Read Chapter 2 of \"Global Communication\" link: https://play.google.com/books/r
ID: 3491615 • Letter: R
Question
Read Chapter 2 of "Global Communication"
link: https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=jcr-AwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&output=reader&hl=en&pg=GBS.PT8
1. In 4-5 sentences, explain what you believe has the greatest influence on the way we study international/global communication? Draw from the textbook (cite page numbers) and provide an example in the media to support your opinion.
2. After reading chapter two, what part of the discussion surprised you and why? Provide an example to bring your points to life.
Explanation / Answer
The networked information infrastructure that blends computing and communications is the largest construction project in human history. During the last two decades advances in information and communication technology (ICT) and an accompanying revolution in logistics (e.g., the advent of containerization) fundamentally reshaped the global economy. The production and the distribution of goods changed fundamentally as complex global supply chains changed where and how the world undertook these functions. The services supportingand complementing the “goods” economy, ranging from research and design through finance and logistics, became the dominant share of the world’s output, and all theseactivities grew markedly more global, more information intensive, and more communicationsintensive. These upheavals resulted in a significant increase in the world’s productivity and wealth (Mann & Rosen; Mann; Levinson). They also transformed important aspects of the conduct of international relations.
In considering the technology and communication revolution we first specify three long-term trends that revolutionized the ICT infrastructure. The first trend involves the end points on the ICT networks: What is their number, scope (ubiquity), and heterogeneity? How many and what type of processors and data sources connect at the edge of the network? Consider the evolution of terminals. First there were voice-only dumb terminals, then there were dumb data terminals, and finally powerful, networked personal computer (PC) terminals emerged. The number, ubiquity, and heterogeneity of network end points accelerated as PC connections tothe Internet proliferated and as voice and data mobility spread. The second trend involves the price point for a specific speed or quality of service in ICT markets. This point determines which applications might be usefully deployed across a network. Sometimes performance levels are not available. In the twenty-five years leading up to 1984, the pricefor services of comparable quality and speed declined sharply. The decline in cost structures spanned applications and services.
The third trend was that the breadth of applications supported by the network increased substantially, as determined by the processing capabilities, the location of the processing and application logic, and interoperability across the network. Mainframes were limited in their processing power and in their ability to run applications that relied on data from multiple systems and resources. Client-server architectures continue to evolve. Cable televisions running on cable networks once mainly relied on dumb data-entry terminals. But as applications increasingly run partly in “theCloud” and partly on devices at the edge, additional flexibility and resources both at the edge and in the network will be needed.
A second stage of the technology and policy revolution continued the convergence of computing, software, and communications began with the breakup of AT&T in 1984 and extended through 2000. After the decision to break up AT&T, the US government began to preach the virtues of facilities-based competition (Aronson & Cowhey). In the United States and internationally the telecommunications market experienced the gradual but forceful introduction of competition in all infrastructure, hardware, software, and services segments. Three important commercial developments spilled over into international relations.
First, the gathering momentum of the microprocessor revolution for personal computing, competition in communications networking, and a second generation of computer networking architecture shifted the markethorizon again. By the mid 1980s, the semiconductor industry began to enable deeper network architecture changes and revolutionize ICT devices’ power at the edge of thenetwork. Telecommunications switching grew more sophisticated, but this happened more slowly than intelligence could be incorporated in computers and other devices operating at the network’s edge. This “flipped” the logic of network architecture even as Moore’s Law took hold and the spread of PCs in business and consumer arenas created new demands for networked applications and services.
Second, there was as explosive growth of mobile wireless. In developing countries mobile wireless connections rapidly overtook wireline connections when the introduction of second-generation (2G) systems greatly upgraded capacity and quality while reducing costs. By 2000, mobile communications had emerged as a vertically integrated competitor to the wired network in all market segments except for data. (A decade later mobile broadband data services (3.5G) began to explode in Japan, Korea,
and elsewhere.)
Third, the Internet and its commercialization alsowere hugely important. The Internet revolutionized the architecture and underlying capacity of the network. Cisco shipped its first router in 1986 allowing companiesand network providers to began to “inter-connect” their networks. In 1991 US policy changes enabled the commercial use
of the Internet. This set the stage for the ICT growth of the 1990s. By 1994, the Intern swamped commercial email services. In August 1995,Netscape went public, igniting the “dot com” boom. In the United States, and to a limited extent elsewhere, new Internet services providers and later large content and e-commerce applications aimed to take advantage of the network’s power and scope. A myriad of smaller, more specialized applications also emerged that built their businesses on powerful, cheaper PCs, broadband networking at the office, and widespread narrowband networking in the home.
These opportunities spread rapidly throughout industrial and developing countries. The emergence of the Internet provided Tim Berners-Lee with the base from which he launched a suite of software applications—now known as “the World Wide Web”—that further altered these dynamics (Berners-Lee). HTML, the programming language that enabled the Web, consciously avoided the Microsoft approach and embraced open application programming interfaces (APIs). Netscape’s Web browser and the subsequent inclusion of Microsoft’s browserin Windows sounded the death knell of Internet Service Providers (ISPs) that forced consumers and countries to rely on proprietary software systems to access the Web (Greenstein).
As policy and technology development progressed inthe United States, parallel changes were underway elsewhere. Usually changes originated first in the United States, but not always. A significant exception was the takeoff of the mobile wireless infrastructure. But, change remains dynamic. Starting in the late 1990s new computing and information architectures (e.g., “the Cloud” and “the Grid”) began emerging that implicitly rest on a much different set of capabilities and market organization than in the past (Stockinger).
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These architectures assume that powerful broadband networks intersect with two other emerging trends: (1) the integration of massive and inexpensive information storage with network architecture and services and (2) the emergence of virtual computer systems that collectively and flexibly harness many computers, including high-end supercomputers, to mesh on demand to meet user needs.
In short, the global information economy—includingtelecommunications, information technology, and increasingly all forms of copyrighted content—is at an inflection point. At this inflection point, if policy permits, a shift in the strategic context of the market invites a new direction in networked ICT infrastructure. But we believe that more and more the new leverage points are pervasive modularity in ICT capabilities and ubiquitous, inexpensive broadband networking.
(There are disputes over the definitional lines. Weuse “the Grid” to indicate an architecture that joins multiple computing platforms within a predefined organization. It is a subset of “the Cloud,” a virtual “on demand” approach that allows decentralized users to tap networked computing and storage as needed. Interfaces must be open but we do not assume that they must be produced by open-source code. )
The Cheap Revolution, a pithy sobriquet coined by Rich Kaarlgard (2002), captures the consequences for commerce of the cumulative impact of (1) the dizzying price-performance dynamics ranging from microelectronics innovations involving computer chips through data storage, (2) innovations in regard to fiber-optic and wireless
bandwidth, (3) changes in software design and costs, and (4) the emerging cost and delivery structure of digital content. All four ofthese processes reflect the advantages of modularity, but software and content were the slowest to yield to the logic of modularity.
This process also will have continuing implicationsfor international relations. Briefly, first, a microelectronics revolution enabled the Cloud architecture, but also spawned two other forces. Terminals became more powerful and escaped the desktop. For many in the developing world, the first experience of the Web will be on phones, not personal computers. In addition, terminals and devices on the edge of the network, as exemplified by radio-frequency identification devices (RFIDs) and sensors, open entirely new applications and architectures with huge growth potential.
A second driver of the Cheap Revolution is the ubiquitous broadband packet-switched network,
which will stimulate network traffic and the geographic spread of ICT applications in unexpected ways. With the predominately wireline, circuit-switched, telephone architecture in rapid decline, incumbent networks and their suppliers tried to slow the transition in network architectures, but after 2000a transformation began to accelerate
and a general telecom infrastructure (Endlich).
Broadband service will become faster, ubiquitous, and a hybrid of many network infrastructure (Cave, et al). This combination will support new information services, a dizzying array of applications, and content delivery to an ever-growing number of subscribers.
Although modularity began when IBM broke up the integration of its hardware and software components (which led to the creation of an independent software industry), modularity has been slower to come to software. Software is becoming more open and modular, especially at the infrastructure layer, in part because the rise of the Web propelled changes in software design (and associated standards) and in part because of market pressures. A critical change is the growth of multiple operating systems as a reality that informs any major suppliers to the enterprise IT market.
A huge percentage of the applications routinely run on Windows. The inflection point means that applications can run on anything. A significant factor in promoting this shift is that large users demanded that their huge investments in heterogeneous software systems, each installed for a special purpose, become interoperable (Cortada).
Fourth, a parallel change is underway in media content, which has far-reaching consequences for commerce, journalism, and international politics. Specifically, digital content is more convertible across networks and terminal systems.
As the media industry is disaggregated, screens for television shows are migrating to mobile phones, computers, and iPods. The distribution pipe includes broadband, cable, satellite, and now mobile broadband. Smart terminals plus broadband are challenging media stalwarts. These devices challenge the geographic boundaries of traditional broadcast models.
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