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Date: Fri, 07 Aug 1998 12:43:56 -0500
From: Rob Kling
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President Clinton advocated public support for a "Next Generation Internet" in his 1998 State of the Union Address: "We should enable all the world's people to explore the far reaches of cyberspace. Think of this -- the first time I made a State of the Union speech to you, only a handful of physicists used the World Wide Web. Literally, just a handful of people. Now, in schools, in libraries, homes and businesses, millions and millions of Americans surf the Net every day. We must give parents the tools they need to help protect their children from inappropriate material on the Internet. But we also must make sure that we protect the exploding global commercial potential of the Internet. We can do the kinds of things that we need to do and still protect our kids. For one thing, I ask Congress to step up support for building the next generation Internet. It's getting kind of clogged, you know. And the next generation Internet will operate at speeds up to a thousand times faster than today."
The Internet has been an important extension of the nation's (and world's) communications infrastructure -- widely used in education, journalism, and research, as well as for commerce and entertainment. The first generation of the Internet supported varied uses, but its popularity was fueled by e-mail. In the 1990s, the WWW supported a new array of documentary and pictorial communications -- as well as a continuing stream of innovations in applications such as electronic publishing, digital libraries, and electronic commerce. The Next Generation Internet (NGI) is a major R&D initiative to develop a new higher speed architecture that can support more technically sophisticated communications such as real-time video and by enabling various classes of service that range in their speed, reliability, and security. Clinton's speech and similar comments from his administration have sometimes blurred the distinction between the NGI as a $100 million/year research program and other "bigger pipe" deployment plans designed to help decrease the Internet's congestion. In contrast with a bigger pipe, the NGI's advocates argue that it will lead to a new array of applications in areas such as health care, education, scientific research, emergency services, and entertainment. However, there are many questions about the extent to which the major direct beneficiaries will be wealthier organizations and individuals and how much "ordinary people" may be able to use them for their own purposes as well.
These new video-rich applications could have profound effects upon professional practices and values in various fields as illustrated through vivid vignettes in NGI planning documents (see www.ngi.gov) . A significant fraction of these envisioned applications use the NGI for enriched video-conferencing between professionals or between professionals and their clients. Some of these applications also hinge on the abilities of system developers and professionals to integrate data from diverse sources -- such as bringing medical records together from
different clinics and jurisdictions.
The NGI is organized as a research project whose participants (and user community) will initially be research universities and some high tech firms (CRA, 1997). However, NGI advocates expect that the new technologies, such as protocols and network management tools, will support services that should be widely used within 10 to 20 years.
Because these applications highlight new possibilities enabled by the NGI, it might appear that technological access is the primary roadblock. Technological access refers to the physical availability of suitable equipment, including computers of adequate speed and equipped with appropriate software for a given activity . There is an important, but partial truth to this observation, since today's Internet is incapable of effectively supporting any of the numerous intriguing video-intensive vignettes of NGI applications that appear in the 1997 NGI Concept Paper, congressional testimony, and specially commissioned white papers (see www.ngi.gov) .
However, many of these scenarios, such as a Dr. Kildare interviewing a sick person, giving medical tests and diagnosis at their home via video, assume that "ordinary people" would have reliable access to new network services. (It also assumes that the person fortunate enough to have a doctor who will make "online house calls" also has an array of diagnostic equipment and skills to use them, as well as telemetric interfaces that they can effectively use when they are sick!) Other scenarios of "ordinary people" using the NGI similarly assume that computer support is easy to organize, and that access to information and services is not problematic.
Social access refers to know-how, a mix of professional knowledge economic resources, and technical skills, to use technologies in ways that enhance professional practices and social life. In practice, social access -- the abilities of diverse organizations and people from many walks of life to actually use these services -- will be critical if they are to move from the laboratories and pilot projects into widespread use where they can vitalize the nation and the economy. Social access should not be viewed "add on" to a technological structure. Many systems designers have learned, for example, that a well designed systems does not simply tack on a "computer interface" after its internal structure has been set in place. The design of human interfaces and internal structures is highly coupled for systems that effectively support people's work and communication (see National Research Council, 1997 for an integrated review). In a similar way, social access is integral to the design and development of systems and services that are to be widely used.
Some analysts do not view social access for "ordinary people" to the NGI as problematic, since they believe that access costs will rapidly decline and the public's computing skills will continue to rise. In this view time and markets will resolve most access issues. In contrast, social access to the NGI is likely to prove vexing for many people, based on what careful studies of computer use and Internet use have shown us. This article examines some of the challenges in the deployment and use of NGI technologies with special attention to "the average citizen." We start by examining what we know about these issues.
INTERNET USE TODAY - WHAT WE KNOW
There are innumerable examples of the use and value of the Internet in providing new kinds of communications to support a cornucopia of human activities in virtually every profession and kind of institution. In the U.S, the professional and middle classes have found the Internet to be useful for communication with some government agencies, for some forms of shopping, for tacking investments, maintaining ties with friends and family via email, and as a source of entertainment. While many people install additional phone lines for online computer use, affordable
telephone service and Internet service providers (ISPs) are available in urban areas (Kahin and Keller, 1995). Access to ISPs and even basic telephone service is more problematic in many rural areas. At this time, high speed communications, such as ISDN or even T1 lines are available in only certain markets, and most people seem to find their installation and use to be prohibitively expensive.
1. The Changing Demographics of Internet Users.
The total number of people who have access to the Internet appears to have been doubling every two years since the early 1990s, but at some point will slow down. At any given time, the estimates can vary by a fact of two or more, depending upon the stringency of the criteria that characterize Internet access or Internet use (ie., having an account for receiving or sending e- mail, having WWW access, having used the account within the last N months.)(Hoffman, Kalsbeek, and Novak, 1996). By even stringent criteria, the number of Internet users is continuing to rise rapidly.
Individuals' demographic characteristics, such as their education, income, and locations, are highly correlated with their use of the Internet. While families with college graduates were twice as likely as those of high school graduates to use network services in 1993, these disparities decreased since he late 1980s (Anderson, et. al. 1995: 24-29). Some studies find that the average and median incomes of Internet users are declining towards "mainstream levels" (GVU, 1997). However, there is evidence that averages mask important differences, and that the disparity in computer network use is actually growing between poor and wealthy households (Anderson, et. al.,1995: 24-29).
One reason that lower income families use the Internet less -- aside from costs -- is because of various "externalities" such as people needing technical support and access to a community of other people who communicate online. People tend to be able to get help from people similar to themselves, so that low usage levels within a group tends to be somewhat self-perpetuating (Agre, 1997). Unlike television, Nintendo, and stand-alone PCs, e-mail is useful primarily if one's friends or family also have access (see Agre, 1997; Bollier, 1998). A recent study found that the Internet is a social medium for many ordinary people: electronic mail use was more popular than use of the Web, more stable, and drove continued use of the Internet overall. One reason is that Email sustains ongoing dialogues and relationships. In contrast, the Web has more bounded properties, in which information gathering, for example, for school assignments, purchase decisions, or paid employment is satisfied with one or a few visits. .... the Internet is a social and emotional technology, and that it sustains social networks (Kiesler, Kraut, Mukhopadhyay, and Scherlis. 1997).
There is some data about the extent to which schools are connected to the Internet. In February 1998, the National Center for Education Statistics reported that 78% of the U.S. schools had Internet access, twice that of 1994. However, the distribution of online resources in uneven. 63% of schools with a high percentage of poor students offered Internet access. 84% of schools in the suburban areas had Internet access, while 74% of schools in the urban schools had Internet access. It is common for urban high schools to have 1500-2500 students. A large school with a lab of six PCs connected to the Internet is counted as connected as a small school which has six Internet connected PCs in every classroom. The meaning of numbers like these comes primarily from anecdotal evidence, and we know very little about the actual use of the Internet in schools (see however, Garner and Gillingham, 1996).
2. Supporting Social Access to Computers and Networks
There is a large and important body of research about the actual practices of managers and professionals in using
computer technologies in various settings, from research laboratories to consulting firms, from insurance companies to manufacturing firms. Of course, none of these studies examines professionals using NGI-enhanced applications! Some of the more recent studies examine how "ordinary people" use the Internet and related network information services.
Social Informatics is the field that examines the development, use and consequences of information technologies in cultural and institutional contexts (see http://www.slis.indiana.edu/SI). The research is analytical, systematic and empirically-grounded (Kling and Star, 1998; Kling, Rosenbaum, Sawyer, and Weisband, forthcoming). Social Informatics research has produced some useful ideas and findings that are applicable to many kinds of information technologies and shed interesting light on the future NGI developments. The concept of "computing packages" is one such idea that is central to understanding social access to networked systems, including the Internet and the NGI.
A. Computing Packages
Information and communication technologies are often discussed as tools or simple appliances, even when they refer to complex arrangements of varied equipment, organizational practices as in the WWW or airline reservation systems. In practice, it is more helpful to view specific information technologies as a "socio-technical package" that encompasses a complex, interdependent system comprised of people (computer specialists, managers), hardware (computer mainframes, workstations, peripherals, telecommunications equipment), software (operating systems, utilities and application programs), techniques (management science models, procedures, training/support/help), and data. Computing and communications technologies are increasingly intertwined in the everyday functioning of other systems at all levels of organizations and society. This package view has substantial repercussions for understanding how information technologies influence social change.
Two organizations that acquire the same set of equipment usually develop different socio-technical "IT packages." A simple contrast between a typical university library and a typical elementary school that each acquire 20 PCs, a server, and a high-speed laser printer to support Internet access helps illustrate the concept. The university library is likely to have a skilled technical staff (that supports other library systems) to install and maintain the equipment. There are likely to be library staff (or academic computing support staff) who are assigned and trained to answer students' questions, both about computer use and ways to effectively search the Internet. The computers are likely to be connected to a high-speed campus network, and people who wish to use them may be required to have a university network ID.
In contrast, the typical elementary school is unlikely to have its own technical support staff, and is most likely to rely upon the school district's computer specialists to upgrade and repair the PCs and printer on request. If the PCs are installed in a lab, students will typically be given access for a class period or after-school. [A network ID is unlikely to be required, and visiting parents and short-term school aides may be able to log in on their own.] If the 20 PCS are distributed into 10 classrooms, teachers are more likely to integrate their use into class topics. But the typical elementary teacher still has limited computer and Internet searching skills. In general, technical support is less available at the elementary school, and, as a result, they have more equipment out-of-service for longer periods of time, and software upgrades are less frequent.
The organization of instructors' time also differs in the typical university and elementary school. The typical university instructor is in class from 6-12 hours per week, while the typical elementary school teacher is in class about 7 hours per day. While university instructors usually have other service and
research obligations, they also have much more time to prepare each week's classes and to develop new inquiry oriented activities for their students.
If we add the offices of a mutual funds investments analysts to this contrast, the "same equipment" and network access would be organized in still different ways. While students would be expected to share computers, and would expect to wait in line, each analyst would have his own PC. There are often technical staff who anticipate problems and opportunities, by organizing preventive maintenance and upgrading the PC and network infrastructure without always being asked. There would be more sustained and reliable access to financial and news databases and the WWW sites that help them track the affairs of selected firms and the fortunes of specific industries. Financial analysts develop significant expertise in knowing the data sources that they use routinely; in addition there may be special librarians who organize business and financial reports and who keep abreast of new financial information sources. The computing and networking support in high performance organizations, such as urban medical clinics, increasingly resembles that of the mutual fund investment firm rather than the university student computer labs.
No one expects an elementary school to be organized like a university, or either of them to be organized like a mutual fund investment company or a medical clinic. But researchers have found that the character of the organization profoundly shapes the character of the kinds of computing services that the "similar equipment" provides. Some of the differences are visible in the ways that computers and network services are organized.
B. Infrastructure for Computing Support is Social as Well as Technological
PCs are much more complicated to install and use for a diverse array of tasks than are "turnkey appliances" such as televisions and VCRs. While it is a standing joke that most people don't know how to program their VCRs (and thus watch an LCD blinking 00:00), most people can reliably play a videotape and enjoy the resulting entertainment. In contrast, PCS that use networked require much more complex configurations (including data rates and IP numbers) that can change with changes in network configurations and service providers.
The NGI projects focus on one critical kind of technological infrastructure -- high speed computer networking. It is also understood that effective computer systems that use NGI services will require reliable complementary technological resources -- such as printers, electricity (reliable in urban settings, sometimes problematic after disasters and in remote regions). What is less well appreciated is how the infrastructure for making computer systems workable also includes a variety of resources that are social in character. Skilled technical installers, trainers and consultants are the most obvious social resources. However, group-scale systems, such as those used in medical clinics, schools and research laboratories, also depend upon technical managers to orchestrate system maintenance, configurations for new users, and security procedures as well as upon people to document local configurations. In addition, people who use advanced networking applications need knowhow -- to be able to learn to effectively integrate them into their professional practices based on learning from their peers or advanced professionals.
There is some debate about how much computer use has simplified in the last decade. It is probably easier to use a stand- alone PC "out of the box." However, the dominant operating systems, such as Windows 95/98/NT, Unix (and Linux) can still stump experts when applications or components interact badly. Maintaining reliable local networks is still an expensive adult activity, despite periodic rumors that "Nintendo generation 11 year olds are running the networks in schools."
System infrastructure is a socio-technical system since technical capabilities depend upon skilled people, administrative procedures, etc.; and social capabilities are enabled by simpler supporting technologies (i.e., word processors for creating technical documents, cellular telephones and pagers for contacting rapid-response consultants) (Kling, 1992).
Malfunctioning computer systems are not simply an opportunity loss, such as a book that is bought but not read. When people organize their days about the expectations that key technologies will work well -- and they don't -- they often spend considerable time tinkering to get systems to work, waiting for help to come, and so on. In the classroom, the teacher who spends 20 minutes tinkering with a malfunctioning computer has also spent 1/3 of a class period unavailable to the students. The alternative of always having backup lesson plans is also immensely time-consuming.
C. Workable computer application are usually supported by a strong socio-technical infrastructure.
The "surface features" of computer systems are the most visible and the primary subject of debates and systems analysis. But they are only one part of computerization projects. Many key parts of information systems are neither immediately visible or interesting in their novelty. They include technical infrastructure, such as reliable electricity (which may be a given in urban America, but problematic in wilderness areas, or in urban areas after a major devastation.) They also involve a range of skilled-support -- from people to document systems features and train people to use them to rapid-response consultants who can diagnose and repair system failures
Much of the research about appropriate infrastructure comes from studies of systems that underperformed or failed (Star and Ruhleder, 1996; Kling and Scacchi 1982). The social infrastructure for a given computer system is not homogeneous across social sites. For example, the Worm Community System was a collaboratory for molecular biologists who worked in hundreds of university laboratories; key social infrastructure for network connectivity and (UNIX) skills depended upon the laboratory's work organization (and local university resources) (See Star and Ruhleder, 1996). Researchers found that the Worm Community System was technically well conceived; but it was rather weak as an effective collaboratory because of the uneven and often limited support for its technical requirements in various university labs. In short, lack of attention to local socio-technical infrastructure can undermine the workability of larger scale projects.
D. The Routine Use of Computer Systems Often Requires Articulation Work
The concept of "articulation work" characterizes the efforts required to bring together diverse materials or to resolve breakdowns in work (such as clearing a paper jam when printing a long electronic document to read). Anomalies are common in many uses of computer systems and professionals often developed informal (and sometimes strange) workarounds to compensate for recurrent difficulties. More articulation work is required when people use higher performance and new technologies in a setting where older technologies dominate. It takes some time for products to be refined, organizations to learn new procedures, and so on. Today, people who install ISDN modems and associated software face more articulation work than do people who install conventional modems. As NGI applications are tried out, we would expect that "leading edge users" will also face more articulation work than will their peers who use more conventional early 21st Century information technologies.
Articulation work is often invisible to people who are not close to the place and moment of working. Articulation work can require notable ingenuity. Unfortunately higher status professionals (and managers) who are buffered from the details of computer work tend to trivialize the nature of the work to be
done. The articulation work required to keep a PC up and running at home places more demands upon "ordinary people" than does computing at work, because many workplaces provide a level of technical support that is rarely available for people's private computer use and network use from their homes. Articulation work is so pervasive that (humanly) effective system designers have to routinely examine how new systems reduce, increase, or reorganize articulation work.
3. Supporting Access to the Internet for Ordinary People
Although 50% of US households may have computers by the year 2000, organizations have been the major sites for adopting networked information systems, especially as implementers of advanced technologies. There are few studies of computer use in households. In one careful study of "ordinary households" (HomeNet), researchers found that using the Internet is too hard for many "ordinary people (Kiesler, Kraut, Mukhopadhyay, and Scherlis. 1997)":
Over 70% of the households called the help desk. Calls to the help desk represented the behavior of some of the more sophisticated users. Less sophisticated users dropped out once they hit usability barriers. The kinds of problems logged by help desk staff included problems in installing phone service, configuring the telecommunication software, busy signals (users often blamed themselves!), buggy software, inexperience with mice, keyboards, scroll bars, terminology, radio buttons, and menus. Yet, in our home interviews, we noted there were many more problems participants had not called about.
.. we thought that as everyone learned how to use the computer and what the Internet could do for them, the influence of their initial computer skill would decline with time. We were wrong. Even after a year of experience with the Internet, participant's initial computer skill still constrained their Internet usage. This result held across different gender and age groups.
Many ordinary people access computers and the Internet through community centers and public libraries (see Law and Keltner, 1995). Mark, Cornebise, and Wahl (1997) examined community technology centers and report that: .... community technology centers provide computer access to a majority of people who do not have technology access elsewhere. And, for individuals who have technology access at libraries, homes or elsewhere, community technology centers provide them with additional technology applications, such as the Internet or scanners, that they do not have access to at other locations. ...... The informal, learner-centered atmosphere that encourages exploration also was cited as a reason for preferring a community technology center to other locations.
Community centers can often provide skilled assistance that increases social access to network services. Industry surveys of the 'total costs of ownership" (TCO) of PCs in major business firms suggest that equipment costs are a small fraction of TCO. Over time, support costs including training, maintaining equipment, upgrading, reconfiguration, and other articulation work become major costs. The HomeNet study suggests that effectively using the Internet is a struggle for many ordinary people. Anecdotal evidence suggests that many school teachers struggle with similar difficulties when they do not have ready access to computer consultants in their schools. Community centers may play an important role in making more complex NGI-based services effectively available to many ordinary people.
WHAT SHOULD BE DONE?
A large part of the enthusiasm for the NGI has been fueled by beliefs in the success of the Internet, an appreciation that the current Internet architecture does not effectively support high speed video and high reliability communications, the faith that
a "better Internet" is necessary and will bring commensurable benefits even if specific uses are unclear today. Since the Clinton administration and technical research communities seek about $100 million per year from Congress, much of the public material is optimistic, and indicates few reservations that major benefits are certain.
The opportunities of the NGI that people envision could be lost if the primary complexities are seen as technological, and if policy makers underestimate the ways in which social factors influence the adoption, uses and usability of advanced information technologies. However, it is possible to anticipate some of the difficulties in enabling broad publics to directly use the new services enabled by NGI by 2015 or 2020. It is easy to say that new technologies, markets and time will effectively resolve these dilemmas; but that is more of a happy mantra than a belief that is anchored in systematic evidence about computer usage.
If the NGI is to more than a project for elites, connectivity and computational management must be simple enough for any competent human to learn and understand, yet flexible enough to allow for the management of the quality and quantity of information communicated. We do not have a good understanding of the ways that social access to today's Internet is effectively supported for ordinary people at home and in public service agencies, such as schools and libraries. This is a topic that merits significant inquiry, since a large body of research points to its importance.
It is important to better understand what specific kinds of networked services will actually be of value to ordinary people. For example, it easy to extrapolate from the importance of e- mail to assume that many people will value video-conferencing with their doctors, friends, and family. However, the video- phone was not widely adopted (for several reasons). People's preference for visual privacy at home was a major consideration (Austen, 1998). Even in offices, many people who have videophones or desktop video conferencing mask their cameras or make notable and time consuming cosmetic adjustments to their clothes and desktops before answering video calls (Austen, 1998). It is important to understand the underlying social judgements that people make in using networked services at home, in public facilities, and at work.
The NGI promises to be a profound advance in the nations' telecommunications infrastructure. The high bandwidth capabilities of the NGI can support promising applications for managers, professionals and their clients. While the NGI is a critical enabling technology, it will have to be shaped as part of larger socio-technical computing systems for these applications to yield the anticipated social benefits. Social access to the NGI will be as crucial as technological access. This will require careful in-context examinations of the overall computing packages that are used and experienced by people at home, in schools, work and other places. Meaningful social informatics research is not simply a set of post-hoc "social assessments," but is actually formative in helping to shape the design of new systems and services.
This early stage of planning is a critical time to undertake research into the social aspects of advanced networking technologies that will help them work for ordinary people in varied social settings outside of the laboratory and specially- supported pilot projects. There are some fields - such as Computer Supported Cooperative Work -- where there have been longstanding collaborations between researchers who have predominantly technical or social orientations to understand socio-technical design and systems that embody good socio- technical design principles. These kinds of collaborations are difficult, but have proven to be essential (See Bowker, Star, Turner and Gasser, 1997). A collaborative research program of this kind is needed for the kinds of systems and services being
developed under the NGI umbrella.
The National Institutes of Health's National Human Genome Research Institute has committed five percent of its annual research budget to study Ethical, Legal and Social Implications of developing and working with human genome databases (NGRI, 1997). This approach seems appropriate for NGI research as well. One straightforward way to fund social research about advanced networking applications that will identify ways to improve its value for ordinary citizens, as well as for service agencies such as schools and libraries, is to use five percent of the NGI's research budget.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Roberta Lamb helped me to develop the contrast between social access and technological access. Ya-ching Lee helped find some important sources. Helpful comments on this manuscript were provided by Phil Agre, John Cherniavsky, Joanna Fortuna, Les Gasser, Geoff McKim, Ron Rice, and Rick Weingarten.
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