii should take a good feel good about what we've done here in the State of Hawaii. Nezbert in his latest book Global Paradox favorably mention Hawaii Inc and FYI and part of the reason was that these FYI terminals are in virtually every public library and every public school so people can get access to the internet.

[00:58:09] Speaker 1: So there are ways to handle the universal access dilemma. As we go through these kind of almost tidal movements of of development in this, I mean the tide comes in and just keeps coming in actually. I wonder if you would if you have a sense of where we're going to be within the next 5 years, we're not talking about now 20 years away, we're not talking far scenarios, we're talking about 5 years, where where will we be? It's 1999. Where where are we going to be on this? Now what are we what are people going to be seeing in their home? What are what are they going to be using, how are they going to be accessing this? Paint a picture for our listeners.

[00:58:45] Speaker 2: I'll take an initial stand but that, I I think um, knowing how much, as Larry mentioned earlier, the state has uh such a huge fiber network, both oceanic cable and and and not just oceanic, the all seven cable companies statewide are putting a lot of fiber in. GTE has more fiber per digital phone in the state than almost any other state. And that backbone network that exists in this state, and the inter-island fiber that's out there and the inter-island microwave, are set up to allow the kind of connectivity that we've been talking about this morning. And it's it's going to be very quick when it happens, sort of like Sony Walkman the price became so cheap that almost everybody can have one or Sega games, and those Sega games are getting more and more intelligent and eventually you'll be able to take a $200 device and plug it into the cable television system.

[00:59:40] Speaker 2: And it may be the cable television from GTE or the one from Oceanic that's coming into your home, and you'll have 10 megabit per second access to the internet. And as George Gilder who's wrote Life After Television said, instead of watching television, you will interact with the world.

[00:59:58] Speaker 1: We're going to come back to this in a moment, I want to take one more phone call from Carol. Carol, Honolulu, Carol?

[01:00:03] Caller: Uh yes, I wanted to respond to a comment made by uh Dr. Bossart earlier on the show regarding the Maui high performance computing center.

[01:00:13] Speaker 1: He's in trouble. I'm in trouble. Go ahead, Carol.

[01:00:16] Caller: Okay, um I would like to correct the impression that the Maui high computer center has not attracted people to Hawaii. Um, it has in fact brought many people to Hawaii, many users. And as far as I can tell, there's very few if if any empty space over to Maui high performance computing center building. There's been oh right now there are three people in residence from different universities. There have been over 135, 150 people come in as users in and um residing on Maui for different parts of of their work period.

[01:01:00] Speaker 1: Yeah, I I agree that the the high performance computing center building is almost full. I guess I was referring to the whole technology park over there and the office space in the MRTC building and and you're right. Many people have come, but I think the notion that there would be thousands of people coming to plug into that um was the point I was trying to make that basically you can stay in London or New York or California and and access that wonderful new computer facility.

[01:01:30] Caller: Yes, you you are correct in that, that there are many, uh in fact, I think they're over 600 users from outside the um the Maui area. But in fact, it does attract people to Maui, not maybe for as long as an extended stay as some people may have anticipated. On the other hand, it's still in its initial year of operations so Look forward to having more people on Maui soon.

[01:01:56] Speaker 1: I guess the quick point there, the quick point there is that we have to look at uh all the other aspects. Uh we have to consider all the other things that bring people and not just whether it's computer or access. Uh they're bringing these other folks in. Uh what the other conditions are, if office rent is too high, people aren't going to come unless it's subsidized in some fashion. Right now in the park it is. Yeah, you're you're you're correcting that, but uh Carol, thank you for calling. We're running out of time and thanks so much for calling. Um real quickly, 25 words or less. Right. Prediction?

[01:02:24] Speaker 2: Vision for the future. I want to go back to that good question Peter. I think the honest answer is none of us know and that's one reason very interested in uh the outcome of the Hawaii information Congress coming up in January. But I think what's going to happen is that communication cost will fall as dramatically as transistors have and so we'll basically be able to communicate anywhere in the world for nominal cost.

[01:02:47] Speaker 1: Richard, the 5 years I'm all more pessimistic. Cable talked about this shopping at home, cable uh banking at home in 81, and uh we're just barely getting there. I think it takes a while for the consumer to really grab hold of this concept. So 5 years maybe more movies, more games. Thank you all. Um, my guest today were Phil Bossert, Larry Cross, Richard Turner, experts on the information super highway. Today's show was expertly and creatively produced by Susie Roth with the wizardry of Jeff Ilarity and next week, tune in for the future of the Republican party.

[01:03:19] Peter Adler: Aloha.

[01:03:20] Speaker 1: Thank you.