PB82-24S913
Environmental Consequences of Telematics
Telecommunication, Computation, and
Information Technologies
J. P. Coates, Inc.
Washington, DC
Prepared for
Environmental Protection Agency
Washington, DC
Apr 82
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EPA 600/8-82-&18
April 1982
ENVIRONMENTAL CONSEQUENCES OF
TELEMATICS: TELECOMMUNICATION, COMPUTATION,
AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGIES
by
Andrea Burgard Coolidge
Joseph F. Coates
Henry H. Hitchcock
Teresa Gorman
J. F. CCATES, Inc.
Washington, D.C. 20015
Contract No. 68-02-3667
Project Officers
Morris Levin, James L. Regans,
and Basil H. Manns
Office of Strategic Assessments and Special Studies
Office of Research and Development
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
Washington, D.C. 20460
Office of Strategic Assessments and Special Studies
Office of Research and Development
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
Washington, D.C. 20460
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TECHNICAL REPORT DATA
(Please read Inttrudiom on the retene before completing)
1. REPORT NO.
EPA 600/8-82-018
3. RECIPIENT'S ACCESSION NO.
PBB2 24991
4. TITLE AND SUBTITLE
Environmental Consequences of Telematics: Telecommuni-
cation, Computation, and Information Technologies
5. REPORT DATE
April 1982
6. PERFORMING ORGANIZATION CODS
7. AUTHORtS)
Andrea Burgard Coolidge, Joseph F- Coates,
Henry H. Hitchcock, Teresa Gorman
8. PERFORMING ORGANIZATION REPORT NO.
9. PERFORMING ORGANIZATION NAME AND ADDRESS
J. F. Coates, Inc.
3738 Kanawha Street, N.U.
Washington, D.C. 20015
10. PROGRAM ELEMENT HO.
CCHHIA
11. CONTRACT/GRAMT NO.
Contract ?10. 68-02-3667
12. SPONSORING AGENCY NAME AND ADDRESS
USEPA
Office of Research & Development
Office of Exploratory Research
401 M Street. S.W.
Washington, D.C. 20460
13. TYPE OF REPORT AND PERIOD COVERED
14. SPONSORING AGENCY CODE
EPA/600/OER
IS. SUPPLEMENTARY NOTES
1
16. ABSTRACT
Current important research needs whose results will be critical to EPA's mission
in the next two to three decades with regard to a major expansion in the use of tele-
matics, i.e. telecommunications, computer, and information technology, are identified.
The potential benefits of telematics to the economy, the environment, and to health
and safety are very large and numerous. Benefits will far outweigh the potential
social costs. Most of the benefits of telematics are likely in the long run to be pro-
vided by the private sector.
The four most important potentially undesirable impacts of telematics which are
poorly understood are:
o microwave radiation;
o indoor pollution, ozone, and other materials produced by telematics equipment;
o solid waste disposal of toxic materials in telematics devices at the end of
the use cycle;
o human factors, design failures, and psychological and physiological stress
in the modern telemated office.
There are three classes of meta-impacts which would result from the large-scale,
pervasive use of telematics in American society, each of which could, in itself, have
far more important environmental impacts than any other effects. Primary and secondary
research needs are defined with regard to these and other risks and opportunities.
17.
KEY WORDS AND DOCUMENT ANALYSIS
DESCRIPTORS
b.IDENTIFIERS/OPEN ENDED TERMS
COS AT I Fidd/Croup
Telecommunications
Computers
Telematics
Environmental Effacts
Public Health Effects
R&D Planning
18. DISTRIBUTION STATEMENT
19. SECURITY CLASS (This Report)
Unclassified
21. NO. OF PAGES
193
Un-1 imited
20. SECURITY CLASS (This page)
Unclassified
22. PRICE
EPA Form 2220-1 (9-73)
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NOTICE
Mention of trade names or commercial products does not
consititute endorsement or recommendation for use.
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PREFACE
As a key element in anticipating new or newly important environmental
problems, the OSASS of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency began a mini
assessment program. Collectively, the reports under this program are
intended to:
t produce a description of alternative future trends and contingencies,
and an analysis of the environmental consequences, including effects
on public health, the vitality of natural systems, socioeconomic
considerations, public welfare and policy implications;
• identify research which should be conducted to support the agency's
regulatory mission over the longer term future.
The generic objectives of the mini assessment program, as stated in
RFP DV-80-A150, are to assist OSASS by producing a report which will:
• provide a comprehensive, integrated overview of the longer term
regional, national, and global environmental outlook;
• expand existing data bases and increase understanding of potentially
significant future problems;
• evaluate concepts, models, methods, and environmental controls and
policies as they affect the environmental future.
The specific function of each mini assessment will be to explore a
potentially significant future environmental problem, and from that
exploration produce a report:
t summarizing the state-of-knowledge concerning the problem;
• defining and scoping the problem in terms of its public health,
public welfare, and environmental policy implications;
• identifying major information/Knowledge gaps and inadequacies in
analytical methods and techniques.
We are pleased to be associated with this intellectually and
administratively exciting venture. Ue are doubly pleased to have enjoyed a
singularly collegia! relationship with our program officers, Morris Levin,
James Regans and Basil H. Manns, and to have benefited from refreshing
exchanges at the scientific and administrative level with the management and
staff of their office.
iii
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John M. Richardson has consulted with us on this project.
Terry Saunders Parsons administered and managed the production of
materials in the first half of this project. Rhoda Baurn managed the
production of this report. She was assisted by Bernice Mann, Barbara
Bullard, Margaret McDonald, Kerry Siggard, and Lea Singer.
The participants in our workshop and others who helped us with
information or in review are acknowledged in Appendix B.
Grant Prillaman was especially helpful in research assistance toward
the end of this project.
iv
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ABSTRACT
Current important research needs whose results will be critical to EPA's
mission in the next two to three decades with regard to a major expansion in
the use of telematics, i.e. telecommunications, computer, and information
technology, are identified.
The potential benefits of telematics to the economy, the environment,
and to health and safety are very large and numerous. Benefits will far
outweigh the potential social costs. Most of the benefits of telematics are
likely in the long run to be provided by the private sector.
The four most important potentially undesirable impacts of telematics
which are poorly understood are:
• microwave radiation;
• indoor pollution, ozone, and other materials produced by telematics
equipment;
• solid waste disposal of toxic materials in telematics devices at the
end of the use cycle;
• human factors, design failures, and psychological and physiological
stress in the modern telemated office.
There are three classes of meta-impacts which would result from the
large-scale, pervasive use of telematics in American society, each of which
could, in itself, have far more important environmental impacts than any
other effects. Primary and secondary research needs are defined with regard
to these and other risks and opportunities.
This report was submitted in fulfillment of Contract Mo. 68-02-3667 by
J. F- Coates, Inc. under the sponsorship of the U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency. This report covers a period from December 11, 1980, to September 15,
1981, and work was completed as of April 22, 1982.
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CONTENTS
Preface i i i
Abstract v
Contents vi
List of Exhibits viii
1. Summary, Findings & Recommendations 1
The Pace of Telematics Development 2
The Search for Impacts 3
Stakehol ders 5
Findings and Conclusions 8
Recommendations 9
Afterword 13
2. Assessing Telematics Technology 14
Introduction , 14
The Pace of Telematics Development 15
The Search for Impacts 17
Assumptions and Definitions 21
What Follows 22
3. Telematics: Telecommunications, Computer, and Information
Technologies in Collision, Convergence, and Coalescence... 24
Introduction 24
What Telematics Does 25
The Telematics Tinker-Toy 27
Basic Devices Widely Available Before 1960 27
Devices Available in the Early 1970s 29
New and Emerging Devices Around the 1980s 31
Some Significant Systems and Software Developments 36
Ancillary Devices 40
Big Telematics Systems 41
New Capabilities 44
Social Characteristics of New Telematics Capabilities 45
4. The Societal Context of Telematics: Long-Range Trends 48
Why Look at the Social Context 48
Trends Pushing and Inhibiting Telematics Adoption 50
Trends Related to the Environment, EPA's Mission, and
Tel ema ti cs 53
5. Impacts of Telematic Technologies 59
Introduction 59
Possible Impacts on the Biota 61
Possible Impacts on Human Health and Safety 68
The Special Case of Microwave Radiation 75
Impacts on the Technoeconomy 80
Social Discontinuities 92
vi
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CONTENTS, continued
Which Impacts are "Most Important"? Criteria for Sorting 93
6. Issues and Stakeholders 100
Why Any EPA (or Government) Role with Regard to Telematics? 102
Major Stakeholders: Objectives and Environmental Interests 104
Potentially Affected Parties 116
Factors Influencing the Dissemination and Use of Telematics 119
Some Implications for EPA 127
7. Findings and Conclusions 129
8. Recommendations 135
Recommendations to EPA .. 135
Broader Federal Response to Which EPA Could Make a Strong
Contribution Include: 138
References 140
Appendices
A, Annotated Bibl.iqgraphy on Telematics 147
B. Methodology Use in the Study 174
vii
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EXHIBITS
Number Page
1-1 Telematics Devices and Systems 4
1-2 Trends Driving and Inhibiting Telematics 5
1-3 Telematics—Opportunities and Problems 6
1-4 Latent Interests of Affected Parties 7
2-1 Impact of Technology Innovation on User Institutions 18
2-2 How Telematic Systems May Impact the Environment 19
2-3 Elements of a Telecommunications System ......"... 20
3-1 Telematic Devices Widely Available Before 1960 28
3-2 Telematic Devices Widely Available by the Early 70s 29
3-3 Telematics Devices Now and Emerging in the 80s 32
3-4 Some Significant Systems and Software 37
3-5 A Broadcast Teletext System... 38
3-6 A Videotex System ' 38
3-7 Ancillary Devices ". 40
4-1 Trends Driving and Inhibiting Telematics 51
4-2 Trends Relating Telematics to EPA's Mission 54
5-1 Telematics—Opportunities and Problems 62
5-2 Nontravel Substitutes That May Satisfy Travel-Generating
Person-to-Object Interactions 66
5-3 Biomedical Telematic Instruments 74
5-4 Radio Frequency Bands 76
5-5 Map-Total Population Increase by Region, 1970 to 19«0 82
5-6 Classes and Causes of Future Environmental Problems 95
5-7 Basic Causes of Future Environmental Problems 97
6-1 Stakeholders and Potentially Affected Parties 110
6-2 Labor Unions With an Interest in Telematics 113
6-3 Telematics Health Hazards—A Vignette 114
6-4 Congressional Committees with Interests in Telematics 117
viii
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EXHIBITS, continued
Number Page
6-5 Latent Interests of Affected Parties 1?0
6-6 Telegraphy's Progressive Consolidation into Monopolistic
Cl us ters 123
B-l Phased Demand Matrix for the Identification of
Potenti al Impacts 175
B-2 Methods Use for Identification of Impacts 177
B-3 Participants in the Mid-Project Workshops 180
B-4 Participants in Review Workshop 182
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SECTION 1
SUMMARY, FINDINGS & RECOMMENDATIONS
As a key element in anticipating new or newly important environmental
problems, the Olfice of Strategic Assessment and Special Studies of the U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency began a mini assessment program designed to
provide a comprehensive, integrated overview of the longer term regional,
national, and global environmental outlook with respect to certain potential
problems. The mini assessments are to summarize the state of knowledge
concerning the problem, scope the problem in terms of its implications for
public health and welfare and environmental policy, and identify major
information gaps and inadequacies in analytical methods and techniques. This
mini assessment is concerned with the impending re^lutionary consequences of
telematics technology in the next 25 years. We use the term "telematics1 to
mean the convergence of computer, information, and telecommunications
technologies. See Section 2.*
As used in this report the terrr. "telematics" carries no political or
ideological connotations. It is a convenient expression for three merging
lines of technological development.
The project did not undertake original field or laboratory research. It
relied upon examination, collation, and analysis of the published research
findings of others. A synthetic and critical examination of those reports is
intended as our contribution to the policy and research planning discussion.
This report used review by experts and potentially affected parties in a broad
.outreach process to collect, correct, end organize materials and critique
findings and recommendations.
The assessment's primary concern is environmental impacts, but it is not,
and could not be, limited to environmental impacts. The likely consequences
of telecommunications in the future are so broad, complex, and diffuse that
many of the social and economic effects could, in turn, hold implications for
environmental quolity and for human health and safety.
The assessment concludes that on balance the effects of telematics on
environmental quality should be strongly positive—that is, beneficial. The
capabilities which telematics can provide for monitoring environmental quality,
for detecting and tracing pollutants, and controlling them at the source, and
for diagnosis and treatment of disease and injury (including those of
The section(s) expanding on points in this summary are so noted.
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environmental origin) will be invaluable.
There are some possibly significant environmental problems associated
with increasing use of telematics. The most important of these concerns,
which are just emerging into public awareness, are the possible adverse effects
of microwave radiation. At present, scientific knowledge is not sufficient to
determine reliably the scope or seriousness of the hazards and risks from
electromagnetic radiation. More research is needed in several areas which
probably fall within EPA responsibility.
There can be little doubt that telematics, in the future, will bring
about significant technoeconomic changes. The continuing growth of electronic
industries, their integration with communications industries, a new wave of
industrial automation (including industrial robots and related technologies),
and, most importantly, the uncertain and controversial effects on the location
of people and industry will surely have long-range implications for environ-
mental change, protection, and management. This report suggests what some of
the secondary environmental impacts may be and identifies trends which should
be monitored as part of EPA long-range research planning. It concludes that
in population decentralization telematics is a facilitator rather than a
driving force, and that while decentralization would relieve some current
environmental problems, it could make others more difficult to monitor and
control.
Host of the potential benefits of telematics will be captured through the
workings of the market without government intervention. However, efforts by
EPA and other agencies acting cooperatively with industry and public interest
groups could stimulate innovation and encourage timely applications of
telematics for the meeting of public sector needs and national objectives.
THE PACE OF TELEMATICS DEVELOPMENT
Telematics applications can-either substitute for or supplement a broad
range of basic technologies and productive activities and at the same time add
capabilities which do not now exist. Nothing short of a "doomsday scenario"
would prevent the increasing adoption and use of telematics in the long run.
The major impacts on society, which will mature around 1990-2010, will come
from exploitation of new capabilities offered by telematics which are common
to several subsets of technological developments (Exhibit 1-1).
Revolutions driven by technology do not come about overnight. Change will
be driven by a steady, rolling accumulation of small modifications resulting
in a body of irreversible differences in the way we organize our personal and
collective affairs. Technologies will be introduced in different forms and for
difference purposes, as substitutes to improve old processes or to perform new
functions. The cumulative effect will be to remake our world. See Section 3.
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THE SEARCH FOR IMPACTS
It is fairly straightforward to anticipate some.highly credible conse-
quences of telematics technology. Many have speculated, for example, that
telecommunications may substitute for transportation and thereby improve the
environment by reducing the use of automobiles. Air pollution and the raw
material and waste disposal side of our industrial cycles could be affected.
As we substitute information technology for other kinds of basic labor,
workplaces may become cleaner and safer. As telecommunications networks
permeate society we may be more readily able to respond to medical emergencies,
fires, accidents, and natural disasters, and to improve the health and well-
being of our citizens.
The random generation of significant implications of technology is one
route to understanding the future, but it is not a sufficient basis for coming
to grips with a potentially limitless number of changes. We need a strategy
for search and sort. The strategy adopted in this paper is tc take lessons
from what we know about the major and minor effects of other technologies and
to use those generalizations as search rules for probing the future. The
dominant effects of technologies come about in the following general ways:
• Technology itself will produce effects. The individual elements of
telematics technology must be manufactured. They require raw
materials; they must be shipped, stored, used, and disposed of.
t The individual elements of the technology join to form systems. A
system has its own implications for the environment in terms of its
initiation, planning, construction, operation, maintenance, and final
decline arid disposal.
t New technologies may substitute for older technologies and will have
effects through what is removed from the market.
• The capabilities to do new things or to do old trr-ngs better are
implicit in every new technology. Those capabilities which can have
environmental effects include:
— new control over time and space,
— new power to obscure and mislead,
— new extensions of human capabilities,
-- new levels of efficiency and productivity,
— new power to connect and disconnect,
— new power to centralize and decentralize.
• Trends outside the areas of telecommunications will interact with
telecommunications in ways that cannot be discerned solely from the
technology itself. These facilitating and inhibiting trends are
summarized in Exhibit 1-Z. See Section 4.
Some principal impacts on the environment, health, and safety are
shown in Exhibit 1-3. See Section 5.
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EXHIBIT 1-1: TELEMATICS DEVICES AND SYSTEMS
TELEMATIC DEVICES WIDELY AVAILABLE BEFORE 1960 THEMATIC DEVICES WIDELY AVAILABLE BY THE '70's
Telegraph
Telephone
Microwave transmission
Radio (AH/FM)
Television (8/w)
Facsimile
Phonograph
Tape recording
Xerography
Cable (one-way)
Transponders
Typewriter
Novles
Still Photography (E/W. color)
Polaroid
Microfilm
Robots - first generation
Mainframe computers
Telematlc Devices Now i Emerging In the '80's
Microprocessor
800 numbers
Voice answer back
Voice activation
Low cost video recorders
Video discs
Large screen television
Laser
Fiber optics
Video cassettes
Electronic scratch pad
Direct satellite broadcasting
Word processor
Graphic & color display
Speech compressor
Packet switching
Robots - third generation
Microcomputers
Large scale Integrated circuits
New memory systems:solid state, laser,
bubble, backend processes
Norphene generator
Touchtone pad (push button keyboard)
Call forwarding
C.8. radio
Plcturephone
Portapack video recorder, the mini can
Color television
Portable television
Frame grabber.
Slow scan
Private microwave transmission
Audio cassette
Low cost xerography.
Two-way cable television
Electric typewriter
Geophysical Satellites
Optical scanner
Microfiche
Robots - second generation
Hand Calculator
Minicomputer
Central processing unit memory
Some Significant Systems t Software
Micro home Information system
Computer utilities - Illlac IV. Arpanet, Plato
Communication satellites - Comsat, Intelsat, ATS-6
Other space Satellites - ERTS, weather, agriculture
CAO (computer-assisted design)
CAM (computer assisted manufacture
Simulation-modeling
Aids to the handicapped
Electronic switching systems (ESS)
Mobile cellular system
Information utilities - The Source, Lockheed. Prestel
Teletext
Videotex
Pattern recognition - voice, signature
Encryption
PBX self contained telephone exchanges
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EXHIBIT 1-2: TRENDS DRIVING AND INHIBITING TELEMATICS
mums Foerrs — *
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Threats
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ProductUlty^' 1
UUHATICS
IMMSTItlAL
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Interest Mai
S. Co-petition
for Jobs. J^.
Restraining -^-
labor Costs ^
literacy, (tore" I
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14.1*. Environ-
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Education
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APPLICATIONS
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Soclil Uelfire
* Numbers refer to trends. See Trend discussions in Exhibit 4-2.
STAKEHOLDERS
In the long run, it is in the interests of all parties, including the
telematics industries, to anticipate, prevent, relieve or solve any
environmental, health, and safety problems that may emerge from telematics.
In the short run, however, the major actors in telematics development,
including Federal mission agencies, have few or no incentives or mandate to
search out such problems so that they can be dealt with at early stages of
development. The primary stakeholders have few or no incentives for identify-
ing environmental problems before they become undeniably bad problems. This
alone justifies, if not demands, that EPA planners carry out broad,
exploratory assessments as an early warning system on real problems and as a
means to allay any public alarm that is not warranted. The latent interests
of some stakeholders in these problems is shown in Exhibit 1-4. See Section 6
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EXHIBIT 1-3: TELEMATICS—OPPORTUNITIES AND PROBLEMS
HEALTH
AND
SAFETY
POTENTIAL
OPPORTUNITIES/BENEFITS
BIOTA • Monitoring and control mechanisms
for air, water, solid waste,
noise, radiation pollution control.
• Localized traffic control.
• Natural resource management (ex-
ploration, detection or tracking
of minerals, fish schools, herds,
forest or crop disease, etc.)
• Improved weather monitoring, pre-
diction, end modification.
• Reduced pollution from transpor-
tation (uncertain).
• Use of robots In hazardous tasks
and hostile environments.
• Detection & monitoring of pol-
lutants in workplace.
• Detection & monitoring of pol-
lutants 1n home and office.
• Detection & monitoring of pol-
lutants in the environment.
• Devices for diagnosis and treat-
ment.
• Emergency services coordination
and routing.
• Remote consultation.
• Medical education.
• Medical Information systems.
TECHNO- • Direct economic growth (elec-
ECONOMY tronlcs industry, exports).
• Increased productivity in manu-
facturing, services, agriculture,
mining, etc.
* Minimization of negative Impacts
or social dislocations resulting
from decentralizations.
TRANS- • New capabilities in large and
SOCIAL diverse fields of activity.
POTENTIAL
PROBLEMS/COSTS
Effects of microwave radiation
(uncertain).
Future disposal of toxic substances
used in some telematics devices.
• Effect of microwave radiation
(uncertain).
• Toxic fumes from telematics devices
involved in fires.
• Ozone emissions.
• Physical and psychic stress from VDT.
• Increased costs of medical services.
• Increased disequitles in health
care delivery.
t Increased impersonality in medical
care.
• Impact on employment levels (uncer-
tain), reduction of unskilled/semi-
skilled jobs In some categories.
• Retraining of workers.
• Disadvantages for some small, under-
capitalized businesses.
• Disturbance of relationships between
management and labor; erosion of con-
stituency for occupational safety.
t Systematic vulnerability froo reliance
on telematics.
• Need to develop: structures for syn-
thesis of Information, more sophisti-
cated programming; revised laws/regu-
lations to fit new activities and
new problems.
• Need for national and international
information/communication policies.
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EXHIBIT 1-4: LATENT INTERESTS OF AFFECTED PARTIES
Potentially Affectee Parties
• Individuals and households
• Medical and emergency delivery
institutions and specialists
• Local governments
• Designers, builders, building
managers
• Industry: owners, managers
• Labor
• Farm owners, farm workers
t Resource development managers
• Environmental managers
t Disaster response managers
And Their latent Interests
• Improved interior environments
(indoor monitoring, alarm systems)
Improved emergency and health care
systems
Improved prosthesis for the
handicapped
Improved communication, comfort,
convenience, entertainment, etc.
Possible impacts on medical care
and housing costs
Possible impacts of microwave
radiation
• More effective and efficient
technology
Possibly higher costs
Possible reduction in professional
independence
Increased disparity between large
and small institutions
• Improved tools for coordination and
control of a variety of public
services such as traffic control,
disaster response, water and sewer
treatment, air quality, crime
prevention
Possible problems with telematics
device disposal (toxic substances)
in the future
Risk to firefighters from toxic fun.es
Effects of decentralization of pop-
ulation, industry, and work centers
(Facilitated by telematics)
• Degradation of indoor environment;
ozone emissions
Monitoring of indoor environment
Changes in work flow and indoor
traffic flow
• Improved productivity and efficiency
Enlarged market opportunities
Labor/automation trade-offs, labor
relations
Redesign of the work place -
transformation of the factory
Diverse effects on regulatory costs
(OSHA)
• Employment levels
Skill requirements
Occupational safety and health
• Increased productivity and efficiency
Advanced market information
Increased capital costs; disparities
between large and small farms
• Applications for monitoring, advance
warning, pollution detection, etc.
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FINDINGS AND CONCLUSIONS
The mini assessment resulted in fifteen principal findings and
conclusions. They are presented here in compressed form; for further
discussion the reader should consult Section 7.
1. The potential benefits of telematics to the economy, the environment,
and to health and safety are very large and numerous. Benefits will far
outweigh the potential social costs.
2. No government organizations or private sector groups are systemati-
cally planning to exploit the environmental benefits of the rapidly
proliferating telematics technologies on a scale commensurate with their
benefits.
3. Most of the benefits of telematics are likely in the long run to be
provided by the private sector. The timely development of positive
environmental applications and the prevention of environmental abuse by
private initiative alone is far less certain. The most socially beneficial
environmental applications should be developed and promoted by the Federal
government, especially by EPA.
4. There are some potentially troublesome environmental and health
impacts associated with telematics. Their significance is now uncertain. It
is not in the self-interest or the legislative mandate of other major stake-
holders and actors to call attention to and assess these potential problems.
This implies an important role for EPA which is now being neglected. The
four most important potentially undesirable impacts of telematics which are
poorly understood are:
• microwave radiation;
• indoor pollution, ozone, and other materials produced by
telematics equipment;
• solid waste disposal of toxic materials in telematics devices at
the end of the use cycle;
• human factors, design failures, and psychological and
physiological stress in the modern telemated office.
5. The failure of the Federal government, and EPA particularly, to/act
in a timely, unequivocal, judicious manner on microwave radiation's effects
could substantially inhibit the enormously productive application of telematics
to the American economy oy ericouraging the proliferation of vast numbers of
incompatible local and state rules and ordinances.
The adverse effects on the economy of equivocation
and uncertainty would be a major economic setback.
It should further be noted that in many of the
applications where microwaves could be employed
there is an alternative technology—fiber optics.
8
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Consequently, acting in an early and timely fashion
would clarify productive development and innovation
in the area of telematics.
6. Telematics is a facilitator rather than a primary driver in
decentralization of population and industry.
7. Public support for environmental protection will fluctuate but is
likely to remain strong and to grow in the long run. Changes in national
priorities and political attitudes will, however, require a more flexible and
innovative strategy for carrying out EPA missions in telematics.
8. The environmental problems and opportunities of telematics cut across
the institutional lines within EPA and the jurisdictional lines of EPA and
other Federal agencies.
9. The best evidence is that telematics does not motivate people to
reduce travel to any significant degree, other things being equal. But if
travel is cut back for other reasons, telematics will moderate the social
disruption and inconvenience which would otherwise occur.
10. The telematics industries consume energy and materials in
manufacturing and in providing services. In general, however, the industry
itself appears environmentally benign.
11. The biggest effects from telematics will result indirectly from
substitution and from new capabilities.
12. A federal role with regard to telematics is necessary and inevitable,
but it need not be, and should not be, a dominant role.
13. There are three classes of meta-impacts which would result from the
large-scale, pervasive use of telematics in American society, each of which
could, in itself, have far more important environmental impacts than any
other effects we nave come upon.
14. EPA has a unique and necessary role to play in researching and
assessing the potential positive and negative impacts on society of the
telematics revolution.
15. The United States military and national security system is fully
committed to telematics. The implications of that intensive involvement and
dependency on telematics technology in peacetime, in a conventional war, or
in case of a nuclear exchange, is outside the scope of the present study, but
it is of such prime importance as to merit independent analysis.
RECOMMENDATIONS
The first group of nine recommendations coming from this assessment are
intended for EPA, the sponsor of this assessment, and specifically for the
Office of Research and Development. The report should also serve a larger
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audience. Therefore, there are three additional recommendations which involve
actions in which EPA could not be the primary actor but should play a strong
supporting role. See Section 8.
In addition to the obvious criterion of importance, the recommendations
reflect two dominant considerations—government's role and EPA's role in
affecting the environment, health and safety, and the technoeconomy.
Government's Role. Recognizing that we are talking about long-term
effects and major outcomes, we see that the government role on these long-term
matters should be driven by two questions. Will the failure to act be highly
likely to cause:
• an undesirable outcome?
• a potential social benefit to be lost?
EPA's Role. As an agency of government reflecting the above criteria in
more detail, EPA's direct role in telematics relates to these considerations:
0 Is the problem unequivocally outside EPA's mission?
• Is the issue tractable by EPA's major forms of action?
• Is new knowledge likely to inform those actions?
• Can that new knowledge be related to specific EPA R&D and
information activities such as—
— research
— development
— monitoring
— evaluation
— public information
— knowledge transfer
— constituency building, inside and outside the government.
The application of these criteria lead to recommendations for EPA's
research program which concentrate on new developments and second order
impacts and consequences, and soft pedal research in those effects which are
only marginal additions to existing or already known problems, or which, at
worst, have self-limiting or only highly localized impacts.
The Recommendations To EPA
1, EPA should continue and expand its role in exploratory research and
assessment of the societal implications and potential impacts of telematics.
2. EPA should accelerate its address to the questions of microwave
radiation effects and coordinate its work more tightly with FCC, the Armed
Services, industry, and others concerned with this matter.
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3. EPA should conduct further research and assessment on the impact of
telematics on the indoor environment.
4. The human factor elements in the telemated office and factory of the
future will become increasingly pressing and urgent. Further research on the
human factor considerations, including body shape and size, the body in motion,
and the body at work, should be begun immediately in conjunction with NIOSH and
representation from labor and industry.
5. EPA should assess and monitor the ultimate disposal of telemat.ic
devices.
6. To accelerate the positive use of telematics for environmental
enhancement, EPA should exhaustively review, within the framework of its
established programs and missions in air, water, solid waste, noise, and toxic
substances:
t the extent to which telematics are now used or available for
environmental monitoring and control;
• specific needs and requirements which could be met, now or
potentially by telematics;
• design criteria which would be necessary for telematics to fill
such needs;
• the likely effects of more extensive telematics use in carrying
out mission and program responsibilities;
• costs or cost savings from the use of telematics;
• internal or external inhibitors to use of telematics for
environmental protection.
7. Information generated by this review should be systematically shared
through a handbook and other information mechanisms with:
• telematics producers and service providers;
• industries looking for cost-effective ways to reduce pollution;
• natural resource managers in Federal, state, and local agencies;
• environmental interest groups;
• the interested public.
8. As a short-term and highly productive stopgap measure, EPA could
initiate a program to prepare software packages on environmental matters
usable on mini- and micro-institutional and personal computers.
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9. EPA should take the lead in initiating discussions and joint studies
with other agencies about the applications of telematics to their missions,
where the responsibilities of the other agencies have secondary environmental
implications. Examples are:
• Department of Interior: resource management, off-shore drilling,
etc.;
• Department of Agriculture: farming and forest, crop and grassland
management;
• Department of Commerce: weather prediction and warning of natural
disasters;
• National Bureau of Standards: building standards and indoor
environments; >
• Department of Energy: pollutants from energy conversion;
• Department of Transportation: traffic control and emissions;
o National Institutes of Health: environmental diseases;
t Occupational Safety and Health: telematics workers, human factors;
• Federal Emergency Management Agency: disasters and vulnerabilities;
• Office of Science and Technology Policy: a national commission;
• Department of Housing and Urban Development: home and office
design and public policies for telematics use.
The Broader Federal Responses To Which EPA Could Make A Strong Contribution:
1. A National Commission on Telematics Policy under Presidential or
Congressional sponsorship should undertake to define the long-term national
policy choices toward telematics.
2. A number of large-scale, real world intervention experiments should
be planned and undertaken under multi-agency auspices with effective but not
dominant participation by EPA. These experiments would help to determine the
causes, behavior, and consequences of telematics. This information could
guide public and private policy choices.
3. An inter-agency coordinating committee under the sponsorship of the
Department of Commerce or NTIA or OSTP in the area of telematics would be a
useful intermediate step toward clarifying policy choices and coordinating
research and study activities.
The overall thrust of these recommendations is that EPA begin defining
for itself a responsibility and task with respect to telematics, which is well
within its existing Congressional and Presidential mandate to protect the
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nation's environment, and which, without TPA initiative, will not be
undertaken. In that case, potential benefits to the environment and to public
health and safety may be delayed or lost, or unnecessary societal costs may he
imposed. These recommended actions, if taken, would also begin to identify
the latent constituency for EPA telematics assessments.
AFTERWORD
In spite of the breadth of treatment of this study, there are major areas
of impacts of telematics beyond the scope of this report. Effects on the
health and safety of the labor force were considered, but the more general
effects on labor, employment, and job characteristics were not. The even
larger question of effects on corporate and business America, international
trade and relations, and government are also outside the scope of this report.
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SECTION 2
ASSESSING TELEMATICS TECHNOLOGY
Section 2 is a general overview of this
assessment, its assumptions, objectives, scope,
and boundaries. Basic concepts and terms used
in the report are defined.
INTRODUCTION
Two areas of scientific and technological development today hold promise
of social benefits comparable to the invention of movable type, the internal
combustion engine, and the harnessing of electricity. These two areas are
genetic engineering and telecommunications. This assessment deals with the
impending revolutionary consequences of telecommunications technology in the
next 25 years.
In this report, we use the term "telematics" to mean the convergence of
computer, information, and telecommunications technologies. Telematic is, of
course, related to the French term "telematique" used by S. Nora and A. Mine
in their policy study for the French government ("The Computerization of
Society," 1980). As used in this report, the term "telematics" carries no
political or ideological connotations. It is a convenient expression for
three merging lines of technological developments.
The objective of this exploratory assessment is to identify the potential
consequences of telematics development for the physical and natural environment,
public health and safety, and our technoeconomy which may have derivative
impacts on the environment. This objective, in relation to EPA responsibilities
and those of OSASS, has already been stated in more detail in the preface.
Briefly, this report summarizes the present state of knowledge and informed
expectations about telematics, discusses areas where information is needed for
a more thorough assessment, and identifies where basic and applied research is
needed to address environmental matters related to those technologies.
The assessment's primary concern is environmental impacts, but it is not,
and could not be, limited to environmental impacts. The likely consequences
of telecommunications in the future are so broad, complex, and diffuse that
many of the social and economic effects could, in turn, hold implications for
environmental quality and human health and safety.
The assessment concludes that on balance the effects cf telematics on
environmental quality should be strongly positive—that is, beneficial. The
capabilities which telematics can provide for monitoring environmental
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quality, for detecting and tracing pollutants, and controlling them at the
source, and for diagnosis and treatment of disease and injury, including those
of environmental origin, will be invaluable.
There are some possibly significant en/ironmental problems associated
with increasing use of telematics. The most important uf these concerns,
which are just emerging into public awareness, are the possible adverse
effects of microwave radiation. At present, scientific knowledge is not
sufficient to determine reliably the scope; or seriousness ot the hazards and
risks from electromagnetic radiation. More research is needed in several
areas which probably fall within EPA responsibility.
There can be little doubt that telematics, in the future, will bring
about significant technoeconomic changes. The continuing growth of electronic
industries, their integration with communications industries, a new wave of
industrial automation (including industrial robots and related technologies),
and, most importantly, the uncertain and controversial effects on the location
of people and industry will surely have long-range implications for
environmental change, protection, and management. This report suggests what
some of the secondary environmental impacts may be and identifies trends which
should be monitored as part of EPA long-range research planning. It concludes
that in population decentralization, telematics is a facilitator rather than a
driving force, and that while decentralization would relieve some current
environmental problems, it could make others more difficult to monitor and
control.
Host of the potential benefits of telematics will be captured through the
workings of the market without government intervention. However, efforts by
EPA and other agencies acting cooperatively with industry and public interest
groups could stimulate innovation and encourage timely applications of
telematics for the meeting of public sector needs and national oojectives.
In the long run, it is in the interests of all parties, including the
telematics industries, to anticipate, prevent, relieve, or solve any
environmental, health, and safety problems that may emerge from telematics.
In the short run, however, the major actors in telematics development,
including Federal mission agencies, do not have any incentive or mandate to
search out such problems so that they can be dealt with at early stages of
development. The primary stakeholders have few or no incentives for identify-
ing environmental problems before they become undeniably bad problems. This
alone justifies, if not demands, that EPA planners carry out broad, exploratory,
assessments as an early warning system on real problems and as a means to allay
any public alarm that is not warranted.
THE PACE OF TELEMATICS DEVELOPMENT
Telematics applications can either substitute for or supplement a broad
range of basic technologies and productive activities and at the same time add
capabilities which do not now exist. Nothing short of a "dcofusday scenario"
would prevent the increasing adoption and use of telematics in the long run.
However, the pace of adoption will be affected by a great many factors and
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will be more rapid in some sectors of the economy and the society than in
others. Factors which will influence the pace of telematics development and
adoption are discussed in Section 4, The Societal Context of Telematics. Our
analysis concludes that these perturbations will have few lasting effects on
the overall social impacts of telematics. If insufficient capital or market
resistance blocks the widespread acreptance of one telematics technology,
there are alternatives. The major impacts on society, which will mature around
1990-2010, will come from exploitation of new capabilities offered by
telematics which are common to seve'a1. subsets of technologies, as will be
discussed in Section 3.
Revolutions driven by technology do not come about overnight. Change
will be driven by a steady, rolling accumulation of small modifications
resulting in a body of irreversible differences in the way we organize our
personal and collective affairs. Technologies will be introduced in different
forms and for different purposes, as substitutes to improve old processes or
to perform new functions. The cumulative effect will be to remake our world.
While telematics, especially telecommunications, is not a new technology,
the pace of change and integration is quickening. We are learning to combine
many communications media and technologies which had been separate into large,
sensitive, flexible systems. To complicate matters, there are a number of
social and economic trends interacting with the telematics revolution to
produce unexpected events. Fortunately, we live in an era when, for the first
time in history, we have the perspicacity to recognize that we are in the
midst of a revolution, and an opportunity to anticipate and to mold our future.
While the forces are in motion, the technology is changing, substitutions are
occurring, and a new web of technological dependency is being spun all around
us. The major effects are 15 to 3U years in the future. That is only a short
time, yet it is enough for us to understand, to discuss, and to act
intelligently on our collective behalf.
Unlike many other technologies, telematics has been received as an almost
unblemished blessing. But there are some strains of concern among the general
public—notably over matters of privacy and security of information systems,
long-range effects on employment, and the effects of television on our youth.
There is a small and, to a substantial degree, neglected scholarly literature
on the long-term implications of the information revolution, the so-called
post-industrial society, the technotronic age.
By and large, however, there has been little systematic attention to
long-term environmental implications of this new era. Even the biological
effects of microwave radiation—such as presented in the purple prose of T_he_
Zapping of Americ-i/I—has failed to excite a broad base of concern. It is
not surprising, therefore, that the more distant, latent, and subtle—but
perhaps more important—consequences are largely unexamined.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is concerned about the quality
of our natural environment, human health, and societal well-being. It is in
the interest of EPA to be aware of any possible dangers from telematic devices
and, equally important, to understand how other trends may interact with
telematics to intensify or mitigate its possible effects.
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THE SEARCH FOR IMPACTS
It is fairly straightforward to anticipate some highly credible
consequences of telematics technology. Many have speculated, for example,
that telecommunications may substitute for transportation and thereby improve
the environment by reducing the use of automobiles. Air pollution and the raw
material and waste disposal side of our industrial cycles could be affected.
As we substitute information technology for other kinds of basic labor,
workplaces may become cleaner and safer. As telecommunications networks
permeate society, we may be more readily able to respond to medical
emergencies, fires, accidents, and natural disasters, and to improve the
health and well-being of our citizens.
The random generation of significant implications of technology is one
route to understanding the future, but it is not a sufficient basis for coming
to grips with a potentially limitless number of changes. We need a strategy
for search and sort. The strategy adopted in this paper is to take lessons
from what we know about the major and minor effects of other technologies and
to use those generalizations as search rules for probing the future. The
dominant effects of technologies come about in the following general ways:
t Technology itself will produce effects. The individual elements of
telematics technology must be manufactured. They require raw
materials; they must be shipped, stored, used, and disposed of.
Hence, the devices themselves have environmental implications.
• The individual elements of the technology join to form systems.
Those systems can be quite local or may involve a nationwide
electronic funds transfer system or a nationwide data credit system.
Systems may also involve the Strategic Air Command or a communications
satellite linking the United States to any other spot in the world.
A system has its own implications for the environment in terms of its
initiation, planning, construction, operation, maintenance, and final
decline and disposal.
• New technologies may substitute for older technologies. Insofar as
telecommunications substitutes for transportation, it will have
effects on what is removed from the market and from society in
addition to the effects of its own intrusion.
• The capabilities to do new things or to do old things better are
implicit in every new technology. Those capabilities can have
environmental effects. For example, the laying of the Atlantic cable
provided the capability of instant communication which drastically
changed the commodities market and the financial structure associated
with basic materials and manufactured goods in trade and commerce.
• Trends outside the area of telecommunications will interact with
telecommunications in ways that cannot be discerned solely from the
technology itself. Telecommunications technology examined in a
social context determines what effects will be more or less important.
As family size grew and declined, America suburbanized and may now be
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EXHIBIT 2-1: IMPACT OF TECHNOLOGY INNOVATION ON USER INSTITUTIONS
Innmtiiive
Technology may be
modified to suit
needs of users belter
Insliliiliim
adopts technology
carry out existing
functions more
efficiently
to
Other [nstiitilitinj
may be crc:ncd. or
old ones chanced.
lo utilize new
technology
Competition
between
institutions
STEP I
Insliliiliim
chances internally lo
lale belter advantage
of new efficiencies
STEP II
limitation
develops new functions
and activities m.ide
possible by additional
capabilities of the
technology
STEP III
Institution
may become obsolete.
be replaced, or
radically transformed
STEP IV
Source: Impact of technology innovation on user institutions' (after Joseph
Coates, Telecommuriications Policy 1:196-206, 1977).
reurbanizing.
These sources of impacts are shown in Exhibit 2-1.
Let us now turn to a brief expansion of some of the elements in a
strategic approach to understanding telecommunications futures. Exhibit 2-2
displays some of these direct and mediating interactions.
The profound impacts of a technology are often not the immediate ones,
when the new thing is used to do an old job better, or even the secondary ones,
when the old system changes to take better advantage of the new thing. The
big effects are usually the third order and later impacts, when new activities
are generated as a result of the new technology's capabilities. For example,
computers originally adopted for payroll preparation allow a merchant to move
to continual inventory control.
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EXHIBIT 2-2: HOW TELEMATIC SYSTEMS MAY IMPACT THE ENVIRONMENT
Turning to telecommunications technology, we can illustrate both the
technology and technology systems with the simple prototypical example shown
in Exhibit 2-3. This exhibit lists the elements of the telephone system and
roughly shows how those elements come together to make more complex and more
socially significant societal systems. A brief review of Exhibit 2-3
illustrates:
The basic equipment—the instruments, the wires, and the
laying of the wires—have environmental effects in terms
of requiring raw material such as copper and petrochemicals.
They require tunnels, poles, and underground wiring conduits,
and have an effect on both the aesthetics and the texture
of the countryside and the city. Telephone companies employ
people at central stations and out on the road; these people
move to and from work. Telephone books are a central part
of the telephone system; they require paper, printing, and
distribution, and generate urban and rural waste. The laws
and regulations bounding the system determine choices as to
when we can use the telephone, what we can use it for, and
what we cannot use it for.
This rough sketch of the environmental impacts of one telematics
technology should suggest the pregnant implications of expanding the probe in
two directions—depth of treatment and diversity of technologies considered.
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Clement
EXHIBIT 2-3: ELEMENTS OF A TELECOMMUNICATIONS SYSTEM
Example From Telephone System
Equipment (hardware)
Organizations of people who
operate the system
Instructions and procedures for
for use (software)
Users
Rules for access to system
Rules by which society
controls the system
People who are assigned by
society to operate the
control process
telephone instruments
wires to connect instruments
switching devices to route calls
equipment for producing the above
telephone operating companies and their
employees
telephone equipment manufacturers and their
employees
telephone books
dialing rules and procedures
telephone subscribers
pay telephone users
rate structures
procedures for gaining residential or
business service
relevant laws and regulations
Federal Communications Cor.mis'n'on
judicial system
Long-range social trends which will condition both the pace of future
telematics development and its impacts will be discussed in depth in Section
4. They are especially important in relating telecommunications to central-
ization and decentralization. Three major interacting forces merit special
consideration. The increased cost of energy is the sharpest, most certain new
force changing the structure and organization of the economy. The second major
force is the changing nature of work and employment. These two forces seem to
be working in opposite directions. Energy inflation is centripetal, drawing
people closer together into more densely packed units and areas. On the other
hand, telecommunications may be a centrifugal _tQX££, permitting people to
locate further apart in more independent, physically discrete units.
Demographic change as a third major force involves a large number of variables
moving in many different directions, promoting both centrifugal and centripetal
changes.
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ASSUMPTIONS AND DEFINITIONS
This report is primarily addressed to EPA decision-makers. But it is
also written in anticipation of a larger audience of people who have an
interest in decisions which the government may make which affect the
development and use of telecommunication technologies. It speaks first to
the Environmental Protection Agency, but also to the rest of the Federal
government because telecommunications technologies serve the whole of
government. The potential audience outside the Federal government includes
everyone in the U.S. and in many other places, but especially the makers of
telematics devices, individual and institutional users of telematics
technologies, industries and institutions which may change significantly as
telematics technologies become more pervasive.
This report is exploratory, synthesizing, and interpretive. It discusses
how the convergence of the technologies of telecommunications, computation,
and information is likely to interact with ongoing social, economic, and
political trends, and how the result may impact the biota, human health and
safety, and the technoeconomy. The reader will find relatively little new
data, few detailed technical descriptions, and no quantitative predictions.
Some basic definitions are needed.
The environment is used to refer to the scope of EPA's interest, as
stated in their request for proposals to perform this work, which is the
biota, human health and safety, and the technoeconomy.
The biota include the earth, its plants,its animals, its soil, air, and
water as media for living things except for those parts which are included in
the otner two categories.
: The technoeconomy refers to the artifacts, laws, and physical and
organizational processes of human culture. Thus, we will consider
commercially raised plants and animals as part of the technoeconomy rather
than the biota. However, public parklands, endangered species, grasslands,
and forests are here considered part of the biota.
A technology is a goal-directed social, physical, or biological
application of arts or science. It includes machines, games, medicines, the
written word, and many other human creations.
Telematics is a group of technologies which include all parts of systems
which merge computer, telecommunication, and information technologies. Most
such systems employ all three, although use of any two will qualify.
This report should assist OSASS/EPA to identify research which should be
conducted to support the agency's mission over the longer term future. In
addition, it will help to inform the development of domestic and international
U.S. information policy, and contribute to the general understanding of the
impact of telematic technologies.
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Hence, the first goal of this assessment is to describe the environmental
impacts of developing telecommunications technologies; the second goal is to
separate those impacts over which we can have some influence from those whose
causes would be beyond control. The third is to identify what we still need
to know, and to highlight those areas in which research and planning are not
underway.
The study team undertook the following steps:
• to provide a conceptual framework useful for analyzing the impacts
of telecommunications technologies and for protecting new
technologies;
• to identify the range of technologies which may operate in the
relatively distant future of 2005 to 2010;
• to generate the widest possible set of impacts which they could have
on human health, the environment, and human culture;
• to consider the social, political, and economic environment within
which the technologies can be expected to develop, including trends,
critical events, and types and groups of people who can be expected
to gain, lose, and wield power under different conditions;
o to devise criteria with which to sort the impacts according to
relative seriousness;
• to identify knowledge gaps which now prevent us from knowing about
potential hazards resulting from telecommunications technologies and
the conditions under which they might come to pass;
• to identify work which is now in progress which may fill those
knowledge gaps.
WHAT FOLLOWS
The next section, 3, is a brief introduction to the technology of
telematics. It describes the elements of telematics technology, seme
telematics systems, and some social and societal systems using or dependent
upon that technology.
Section 4 deals with trends—both within the domain of telematics and
within the larger society—which will interact with, affect, and be affected
by, telematics.
The next section, 5, treats the interaction of systems, trends, and
general impacts, to define significant environmental impacts with regard to
human health, the biota, and the general technoeconomic enterprises of our
society. Section 5 also discusses criteria for evaluating impacts in the
light of EPA research and planning.
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Section 6 supplies the policy context within which EPA should consider
research on telematics. It identifies the principal parties at interest and
describes the dynamics of their interaction.
Our findings, with special attention to knowledge gaps, are discussed in
Section 7. From those knowledge gaps, useful research goals are proposed on
two important questions: (1) basic knowledge required to better understand
the interaction of telecommunications and the environment, and (2) better
knowledge specifically required to inform public policy.
Finally, in Section 8, we discuss research which is already in progress
and make specific recommendations tt OSASS/EPA regarding the sponsorship of
research in telematics.
There are, as well, two appendices. The first is an annotated
bibliography of important literature in the field. The other discusses
methods used in this assessment.
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SECTION 3
TELEMATICS:
TELECOMMUNICATIONS, COMPUTER, AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGIES
IN COLLISION, CONVERGENCE, AND COALESCENCE
This chapter is an introductory overview of telematics
technologies and telematic systems. It discusses five
domains of technology and their emerging integration.
Understanding the technology is crucial to understanding
the new and unprecedented capabilities of telematics.
The generic characteristics of these new capabilities
will be a primary stimulant of change in social behavior
and t.ie structure and function of institutions.
The reader who is well-informed about these technologies
may wish to skip all but the final section of this
section on "The Social Characteristics of New Capabilities."
INTRODUCTION
Public processes of discussion, planning, action, management and
evaluation must be based on some recognized definitions and shared concepts
and beliefs. The function of this section is to present a simple framework
for ordered speculation about telecommunications and computer technologies
which are now already in use or are on the verge of practical importance.
The five domains of telematics are:
6 computers, calculators, and kindred devices,
• telephony and telegraphy,
t audio and video broadcasting,
• those devices which come out of still and motion
photography and graphics, and
t information technologies.
The technical, historical, institutional, legal, and corporate bases of these
main domains of technology are quite different. These domains are rapidly
coalescing, interacting, converging, and competing to form new structural
systems and capabilities. These clusters of technologies began in different
historical periods and evolved in economically different institutions. They
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have enjoyed quite distinctly different legal status and relatively different
degrees of public and private control. It is in order to sidestep this
confusion that we adopted and adapted the French term telematique—telematics—
which treats all of these technologies under a new rubric. From a more
technical point of view, we take telematics to be the use of electrons, light,
and electromagnetic radiation for communication, control, memory, and related
purposes.
This section is elementary in both senses of that word. It presents
basic information about the telematic devices and systems in simple, and as
much as possible, in non-technical terms. The order of presentation will
first discuss familiar devices well embedded in our current history. We then
move to more recent devices, and finally to those coming into prominence.
Having described the elements, the discussion moves to technological systems
and software developments coming out of the interplay of the devices. There
is a brief discussion of ancillary devices, some of which are not usually
included within the telecommunications/computer lexicon. With those pieces in
place, the discussion then moves to larger scale telecommunications systems
and related societal systems.
WHAT TELEMATICS DOES
Before taking a look at the technology and its systems, it may be useful
to review some of the functions telematics perform and some general factors in
that performance. The most obvious and the original burden of telecommunica-
tions is to transmit messages. Originally these were in the form of text
(telegraph) and voice (telephone). More recently, we have learned to transmit
images of all sorts, including color and three-dimensional graphs. Combinations
of these techniques—for example, videophone, teletext, and long-distance
xerography—allows people to approximate a face-to-face business meeting.
Some messages are composed simply of bits of data. If people have
previously decided the way the data will be structured, it can simply be
packed up and transmitted in an agreed-upon format without the accompaniment
of other interpersonal communications. Other messages refer tc interchange-
able objects, and telecommunications does, in effect, allow their transfer.
What began with wiring money by telegraph has become electronic funds transfer
(EFT), by which much of the world's banking can be accomplished without
currency ever physically changing hands. Now, ownership of anything that need
not or cannot be physically transported can be exchanged in this way—from
shares of stock to land deeds. Telematics is carrying the economy to a fourth
level of symbolism—gold to paper, to checks, to magnetic storage. Authority
may also be transmitted by telecommunications, whether that authority is
political, military, institutional, financial, or moral.
Telecommunications systems may be of a form to allow one-to-one
communication in either one or both directions. The common pager which beeps
and telephone exemplify each pattern. They may also have a unidirectional
one-to-many broadcast form, as with traditional radio and television.
Television security systems reverse this pattern with unidirectional
many-to-one transmissions. Some technologies allow a bidirectional message
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flow among several points. For example, a broadband cable television system
may allow subscribers to transmit from their homes or businesses and target on
specific groups of other subscribers. Often systems will combine technologies
to achieve the communication patterns they need with lower cost. For example,
a cable television system need not always have video transmission capability
for its subscribers when a many-to-many pattern is needed. Often it is enough
to combine cable in one direction with telephone response in the other.
Changes in the communication pattern which a given technology permits often
have major social impacts.
The flexibility to control the amount of time between recording and
transmission of messages and between their reception and play-out is
important. With television it is useful sometimes to have live broadcasts of
important events and at other times to have the freedom to edit and rework
material before its transmission. The development of telephones which can
receive and record messages while their owners are not present or to forward
calls to another number extends their use. Similarly, the ability to use
computers in real time, combined with developments in microprocessor
technology allowed thi? development of text editing and memory typewriters.
It is well known that in general the cost of telecommunications has
decreased as the technology has developed. There may be several break points
which separate socially significant cost ranges. For instance, a cost low
enough that the average small town could afford the system would mark one step;
a cost which is affordable for most families would mark another; a cost which
makes the system a nearly universal personal possession would rruirk an extreme.
There are five basic internal functions of telematic systems which are
clues to future consequences. These are:
• format a message,
• transmit a message or authority,
* record a message,
• store a message,
• manipulate message? through computation, switching, or problem
sol vine) techniques.
Most telematic systems do not perform all of these functions.
Virtually all telematics media encode messages at one point or another.
Messages may be encoded directly into electromagnetic waves, or encoded first
in digital patterns and then into electromagnetic waves. The difference is
significant because a digital message may be recorded and stores far more
easily. Moreover, with digital cod-'ng, telephones and television may be
integrated with computers in versatile and powerful systems.
Channel capacity refers to the volume of messages which a given medium
will accommodate. Again, taking the telephone as an example, the
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old-fashioned, basic telephone used one twisted pair of wires per message at a
time, so that a given call had exclusive use of whole wire for its duration.
With multiplexing equipment and digital coding, more than one conversation can
be carried on a wire at a time. This represents a great increase in channel
capacity. With the adoption of fiber optic filaments instead of traditional
wires, the capacity is increased further. Optical fibers use lasers to
conduct impulses on a broader bandwidth so more conversations can be carried
on one line at the same time. In addition, they are thinner, so that more
lines can bestuffed into a cable of a given diameter. There have been similar
increases in channel capacity in other telecommunications media as well, and
there are substantial differences in channel capacity among media.
Let's now turn to the devices that are the bases of these functions.
THE TELEMATICS TINKER-TOY
This section reviews the basic technological devices, the functioning
elements, with which present and new systems are designed. Little attention
is given to the technological details or the scientific principles on which
the devices are based. With the earliest and most unfamiliar devices, we rely
on the reader's common knowledge about them, and the common understanding of
how they work and what they can do. As we move to newer and less familiar de-
vices, a bit more attention is given to capabilities. Most of these devices
are in a strict sense systems. Therefore, treating them as devices, of neces-
sity, falsifies their nature to some extent. On the other hand, we can start
at any stage in a hierarchy of technological systems and take that stage as
the basic unit about which we are speaking. To illustrate specifically, a
xerographic reproducing machine is itself a complex functioning system of ele-
ments and connections, and is the product of elaborate technological, research,
marketing, and maintenance systems. However, for this report, it is taken as
a basic unit. That level of discussion may be most useful to start us off.
The elements of the telematics tinker-toy are in use or in development.
For much of the telematics system, the future is now. However, telematics has
not yet revolutionized every aspect of our lives. Of the myriad services
telematics could perform, only a handful have been realized. The incipient
revolution in telematics is in the wedding of the technology, the capability,
with services—banking, education, environmental monitoring, medicine,
transportation, manufacturing, farming, entertainment. The pace and direction
of the telematic future will be determined largely by the forces—especially
the market forces operating in these service areas. The following subsections
describe the capabilities encompassed in the emerging telematics tinker-toy
that will be adopted in vary'-ig configurations by different sectors of the
economy. We had automobiles in 1880 but they did not work their revolution
for fifty to seventy years. Perhaps telematics is now like the auto in 1920.
BASIC DEVICES WIDELY AVAILABLE BEFORE 1960
The most commonplace telecommunications devices known to anyone born
since 1930—and familiar if not commonplace in their intellectual and function-
ing furniture—are shown in Exhibit 3-1.
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EXHIBIT 3-1: TELEMATIC DEVICES WIDELY AVAILABLE BEFORE 1960
» Telegraph • Cable (one-way)
• Telephone • Transponders
• Microwave transmission 0 Typewriter
• Radio (AM/FM)
• Television (B/W)
• Facsimile
• Phonograph
• Tape recording
• Xerography
• Movies
• Still photography (B/W, color)
• Polaroid
• Microfilm
9 Robots - first generation
• Mainframe computers
The telephone and the telegraph provide place-to-place communications,
AM and FM radio expand communication from one-to-one to one-to-many. Radio
has a higher information density, but does not provide easily and cheaply for
two-way communication or ready feedback. Black and white TV enhances,
supplements, and, in part, replaces speech with images. Facsimile provides
image without speech. The phonograph and the tape recorder provide a cheap
and convenient way to reproduce the spoken word, music and other sounds in a
widely available stored format for repeated use. The big invention of
xerographic reproduction permits both permanent and ephemeral written and
typed words, glyphs, and graphics of all sorts to be copied and reproduced at
incredibly low cost and at tremendous savings in skilled labor, e.g.,
stenographers and typists. The introduction of cable systems and transponders
opened up TV to those cut off by physical barriers from line-of-sight broad-
cast. The reader should keep in mind that TV and FM radio can be received
only through line of sight, not over the horizon. Hence, tneir need for tall
transmission towers.
The typewriter, movies, black and white photography, and polaroid are
all commonplace and familiar. Microfilm permits the printed word to be
cheaply reproduced, packed, stored, mailed, and handled. The big development
before the 60s—new and exciting in all regards—was the large scale, or
mainframe, computer. It and the associated memory devices began the
computational revolution. Finally, first generation robots (or as it was
called then—automation) came into use. The first generation machines are
capable of repeatedly performing complex, multiple, fixed functions. They
called for large capital investments and were used over and over again, i.e.,
as in drilling out engine blocks on the automobile assembly line.
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EXHIBIT 3-2: TELEMATIC DEVICES WIDELY
0 Touchtone pad (push
button keyboard)
• Call forwarding
t CB radio
• Picturephone
• Portapak video recorder,
the mini cam
• Color television
c Portable television
• Frame grabber
• Slow scan
• Private microwave
transmission
AVAILABLE BY THE EARLY 70s
• Audio cassette
• Low cost xerography
• Two-way cable television
• Electric typewriter
• Geophysical satellites
t Optical scanner
• Microfiche
• Robot - second generation
• Hand calculator
• Minicomputer
• Central processing unit
memory
DEVICES AVAILABLE IN THE EARLY 1970s
By the early 70s, many of the new telematic inventions of the post-war
period came to maturity and began to have significant effects. Exhibit 3-2
lists these principal devices.
• The touchtone pad—that is, the push button keyboard on the
telephone—is a key element in potentially making every telephone a
computer link. Recall how your bank teller can now check your
account by punching up on the computer, your account number, and the
coded request for information, using the telephone buttons.
• The picture telephone, available in principle for two decades,
received some early and unimpressive trials. Today it is
institutionalized and functioning in several big cities and in
private facilities. Picture telephones make available a point-to-
point, two-way, audio-visual capability.
• The portable video recorder (portapak or minicam) opens up the
potential of anyone going anywhere on a low budget to make his or
her own films. We tend to think of television as a passive, viewer
technology. Yet, now the technology is available which permits any
child or adult, for Si,OnO-$l,500, to go into the world and make
talking films. The opportunity to do this will impact on education,
open up new art forms, and expand our modes of understanding. The
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capability to select, recast, and interpret the world in a visual
medium could raise our levels of attentiveness and sensitivity to
unprecedented subtlety. The world will be seen differently by those
who make their own films. The portapak is to television and movies
what the Brownie box camera was to 19th century studio photography.
• Television sets themselves became portable and available in color at
extremely low cost. TV was technically augmented by devices such as
slow scan and the frame grabber to permit one to examine at any
desired pace the material on the screen or to take a particular frame,
that is, a particular picture, and freeze it on the screen.
• Microwave technology was available for transmission in the 50s, but
only cvei' public channels. In 1959 private operators were allowed
to put up microwave transmitters, thereby launching a minor
technological revolution.
t Audio cassettes are a big improvement over previous tape recording.
They affect the rendition of popular music, story telling, office
practices, memoranda writing, and have given business and the lay
person the acoustic equivalent of cheap photography.
• Low cost, small copy machines have moved the xerographic revolution
many steps ahead.
• In cable it has always been, in principle, possible to communicate in
two directions. Increasingly, since 1970 two-way has been a
functioning reality in which it is possible to communicate not only
from, but to, the head end, that is, to the station. Cable also has
begun to acquire independent status as a new high quality medium for
presenting television material. Cable TV, on a much larger scale
than other technologies, will weave the nation together. It was
originally developed as a way to bring improved television broadcasts
to out-of-the way communities, to homes beyond the hills which were
shadowed from traditional broadcasts. It has now become a technology
on the brink of commercial dominance. Cable television brings high
quality viewing to the home. Instead of four, five, or six channels,
it brings the capability of 30 to 80 channels. The first net effect
of cable television on American society will be to break the dull
and deadening monopoly of the big broadcasters; the day of centralized
television out of New York or Los Angeles is about to pass.
Diversity is the order for the future. Every agency, group,
institution, organization, and individual will have a reasonable
chance for access to the medium. A true intellectual and artistic
free market may yet operate. The implication for education is clear
in that truly educational channels in great abundance will be avail-
able. However, the problem is not their availability, but in filling
them with useful, worthwhile material.
• The electric typewriter came into its own in the 70s and is now a
major interlocutory device with computers, punched tape, electronic
devices, home consoles, etc.
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• Optical scanning devices to examine and interpret all kinds of
printed and non-printed material moved into the realm of practicality.
t Communication and observation satellites became institutionalized.
Space communication satellites, made legally possible in 1962, became
practical by the 1970s.
• Big improvements involving central processing memories further
increased the capacity of mainframe computers. By the early 70s, the
minicomputer and the hand calculator were coming onto the scene in a
big way. The hand calculator puts in the hands of students and
citizens at large a capability roughly equivalent to the most
sophisticated ore-electronic devices—at prices of $5-535. The extent
of the use of the hand calculator is such that some 80 million may be
in use in 1980, with a steady market of replacement and upgrading of
20 million per year.
• Microfiche began replacing microfilm to give new degrees of
convenience at very low cost.
• Second generation robots came on to the market. These reprogramming
robots were capable of performing a particular function and having
that function changed or modified in quite drastic ways to go on to
perform new and different functions.
NEW AND EMERGING DEVICES AROUND THE 1980s
Devices now coming into ascendency, in addition to those previously
described, are listed in Exhibit 3-3. The new items have not led to displace-
ment but to integration of old and new devices in all sorts of ways.
• The premier device in ascendency in the 80s is the microprocessor—
the so-called brain on a chip. This device effectively reduces to
small, low cost, manageable size the computational and other computer
capabilities previously available only in large facilities. Large-
scale integrated circuitry has made the microcomputer and the mini-
computer functioning realities. The microprocessor, as its costs
have declined, now holds the potential of being applied to literally
any human artifact which involves memory, control, feedback, recog-
nition. It is itself spawning devices right and left. The tiny,
silicon chips that carry integrated circuitry contain all the logic
of a small computer. They may operate independently or be wired to
a larger computer as part of a complex operation. They permit the
remote, electronic control of all sorts of machines—from household
appliances, to automobiles, to industrial equipment. For example:
— Cars can continuously monitor and adjust their own timing,
ignition, and carburetor mixture, and calculate and display fuel
efficiency to the driver;
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EXHIBIT 3-3: TELEMATICS DEVICES NOW AND EMERGING IN THE 80s
• Microprocessor • Direct satellite broadcasting
• 800 numbers • Wore1 processor
t Voice answer-back • Graphic and color display
• Voice activation • Speech compressor
• Low cost video recorders • Packet switching
• Videodisks • Robots - third generation
• Large screen television • Microcomputers
• Laser • Large scale integrated circuits
t Fiber optics • New memory systems: solid state,
laser, bubble, backend processes
• Video cassettes
• Morpheme generator
t Electronic scratch pad
— Household thermostats can be programmed to maintain a variety of
temperatures according to time of day, weather conditions, or
other factors in the house as a whole or on a room-by-room basis;
— Cheap toys can be produced that will interact with children by
means of sound or visual displays;
— Medical devices, like tiny pacemakers, can be implanted to
monitor or to help control vital body functions such as heart-
beat, thyroid activity, ovulation, and fetal development.
According to Professor Licklider of MIT, since the mid-60s the
capability of the chip has gone up over 10,000 fold, and is still
increasing while the cost of the chip has remained fairly constant
at $5-$50. As a rule of thumb, every new development in micro-chip
technology comes on the market at $50 and in two or three years is
selling for $5-$10.
With regard to the telephone, the development of the 800 numbers
creates a nationwide capability to search, sell, and scan.
Additionally, voice answer-back automation devices permit flexibility
in response to touchtone signals. Voice activation gives a new
degree of flexibility to many kinds of equipment. While voice
activation is well established, voice recognition is still being
developed.
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• Low cost video recorders now give the capability to selectively
record from commercial as well as private video pickup. This will
enable us to build personal, commercial, and public video libraries.
It gives flexibility to visual recording which is comparable to the
flexibility that platters and tape have given to sound recordings.
• The videodisk, looking superficially like a phonograph record,
captures all the information equivalent to a 30-minute television
broadcast. It captures the equivalent of 54,000 snapshots—frames,
in the jargon of the trade—on a single disk. It permits all the
audio, that is, all the sound message, that would normally accompany
those frames. The capability to package this vast amount of informa-
tion, in the equivalent of a small piece of luggage, will change
scores of information demanding activities. For example, someone
doing a complicated, sophisticated repair job—let's say, on the
innards of a military tank—may be able to climb into the tank with
his videodisk set up, get a display of what he is to look at, punch
a button to indicate where the problem is, and have called up to him
not just a written message, but a spoken and written message
describing what he should do next, what he should look for, etc.
The capability to pack 100 linear feet of repair manuals into a suit-
case and have at the fingertip both visual and aural inputs (which
incidentally are self-searching, not at all like paging through a
manual) could enormously accelerate the capacity to deal with complex
information. The videodisk—by combining printed, spoken, and
graphic materials in one small package—will have a profound impact
on the training elements of education and could very well have a
revolutionary impact on the grasping of concepts and complex inter-
actions and events. The videodisk may completely change vocations,
vocational education, laboratory training, home and automotive
maintenance and repairs, and scores of other things requiring
integrated grasps of complex technologies.
• The large screen TV now makes it possible to use theatre seating and
adds great flexibility to the use of TV communications.
• Video cassettes are on the market.
t The electronic scratch pad permits communication back and forth, in
real time, of graphics, notes, and messages generated ad hoc, and
gives an unprecedented degree of personal flexibility to
communications. Imagine two people a thousand miles apart drawing
and modifying a diagram together.
t Graphic and color display is now commonplace.
• The word processor is working its well-known revolution in office
work. It offers the prospect of every author being his own publisher.
t Perhaps equally important, but less widely known, is the generation
of a practical voice synthesizer—morpheme generator. The fundamental
unit of human speech in the phoneme—the sounds of single letters.
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These combine to form morphemes which are the building blocks of
speech. An exciting technological breakthrough based on the micro-
processor generates a passable version of the" human voice without
using prerecorded messages. On instruction it will sound out any
message within its programmed capabilities. The device is now avail-
able in an educational toy called "Spe&k and Spell":
— The child spells by punching buttons for each letter,
H-O-S-E. A visual read-out shows what he has punched
in, and a voice sounds back, "I'm sorry, that's
incorrect, please try again." The child spells it
again, H-0-U-S-E; "Thank you, will you now spell candy."
This electronic device now makes it practical for any machine or
device to talk to its operator. The implications for this for the
handicapped, for the foreign language speaker, and for the semi-
literate are enormous. It opens up the world of information to those
who are intrinsically, accidentally, or by culture limited in
literacy. The morpheme generator will speed up understanding, skill
building, and access even for the most literate who are moving into
the unfamiliar.
Although satellites have been with us for many years, recent develop-
ments will allow much wider use. There are now many more communica-
tion satellites and they are far more powerful. Signal receiving
dishes have dropped in size and price to the point that they are
within the grasp of most American communities and businesses, and
many families. We are now able to send many more long distance
messages with far better quality signals and to receive them directly
in our homes and businesses. Packet switching is the great exciting
development in the use of communications satellites. With satellite
communications:
— Remote and otherwise isolated communities can gain access to
commercial broadcasts, educational television, radio transmission,
and other forms of telecommunications;
— Financial institutions and corporations can set up their own
satellite receivers to get news and financial information
directly, and to transmit their own data with security;
— Most communities can get a wider variety of programming with
stronger signals.
Coupled with cable television, satellite communication will permit
the ready exchange of information from one local cable TV network to
another. All the information of any country in the world will be
available throughout the rest of the world—from Katmandu to
Capetown, from Anchorage to Andalusia. Libraries will no longer be
limited to books; the full recorded ten Off"! edge of all mankind will be
useful to scientists, scholars, entertainers, educators, businessmen,
and recreationists.
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The speech compressor, as an adjunct to voice recordings, for the
first time makes the ear an effective information channel competitor
with the eye in picking up cognitive materials. In We .tern culture
the printed word is virtually coincident with educaticri. The spoken
word, except for the classroom, has lagged far behind in its infor-
mation transfer capability. While we can conveniently listen to
words at the rete of 120-160 words per minute, most literate
adults can read 250-400 words per minute. New telecommunications
technology now makes it possible to put the spoken word in direct
competition with the printed word on an information-density basis.
The concept is as follows:
Imagine the recorded message to be like a salami.
Imagine slicing that salami into thousands of
thin slices. Then throw away every tenth, or
every fourth, or every fifth slice. By pushing
the remaining slices back together electronically,
one has contracted the message—made it briefer
by 10%, or 25%, or 20%. Unlike speeding up a
record—which has that unpleasant Donald Duck
effect of shifting the voice to a higher pitch—
the new voice compressor speeds up the message
without any changes in tone. Results suggest
that spoken messages up to the rate of 300 to 400
words per minute are fully understandable.
This new capability opens rapid learning to the visually limited.
To all of us it may be the new avenue of learning—while traveling,
or jogging, or while engaged in other activities that preclude
reading.
Third generation robots with sensing capabilities are being added to
second generation reprogramming capabilities. Microprocessors and
integrated circuitry, together with remote sensing devices such as
optical scanners, have permitted the beginnings of a new field of
application for robots. We are just beginning to see the development
of machines which are able to carry out jobs which are demanding of
humans. Robots, for example, are capable of finer and more reliable
visual discrimination than most people. As robots become inexpensive,
they may replace human labor in many jobs. With robots:
— repetitive assembly line tasks can be performed more accurately
and more cheaply than with human labor;
— one robot may be reprogrammed to perform a number of different
household or industrial tasks as needs change;
— a robot cannot only determine when a job needs to be done, but it
can schedule itself over a number of tasks, perform the work, and
report in to a coordinating computer when it finishes or if
problems arise.
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t The home market and the office market have been cracked wide open by
microcomputers. Microcomputers are now becoming as coppionplace as
color TVs in the early 70s.
0 Finally, don't forget memory systems. On computers of all scale,
memory systems involving solid state, bubble, and laser memories are
coming into use. New smart memory systems involving what is
technically called back-end processing is adding new degrees of
flexibility and sophistication to memory storage.
The above is a brief description of the techniques and the technologies,
the tinker-toy of the telematics era. Let1-; turn now to some of the
technological systems capabilities available as combinations of these devices.
SOME SIGNIFICANT SYSTEMS AND SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENTS
Exhibit 3-4 lists some of the current functioning systems and software
capabilities coming out of the above technologies. Software is the program
and the instructions, in any telematic system.
• Computer utilities are analogous to electric utilities—plug in where
and when you will. Major utilities such as Illiac IV, ARPANET, and
the PLATO system at the University of Illinois are predecessors of
the new capabilities for large scale computer communication, informa-
tion, manipulation, and storage capabilities. Computer conferencing
is a widely practiced, although minor, art dependent on computer
utilities.
t Paralleling computer utilities are information utilities. Traditional
bibliographic searches are available in enormously rich systems such
as Lockheed, and commercial systems directed at home and small-
business users such as The Source. Teletext and videotex are
spreading worldwide. They effectively put information of any sort,
any size, any scope, any degree of cognitive content in the hands of
any user wired into the system. "Teletext" is used here as a generic
term for the broadcast of text and graphics as part of a television
signal. "Videotex" is suggested by the International Telegraphy and
Telephone Consultative Committee (CCITT) as the standard term for
the generic class of services that provide transmission on an inter-
active basis, typically through a telephone connection between a
television and a computer. ("Viewdata" is a term that is often used
interchangeably with "videotex".) The systems are illustrated in
Exhibits 3-5 and 3-6.
• Micro-scale home information systems are capable of tying into the
larger information utility, and also are capable of developing their
own custom tailored system for personal, business, or corporate
information.
• Communications satellites—COMSAT, INTELSAT, ATS-6—are rapidly being
complemented by other functioning information satellites, such as
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EXHIBIT 3-4: SOME SIGNIFICANT
• Micro home information system •
• Computer utilities •
Illiac IV
ARPANET •
PLATO
• Communication satellites
cRTS
weather
agriculture
• Other space satellites
ERTS
weather
agriculture
• Computer-assisted design (CAD)
• Computer-assisted
manufacture (CAM)
• PBX self-contained telephone
exchanges
SYSTEMS AND SOFTOKRE
Simulation modeHimrg
Aids to the handicapped
Electronic switching systems (ESS)
Mobile cellular
Information utilities
The Source
Lockheed
Prestel
Teletext
Videotex
Pattern recognition
voice
signature
• Encryption
earth resources satellites, weather satellites, and agricultural
monitoring satellites.
• The general area of pattern recognition permits the recognition of
voice and hand signatures and all other kinds of patterns. That
pattern recognition capability '"s expanding in every conceivable
direction.
• Computer-assisted design is working a revolution in ttoe physical
artifacts of our world. With computers it is now possible to not
only assist in the design of houses, structures, dams, bridges,
automobiles, and physical artifacts of every sort, but computers can
assist in the design of computers themselves.
• Simulation and modeling, through computer-assisted computational
techniques, have brought new levels of understanding CUT cur world—
from ecology to nuclear devices, from social behavior to kinesiology.
The computer has moved modeling and the use of mathematical tools to
a heretofore unimagined level of practicality.
• The PBX (private business exchange) is a self-contained
telecommunications exchange framed around microprocessor technology.
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EXHIBIT 3-5: A BROADCAST TELETEXT SYSTEM*
A Broadcast Teletext System
Teletext Decoder
EXHIBIT 3-6: A VIDEOTEX SYSTEM*
I Public Databases I
Dial or "usn-
Button Telephone
Centre! Computer
Keypad
A Videotex System
~
Business
Terminal
1 1
1::::
!::::
* Institute for the Future Newsletter, Vol. 1, 1379, Menlo Park, California,
pp.2 and 5, with permission. 38
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It effectively gives any small or large business the full capability
of its own internal telephone system.
Encryption is an increasingly important element of telematics systems.
By scrambling a message, encryption keeps unauthorized people from
access to information or from altering information. Medical records
might be encrypted to prevent unauthorized disclosure. A nuclear
power plant's telecommunications might be encrypted to prevent
interference. The basic technology of encryption is adding and
subtracting messages from random noise— to do this the sender and the
receiver use keys to specify how the coding is done and how it can be
undone. For example, in "stream ciphering", the sender adds the
message to a random sequence; the message is sent to the receiver
where the random sequence is subtracted and the message emerges. In
the past, encryption has been largely of interest to government
agencies — especially in national security. With the growing use of
telematics in the private sector, the need for private encryption
devices has increased; banks are among the major users of encryption.
As businesses move to greater use of telematics, encryption will also
increase; SRI reports that 25% of business persons they surveyed
admitted to covert intelligence gathering about competitors. Among
the data likely to be encrypted in the near future are: personnel
files, customer files, project reports, market intelligence, bids and
proposals, contracts, credit authorization, internal financial/
accounting reports, strategic plans, market forecasts, and financial
records .
Aids to the handicapped through telematics technology are on the
brink of a major improvement. Most of the problems of the handicapped
are afferent problems, efferent problems, or central processor
problems — problems of getting information in, getting controls to
work, or processing information in the head. These are the language,
the concepts, and the technology of telematics.
• ESS systems (electronic switching systems) are entering into major
central telephone systems in a way that give unbelievable systems
flexibility. The capability to convert from analog to digital form,
process the message, deliver it, and reconvert it to analog form is
just one of the ESS's accomplishments.
• Mobile communication systems are on the move. Mobile cellular systems
hold a technical promise of being able to have vastly greater numbers
of users on mobile systems. This is because it is now technically
possible— effectively, efficiently, and with less cross talk—to pack
mobile users in greater numbers into a given geographical area. In
principle, all the things you had to sit down at a fixed station to
do previously can now be done anywhere, at anytime. Mobile cellular
systems open up the possibility— in conjunction with som<= of the
other technologies — of the equivalent change from carving in stone to
going to paperbacks in one generation.
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EXHIBIT 3-7: ANCILLARY DEVICES
0 Credit cards • CAT scanne.s
I Social Security numbers • Analytical and monitoring devices
• Voting devices — chemical
• Master/slave manipulators — physical
• Transducers — biological
• Electrical/electronic implants • Man/machine interface
ANCILLARY DEVICES
Telematics is a flexible, protean, growing area. But even it has
ancillary technological developments which will interact with it. Exhibit 3-7
suggests some of these devices. How they will interact remains to be seen.
The key feature is that separately and together these devices are the instru-
ments for weaving human, natural, and social organisms more closely together.
For example, credit cards are now being developed that have their own brain on
a chip incorporated into them. Social Security numbers may be tha first step
in individual identifiers—perhaps usable in such things as energy rationing,
work passes, security systems, etc.
• Voting devices are now going well beyond the low technology of the
voting machine. It is now possible for people in small group meetings
to vote anonymously, instantly, and in real time. On cable systems,
they can vote collectively on a large scale, anonymously, and also in
real time.
• Master/slave manipulators, as a branch of automation and robotics
equipment, permit actions to be taker, in one physical place (control
headquarters) and to be manifested on an enormously larger, the same,
or smaller scale somewhere else. The manipulation of physical
devices from earth, on the moon, in space, in the deep oceans, in
mines, or inside the body, is not a promise—it is real.
• Transducers (devices which convert signals from one medium to
another) are central to telecommunications technology. But we are
now coming to understand the transducers in animals, and to develop
new transducers unknown to previous technology, and unknown in nature.
• From a biomedical point of view, electrical and electronic implants
in men and animals are already well-known and may become more
significant. Analytical devices in the chemical, physical, and
biological sciences are proliferating at such a rate and to such a
degree of fineness and sensitivity in control that they are themselves
subjects of independent scientific journals. The capability to use
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these techniques for analysis and monitoring is the opening wedge of
a new level of control over the natural and man-made environment.
CAT scanner is one example of a new diagnostic device which combines
x-rays, computers, and microprocessors to give an incredible new leap
forward in diagnostic capabilities.
• Finally, man to irachine interfaces, by which people can interact with
devices, is the subject of new refinements. We all sat in awe and
wonder as children at the one-man band capable of playing music with
ankles, toes, knees, elbows, wrists, mouth, and head. The one-man
band is perhaps the faint prototype of what man/machine interactions
may hold when it will be possible to convert a person from a linear
information receiver and processor into a multidimensional
polytransduced information receiver, processor, and activator.
BIG TELEMATICS SYSTEMS ;
Discussion of specific technological advances is necessarily prefatory,
because the meaning of any technology is changed when it is harnessed with
other technologies into a new system. For example, it is useful to know what
a microprocessor can do in general, but it is hard to grasp the real impact of
microprocessor technology until you can see it applied in an assembly line or
an automated office. A telematic system is a set of equipment, procedures for
its use, people who use the equipment and procedures, and the rules which
govern the complete process. Whatever its function, it is synergistic in that
the impact and power of the system as a whole are greater than the sum of the
components' power and impact. This section describes some telematic systems
which appear to have great potential consequences.
This section illustrates some of the new telematic systems which are
coming into use, shows how they developed, and explores what their meaning
seems to Le. It is important to remember that these systems are so new and so
different in their power and versatility that we do not know and cannot predict
where they will lead. But we can scope out some possibilities.
The goal of this study is to focus as much rigorous thinking and
empirical knowledge as possible, to systematically and clearly outline
possible and likely first, second, and third order impacts of telematic
systems on ourselves and on the natural and man-made environment.
Private Systems for Families and Businesses
Powerful telematic systems, formerly used only by agencies like NASA to
explore outer space, are suddenly available to families and businesses at a
cost which many can already afford and which seems likely to fall lower. Such
systems allow people to communicate in real time with virtually anyone in the
world using voice/and sight. They give instant access to organized bodies of
information. All the most current information is instantly available—from
world news to financial information. Additionally, this information can be
manipulated to make many useful calculations.
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What will it mean to have such systems in most homes and businesses?
One result will be what is now referred to as the office of the future. The
development of very large computer memories in combination with microprocessors
allow a real revolution in office work. Less labor and less paper will be
required through the use of large message switching systems which can shuttle
messages within an extensive network of offices, store them, and print them
out on request. Microprocessors have turned typewriters into text editing
machines. In this sort of office, many jobs will be eliminated, others
upgraded, and new ones created. Because physical proximity between many work
stations could be so unimportant as to be irrelevant, the office could be
organized differently in scores of places at different locations. • In.contrast,
computer systems allow much more centralized control over complex processes.
The authority structure of organizations may well change to centralize power.
Telematics will affect many jobs which are thought to be too dangerous
or unpleasant for humans to perform. For example, robots can be used to mine
minerals, to handle radioactive materials or other dangerous substances, to
wash the windows on skyscrapers, to maintain suspension bridges, etc. They
can also be used on assembly lines to replace striking workers. If this
happens, and it is quite likely that it will, then the whole structure of our
economy will be altered. While there may be fewer jobs in all, more jobs will
require high technical skill and thereby have higher intrinsic interest.
A third result will be the wired family. People can work from their home
information systems instead of going to the office. Children can be educated
through home units. Family members may never be compelled to leave the home-
desire may prevail. When the average family has access to as much information
as General Motors or the local government, or the local bookie, things will
change.
Some generalizations can be seen. Telematics for the masses may reduce
the differences between large and small units. For instance, small businesses
will be better able to compete with large ones. There may be less value, and
perhaps less incentive to organize on a large scale. The ordinary person can
have more direct control over information. One could get the news direct from
a satellite without benefit of network editing and analysis. One could do
without stockbrokers and travel agents. At the same time, because the handling
of information will be largely invisible in the sense that it will be stored in
a form that requires translation, the possibility of undetected chicanery
grows. While differences in some kinds of power at the upper end of the scale
may be reduced, the gap between the poor and the middle class will increase.
Those who cannot afford access to telematic systems will be more and more
disadvantaged. In general, while we cannot pin down exactly which changes
will occur, it is clear that widespread availability of telematic systems will
produce profound and far-reaching social, economic, and political changes.
Information Supply Systems
Private information systems are worthless without information to put in
them. While a good deal of information which they process, for example
business records, is privately generated, much of it is not. There is a need
for special purpose software packages and for large, on-line data bases.
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These data bases could supply current information on stock market prices,
entertainment and sports activities, and continuous news and weather. They
could also supply directory information for community services, bibliographic
data bases, and other data. They could also supply lessons or learning
packages of various sorts. The possibilities are endless. At present, the
technology for these private information systems is available. However, it
will be widely implemented only when there is a sufficient supply base and
the market.
The information supply can come from private suppliers like the Infomart
system which is designed to interface with the Canadian Telidon system. Or,
it can be publicly owned and developed, in which case it is known as a public
information utility. In either event, its development requires quite a large
information base which is appropriately indexed for retrieval, and kept up to
date. The system would also need a large computer to process the information,
a staff of people to operate and maintain it, and a means of transmitting the
information to subscribers. The power of the system lies in giving people
access to and the means to'manipulate a far greater body of information than
ever before.
Electronic Funds Transfer
EFT systems allow traditional banking functions to be carried out from a
distance, very quickly, and without shuttling pieces of paper. From the
automatic, 24-hour teller window, to larger, inter-bank exchanges, to
automatic transfers of funds from one account to another, EFT systems are
different in several ways from old-fashioned banking.
First, elapsed time is shorter. Second, security can be both tighter and
looser. For example, a person who has a bad credit rating or a history of
passing bad checks can be identified far more quickly and easily at a point of
purchase. On the other hand, since entry into the system is on the basis of
code numbers rather than signature or personal recognition, illegitimate entry
can be easier. The size and density of the electronic web which is created by
connecting up meny of the financial institutions in the world is such that a
criminal with access to the system can more easily find hiding places for
embezzled funds and cover his trail to the point where tracing a crime, or
even being sure that a crime was committed can be virtually impossible.
Third, the opacity of an electronic system to the average user can be
even more intimidating than the stuffiest, most self-righteous banker of the
past. If an error should occur, the mystification of the system is such that
the user may either assume that the system must be right, or else despair of
its ever being corrected. Fourth, the possibility of total centralization of
financial information raises all sorts of questions of individual privacy and
protection of civil liberties.
Electronic Mail
Electronic mail systems are those in which people type out messages on
keyboards or feed documents into telefacsimile machines and indicate the
recipient. Within a few minutes, the message can be automatically printed out
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at the recipient's location. Many corporations are finding electronic mail
preferable to their former internal word processing and filing arrangements.
Several nations are already seriously considering electronic mail operations.
Since not all messages need be printed out (the recipient could read messages
from the screen and electronically "throw away" the undesired ones), the
system could result in some saving of paper. It would also save some fuel.
However, it is not at all clear that the system would result in substantial
savings over conventional mail systems. But it could be an attractive option
in .nations which suffer from frequent postal workers' strikes and which have
widely dispersed populations. As with EFT, electronic mail raises privacy and
security questions. In some nations, particularly those where broadcast
communication is already nationalized, they are considering a completely
centralized telematics system.
Centralized Communications Systems
Several European nations are exploring the wisdom of centralizing and
consolidating their telephone, television, radio, and mail services into one
enormous, electronic pie. This sort of system could be augmented with large
public information utilities and electronic newspapers. Such a system is
likely to boggle the mind of many Americans with Orwellian nightmares. Never-
theless, what is possible is likely to be done somewhere and sometime. What
would it mean?
NEW CAPABILITIES
It was observed at the beginning of this section that telecommunications
is not new; people have been communicating over distance for some time. But
today's telecommunications in convergence with today's computation and infor-
mation technologies give people and institutions new capabilities. It is
important to extract the element of novelty from a developing technology if
one is to forecast its more extended impacts. This is so because as a new
technology is substituted for an older one and it is adapted, modified, and
improved, its outer form is often so changed that only the function remains.
Then as other products and systems are changed to better take advantage of the
technology, even its function is expanded or developed so that in the end the
new capability which the original invention offered is the only thread which
can be used to follow its evolving path.
What is useful in tracing back the development of technologies, the
concept of the capability, is also a good tool for anticipating its major
impacts. If it can be discerned, the new capability can be figuratively
tossed forward in time as a vehicle for projecting future impacts. The
specific development or non-development of any telematic device will depend on
a great number of economic, social, political, and accidental events. The
chance of widespread adoption of any particular product or device is not
readily calculated. However, many new capabilities can be expressed in several
ways by different technologies or technological systems. The capabilities
implicit in telematics, therefore, are particularly adaptable to the vagaries
of human culture. The chances are quite high that if a specific product or
device is not accepted, the new capability it represents will not be lost but
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will be applied or manifest in some other telematics format.
SOCIAL CHARACTERISTICS OF NEW TELEMATICS CAPABILITIES
Looking at telematics there are a large number of new capabilities, with
many quite specific ones mapping onto fewer, more general ones. At the
highest level of abstraction there are six.
1. Nev* control over time and space. Many telematic devices are so fast
that distance becomes a non-factor, allowing virtually instantaneous
perception of an event which may be half a globe away or far out in space.
The ability to perceive distant events as they occur and to cause distant
events to co-occur is new. Another new way to manipulate time is the capacity
of digital equipment to store messages and play then later. This permits
synchronous use of broadcast messages, and make very likely the demise of
"prime time". Already we can see the beginnings of around-the-clock business
as people become free to schedule their time in ways that suit them best.
Time-sharing computer systems also manipulate time by offering false
synchronicity. They manipulate information so fast that humans have the
illusion of using the same system at the same time when, in fact, they are
queued for short periods between messages. The relative slowness of human
information processing similarly allows several conversations to share
telephone lines at the same time unbeknownst to the users. The enormous
increase in variety, richness and texture of information which can now be
transmitted makes it feasible for dispersed individuals and institutions to
actively influence and participate in decision-making by reducing the advantage
of being physically on-site. This permits new decentralization of authority
and responsibility.
2. New power to obscure. The simple fact that new telematic systems can
be totally paperless means that many transactions can be virtually invisible
when they occur and without trace afterwards. Not only can information, fur.as,
or whatever goods the system controls be taken, but one may not know for sure
whether or when the theft occurred. Further, such thieves are extremely
difficult to track. On the social side of it, electronically mediated trans-
actions can protect one from social discrimination, providing one has
opportunity to learn the other system. It may, of course, serve the interests
of some to prevent others from learning the system, simultaneously increasing
its mystification, and their own power. Fear and alienation need not belong
only to those who do not have personal access to a system. Few users will
know a system well enough to feel in control. Everyone else is likely to be
susceptible to some degree of alienation.
3. New extensions of human action. Telematics can extend and to some
degree substitute for human capabilities of communication, guidance and
control, and use of information to create new information. One aspect of
this capability is new operational access to obscure places. Not only can we
now monitor and regulate from within machines or living bodies, but as
sensory robots are developed we can perform delicate and precise maneuvers in
hostile environments such as the deep sea, outer space, underground, or in the
presence of toxic materials. In another aspect, with the development of
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artificial intelligence, computers can be used to monitor and control systems
of other computers and consult people only when appropriate. In areas like
pattern recognition and encryption,machines can sometimes out-perform people.
The ability to build, test, and experiment with models of large systems under-
girds our growing capacity to manage complexity, thus extending enormously the
size of systems which ,ve may build and control.
4. New levels of efficiency and productivity. New telematic technologies
are generally conserving of energy, materials, and labor. When they are
substituted for other technologies, they are almost always more efficient.
They are able to enhance the productivity of other technologies. The uniform
product code substitutes for hand stamping of food and merchandise with prices
and makes more efficient use of the labeling which is done anyway at the
factory on most goods.
5. New power to connect and disconnect. Telematics creates networks,
linking together previously unconnected markets, regions, industries,
organizations, people, or data bases into systems. In doing so they create
new interdependencies among the units of the systems. The interdependences
themselves create vulnerability to disconnection.
6. New power to centralize and decentralize. With telematics, power need
not be associated with distance. Control and authority may be highly
centralized even when operations remain, or become, decentralized. Conversely,
telenatics can allow dispersed people or institutions to actively influence
and participate in decision-making, thus decentralizing authority and
responsibility. Similarly, the population may be geographically dispersed by
substituting telecommunication for transportation. Or, if It should be
advantageous to centralize population, telematic control can improve the
management of large cities.
Telematics is the agency for making ever more true the observation of
Teilhard de Chardin that mankind has added a tangible new dimension to the
structure of the earth—to the geosphere, the lithosphere, the stratosphere,
and the biosphere. This product, of our own creation, is the noosphere.
Technology has given the total knowledge of mankind a virtual independence
from any individual, any institution, any location, or any place. Shared and
common knowledge so perfuses and interrelates that a new web surrounds and
draws the world together. The noosphere, the sphere of knowledge, is a
tangible and indestructible part of global life.
As we stand on the brink of this knowledge and information revolution,
we find ourselves saddled with every encumbrance of the past. Myopic
perspectives, forced by day-to-day pressures and narrow self-serving interests,
clouds visions of the future. Nearly total indifference to a future beyond
tomorrow by legislators and public and private executives conspire to delay
bringing the benefits of modern telematics, first to all Americans and then to
all of mankind. Many fears—such as that of mass propaganda, invasion of
privacy, information overload, mind manipulation, technological unemployment,
trivialization by making the important accessible—reflect the mismatch
between these modern wonders and old frameworks. The excitement and the
promise of a technological revolution is not in how it will disserve the old
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and established, but in how it will transform the old and create the new-
including new values, new needs, and new levels of human fulfillment.
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SECTION 4
THE SOCIETAL CONTEXT OF TELEMATICS: LONG-RANGE TRENDS
National and international trends and conditions
will affect the pace and pattern of telematics1
development and the kinds and significance of
its impacts. The first part of this section
discusses indications that society is in the
midst of several transitions. The next part
identifies economic and social trends that will
push telematics1 development, and some which may
inhibit it. The third subsection describes
trends related to the environment, EPA's mission,
and telematics; it concludes that public support
for environmental protection will not decline
significantly in spite of changing political
attitudes.
>
Two exhibits display relationships between
long-range trends and the future of telematics.
WHY LOOK AT THE SOCIAL CONTEXT
The world of the next few decades will be the product of trends noted in
the past, as well as events which occur in the future. The relationship
between social change and technological change is a two-way street. Society—
its needs, values and culture, laws and institutions—guide the path and
direct the pace of technological development either deliberately or without
intent.
National and global trends and conditions will strongly affect:
• the pace of telematics development and adoption;
• the degree of market penetration;
• the magnitude and significance of benefits and costs;
• the way in which those benefits and costs are generally
perceived, and therefore the public acceptance of or resistance
to telematics.
»
As already noted, this study attempts no product-specific, quantified
market projections. The capabilities offered by telematics are so diverse
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and overwhelming that, short of a general societal collapse, it is
inconceivable that modern telematics will not be adopted and adapted to
nearly every institution and activity of our society sooner or later.
Particular applications may be delayed or blocked, but there are a nearly
endless number of combinations of elements, functions, devices, and systems to
provide equivalent services and capabilities. The pattern and timing of
adoption, the way social institutions adjust to telematics, and the changes
engendered thereby are more uncertain—at least during the next two decades.
Consideration of long-range national and global trends can discharge some
certainty by helping to understand the actions of major stakeholders in
telematics development.
Because American society is so technologically multifaceted, socially
diverse, and institutionally pluralistic, the trends which might be discussed
are almost without number. A trend, after all, is only a perceptual and
conceptual template used to impose a rational pattern on a bewilderingly
richly textured field of data. And for every trend which is identified, there
are likely to be countervailing trends or contrary pressures.
In addition, the period from 1970 to 2000 seems likely to appear, in
retrospect, as one of those times in human history when many trends of long
and stable duration approach saturation or undergo sharp inflections. One
factor in particular is having a profound effect: the recent realization that
the non-renewable resources on which Twentieth Century industrial society
depends, especially fuel and non^-fuel minerals, are not infinite. Although
ultimate limits are not in sight, readily available, high-grade deposits of
many materials are becoming more difficult to find and recover, and the costs
of these raw materials have therefore risen sharply or will do so in the
future.
A second factor is the increasing stress imposed by accelerating global
population growth on the world's natural support systems: forests, fisheries,
crop land, grasslands, wet lands, and the regenerative quality of the natural
environment—especially air, water, and soil quality.
Third, the breakup of the political dominance of two major world powers
which prevailed at the midpoint of this century, and the demands and increas-
ing power of the Third World nations to control their own resources and pursue
their own national economic and political objectives, create powerful
uncertainty about the continuation of long-range trends.
Daniel Bell, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Bertram Gross, and others have
attempted to identify those trends which will create the information society
of the future, using concepts like "post-industrial society," "the techno-
tronic age," and "friendly fascism." Their models may be persuasive, but they
leave largely unanswered the questions of how we move from here to there, and
whether there are other equally plausible futures. We recognize that there
have been periods in history which were major transition points for society—
the Renaissance and the Industrial Revolution, for example. Whether such
societal transitions can be seen and described while they are in progress is
an open question for many thinkers—but not for all.
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We must also bear in mind that unexpected and unplanned, even unforesee-
able, events can abruptly abort or reverse many long-established trends. A
"big surprise" such as a natural disaster, a nuclear war, an economic collapse,
or a catastrophic environmental "overshoot" (to use the language of "Limits To
Growth") cancels all bets.
What set of long-range trends—or what formulation of long-range trends—
is most important to keep in mind when discussing the future of telematics and
its effects on society and the environment? Bearing in mind the significant
characteristics of the technology which have been identified, we can consider
some trends which bear on the related social patterns and institutions. To
review, those characteristics of telematics, which were discussed at some
length at the end of Section 3, are:
• new control over time and space;
• new power to obscure the inner dynamics of processes, and thus
conceal vulnerabilities;
• new extensions of human action;
• new levels of efficiency and productivity;
• new power to connect and disconnect; and,
e new power to centralize and decentralize.
The following subsection discusses some trends which will encourage, and
some which may inhibit, rapid spread of telematics (Exhibit 4-1). The third
subsection considers some trends directly relevant to EPA responsibilities,
and suggests that these responsibilities will not diminish in spite of
changing political programs and priorities. A final exhibit (4-2) summarizes
a number of national and international trends in relation to EPA's mission.
TRENDS PUSHING AND INHIBITING TELEMATICS ADOPTION
The competitive position of American industry in international markets
has been weakening for twenty years. American science and technology,
although still strong, do not enjoy the preeminence in nearly all fields which
marked the first decade after World War II. Dependence on imports of energy
and materials has greatly increased. Rising energy costs, inflation, high
interest rates, and uncertain or high regulatory costs have discouraged
capital investment, accompanied by a declining rate of productivity growth.
Current national economic policy emphasizes recapitalization and
re-industrialization. Telematics is generally seen as an effective tool for
increasing productivity in manufacturing, agriculture, and services.
The nature of work and the workforce has been changing for some time;
manufacturing and agricultural jobs as a proportion of the workforce have
declined; production jobs have declined relative to non-production jobs; and
more than half of the workforce is in services—usually information handling.
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It. uorlt rap.
Cnxtfc
EXHIBIT 4-1: TRENDS DRIVING AND INHIBITING TELEMATICS
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*Numbers refer to trends. See Trend discussions in Exhibit 4-2.
This trend and the development of telematics are mutually reinforcing.
Tf.t v.crkforce is increasingly educated in terms of number of school years
completed. The percent with college education is increasing, and more and
more young workers have familiarity with computers. Nearly all are accustomed
to telematics, from TV and electronic games to automated teller machines.
This electronic literacy may reduce psychological resistance to telematics in
the workplace.
The rising costs of energy and materials, as easily recovered, high grade
deposits become relatively depleted, will encourage adoption of telematics
which are generally conservative of energy and materials. Thus, industrial
and commercial applications of telematics are apt to lead household market
development.
The U.S. will have a stabilizing and aging population over the next two
to three decades, and possibly a declining population thereafter. The rate of
household formation has been increasing much faster than population, and.is
more important for domestic applications of telematics. An increasing number
of adult households, many with two or more earners, a long-established trend
toward increasing affluence and predominantly middle-class lifestyle, and a
very slow shift toward moreequitable distribution of family income, all argue
for a healthy market for domestic and household applications of telematics.
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Americans in general feel that their health is good, and social indicators
point to continuing improvement. However, by some indicators, such as infant
mortality, the U.S. lags behind other advanced nations. Americans are
increasingly dissatisfied, the evidence suggests, with the quality, cost and
accessibility of health care delivery services. Medical diagnostic, treatment,
and emergency response applications of telematics will be stimulated by this
increasing demand which will be reinforced by increased numbers of older
citizens.
The breakdown of two-power dominance in international affairs, and the
:esulting multiplicity of active participants and conflicting national and
regional objectives, has steadily increased the need both fo^ international
consultation and coordination, and for 24-hour constant readiness to detect
and respond to diplomatic and military threats. Modern telematics is critical
for military security, modern warfare, peace-keeping efforts, and day-to-day
relations between countries. Both the scale and volume of international
economic activities and interdependence of national economies is continually
increasing. Military and diplomatic applications of telematics will vie with
industrial applications in pacing telematics development.
Two general trends will be strong drivers in all aspects of telematics
development. Nationally, the continuing movement toward population
decentralization and industry dispersion is both facilitated by and stimulates
adoption of telematics. This includes shifts from the Northeast and North
Central regions to the Sunbelt, shifts from urban to rural areas and from
large cities to smaller cities, shifts from manufacturing concentrations to
suburban shopping malls. In all nations and in all aspects of human
organization and activity there is a general and steady increase in the scale,
complexity, and interdependence of processes, institutions, and economic units.
Telematics and the trend toward complexity reinforce and feed each other.
For most of these trends, however, there are some counter-forces and some
important uncertainties. Continuing inflation and high interest rates or a
major depression would be likely to delay the telematics revolution for some
time. Although the U.S. population is growing at a sharply declining rate,
the baby boom generation is now entering the workforce in unprecedented
numbers. In addition, women are increasingly entering the labor force, and
this trend is likely to continue. There is also a new wave of immigrants,
and a tendency to postpone retirement because of inflation-depleted pensions
and threat of reduced social welfare programs. Competition for jobs could
tend to slow rising labor costs, and thus reduce some of the motivation for
industrial adoption of telematics. Unless the economy is strongly expanding,
telematics may not result in a net increase in employment as earlier waves of
automation have done. It is, in fact, likely that the number of entry-level,
unskilled, and semi-skilled jobs will decrease, and at a time when more are
needed to provide experience and channels of upward mobility for groups
entering the workforce. In the worst case, worker resistance to telematics,
rising social conflict, and neo-Ludditism could result. The adverse impacts
on employment opportunities could become an inhibitor to telematics adoption.
Inflation and/or recession, by eroding discretionary income, will also
slow penetration of the household market. There is already evidence that
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real income has declined in the last five years. In the case of health care
applications, emphasis now being placed on cost containment and possible
reductions in social welfare benefits—including Medicare and Medicaid—may
inhibit development and adoptions of telematics.
TRENDS RELATED TO THE ENVIRONMENT, ERA'S MISSION, AND TELEMATICS
Environmental problems are increasingly international, and even global,
in scope, as a result of the increasing scale of modern industry and technol-
ogy in advanced nations, the spread of industrialization to Third World
countries, and depletion of biological support systems as a result of
population pressure. Some of the trans-national problems, such as acid rain,
are becoming international issues between countries. International concern
for global problems will increase the need for monitoring and sharing data
between nations.
The ability to detect and monitor slow-building, long-range, and low-
level cumulative health effects of pollutants is increasing, and it is out-
pacing development of control techniques. Further, as medical and biological
sciences make breakthroughs in prevention and cure of cancer and degenerative
diseases, as they have already with infectious diseases, public attention and
concern will increasingly focus on environmental threats to health. This
Increasing concern will reinforce the need for, and the demand for, environ-
mental management and for appropriate telematic systems to carry it out.'
The increase of world population by 75% in three decades, a growth rate
which could reach maximum sustainable levels in about fifty years, is strain-
ing the productive limits of natural systems: grasslands, crop lands, forests,
and fisheries. Increasing demand for water, contamination of ground water,
and erosion of soil are serious concerns globally and even in the U.S. The
capacity of the natural environment to absorb damage and replenish support
systems—its carrying capacity and regenerative capability—is diminished by
loss of undeveloped and uninhabited lands. Thus, in spite of advances in
environmental legislation and regulation in the U.S., and increasing attention
in the rest of the world, environmental problems will worsen.
Indoor environment is a newly important concern which is exacerbated by
actions designed to conserve energy used for heating and cooling. One of the
relatively few direct environmental concerns associated with telematics is
the emission of ozone which will make indoor pollution worse.
Public support for environmental protection programs has been increasing
and is likely to continue in spite of a general shift in attitudes against
Federal government activism and regulation. As environmental problems become
more visible and more threatening, as international pressure to control
pollutants which cross national boundaries increases, and as scientific
advances continue to reveal cumulative effects of pollutants on health, public
concern may well increase. Environmental ism is now well institutionalized in
bureaucracies, supporting industries (environmental law, environmental
publications), and organized constituent groups, all of which have a strong
tendency to be self-maintaining.
53
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The renewed emphasis on local and state initiatives and control, and
recognition of regional differences, may, however, make it necessary to
develop new strategies for carrying out EPA's basic ..n'ssion and responsibility.
Insistence on detailed regulations and standards as the sole strategy is likely
to evoke strong resentment and resistance over the present decade."""^
Exhibit 4-2 relates trends to implications for telematics and suggests
some further implications for EPA's mission.
EXHIBIT 4-2: TRENDS RELATING TELEMATICS TO EPA'S MISSION
TRENDS
1. The coopetitive position of American Industry
and technology in world markets has been
weakening.
Important factors are aging capital stock.
dependence on Import of petroleum and
critical Industrial materials, foreign
competition for raw materials and for
markets, declining availability of high
grade, easily recoverable, domestic min-
eral deposits, and declining rates of
growth in productivity resulting in part
from high interest rates, energy costs,
regulatory costs, and general inflation.
Current national economic policy puts
high priority on innovation, recapital-
ization.
2. The nature of work and the distribution
of employment opportunity has been steadily
changing, as the U.S. mov^s from a nanu-
Tacturing to a service and information"
economy.
The proportion of total workforce engaged
in manufacturing and agriculture has
greatly declined. The proportion in
services has increased to 53*. Automation,
especially computers, has generally in-
creased the number of Jobs when the economy
was expjnding; but decreased employment In
some J3b categories and some Industries
as a whole. Further automation, espec-
ially Industrial robotics and other
foros of telematics, is likely to
decrease the number of entry-level,
seal- or unskilled jobs.
3. Wonen are entering the workforce in increas-
ing numoers,
This is a well-established trend which is
projected to continue. It could be reversed
during a period of very high unemployment
coupled with relatively high (government)
guarantee of family Incomes, but this is an
unlikely scenario. Women are disproportion-'
ately concentrated in low-level, white collar
jobs (which may be reduced or constrained by
telematics), and in low-level manufacturing
jobs where they tend to constitute a labor
bank used to buffer fluctuations in the
need for workers.
IMPLICATIONS FOR TELEMATICS RELEVANCE TO EPA'S MISSION
Telematics Is a means of
increasing productivity
in extractive Industries
manufacturing processes,
management, and services.
Emphasis on recapitaliza-
tion will encourage tele-
matics; failure to control
Inflation/recession would
slow telematics.
This trend will reinforce,
and will be reinforced, by
telematics* adoption.
Massive reindustrlaliza-
tlon and recapitalization
implies Increasing domestic
extraction and production
of raw materials, increas-
ing volume of production,
and ircreaslng levels of
mining. Industrial, and
end-use waste streams.
Indirect, see Exhibit 4-1
Telematics in many occupa- Indirect, see Exhibit 4-1
tions decreases the advantages
which males have over females
(physical strength, long-estab-
lished credentials, old-boy
networks). But telematics is
very likely to decrease the
number of entry-level, semi-
and unskilled jobs. Continu-
ing entry of women Into the
workforce may (a) be slowed by
telematics' adoption, or '•-) by
lowering the average cost of
labor, remove some of the impetus
for telematics' development.
54
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T'iP!.V3 GUDC SHUT
EXHIBIT 4-2: TRENDS RELATING TELEMATICS TO ERA'S MISSION (cont'd)
*. American workers are staying In school
longer out may net be~proportionatelv
better educated.
Average number of years of school Ing has been
Increasing for many decades, and about 75X of
the workforce has completed four years of high
school. Test scores Indicated that the quality
of education may be declining. But younger
workers have bten liberally exposed to tele-
•atlcs. usually even computers, since child-
hood.
Younger workers may be less Indirect, see Exhibit 4-1
likely to seek the unskilled
or semi-skilled jobs which can
be replaced by telematics. If
there is a "naturally acquired
electronics literacy", this may
decrease psychological resistance
to telematics. A larger propor-
tion of workers have college
training which will increasingly
include familiarity with computers.
5. U.S. population is stabilizing and could even
begin to decline in the future.
Host demographers expect a gradual return to
the long-established trend of a slowly declin-
ing birthrate, following a 'baby boom" (1945-65)
and a -baby bust* (1965-7). But if the baby
bust continues, the population could begin to
decline during the 21st Century. The current'
too-large generation will cause intense con-
petition for jobs for the next few decades.
The population Is aging, but the ratio of
dependents to workers is decreasing.
6. Household formation Is increasing much more
rapidly than population.
The average number of people per household
dropped in one generation (1940-78) from 3.7
to 2.9. Important factors are divorce, single
parent households, increasing numbers of
elderly living alone, households of unrelated
adults, etc. Rising housing and energy costs
nay slow the rate of household formation, but
it is likely that more households would consist
of earning adults.
7. The U.S. Population has become steadily more
•iddle class and affluent"
Talcing education, income, and occupation to
be Indicators of social class, Americans are
overwhelmingly middle class. Per capita
incooe in constant dollars doubled from
1950-77. but may have since declined slightly.
Evidence indicates a slight gain in equity
of distribution of income.
8. The health and social welfare of Americans
are by rust measures good and improving, but
they lag behind some other advanced nations.
Host Americans rate themselves as being in
good health. Mortality from infectious dis-
eases has fallen sharply, and life expectancy
has been increasing since 1900. By some
measures, such as infant mortality, America
lags behind other industrialized countries.
The costs of medical care have escalated.
Social welfare programs in the U.S. are below
those in most other advanced nations. Cur-
rent political attitudes point to a desire
to reduce or constrain social welfare guar-
antees and benefits.
A stable or declining pop-
ulation, predominantly adult
and with relatively few depen-
dents, may provide an excel-
lent market for telematics.
However, increasing competi-
tion for jobs for the next
few decades may tend to con-
strain labor costs and
reduce some of the impetus
for adoption of telematics
by industry.
Domestic utilization of tele-
matics is probably more de-
pendent on household forma-
tion rates than on absolute
population growth. An in-
creasing number of affluent
adult households would ex-
pand the telematics market.
Unless this trend is revers-
ed, there will be discre-
tionary income available
for purchase of telematics,
and cultural values will
support such purchases.
Increased demands on medical
care would encourage medical
applications of telematics.
But emphasis on cost con-
tainment may constrain
their adoption.
The changing age structure
of the population could imply
changes in demands made on
the environment, e.g., less
emphasis on recreation, open
space, and wilderness lands.
more emphasis on urban and
Indoor environments (which
may be affected by telematics).
Larger numbers of households
implies greater per capita
consumption of materials and
per capita waste production.
increased construction of
housing, and generally greater
stress on the environment.
There may be more emphasis on
Indoor environment as new
houses and apartments are
made more airtight.
Kiddie class affluent people
make greatest demands for
quality of environment and
are EPA's natural constituents.
They also, however, place
great strain or. the environ-
ment through li'jh consump-
tion rates.
The conquering of infectious
disease and progress in reduc-
ing degenerative diseases or
cancer will tend to focus
public attention and concern
on diseases associated with
environmental causes.
55
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EXHIBIT 4-2: TRENDS RELATING TELEMATICS TO ERA'S MISSION (con't)
Population is shifting toward the Sunbelt and
away from concentrated urban areas to rural
areas.
For the past 15 years there has been strong
movement toward the South and West. In ad-
dition, population is shifting from larger to
. smaller cities, fro* metropolitan tp non-
•etropolitan counties, and from urban to rural
areas. This progressive decentralization
appears to stem fro» a large variety of factors
related to land, housing, and energy costs; dif-
ferential tax rates; urban congestion, crime.
and pollution; changing lifestyles;
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EXHIBIT 4-2: TRENDS RELATING TELEMATICS TO ERA'S MISSION (cont'd)
12. International relations and military security
reflect this increasing scale and complexity.
Modem communications allowed the development of
international cooperation to deal with trans-
national problems. They also allowed--and
thereby made necessary—the consideration
of local affairs in the context of multi-
national rivalries and objectives, the use of
public information as a weapon of diplomacy and
of war, and constant readiness and instant
response to any threats.
Further development of tele- N.A.
mattes is central to modern
diplomacy, warfare, and peace-
keeping. It is likely that
national security considera-
tions will be a major driver of
telematics development.
13. The real costs of energy and raw materials is
rising and will continue to rite.
A long-established trend toward declining
energy costs was reversed in the last decade.
The real costs of most raw materials will rise
In the future quite apart from the effects of
any possible actions by supplier nations. Known
deposits of hlgn grade, easily accessible ores
will gradually be used up, and it will cost more
to recover dispersed or lower grade minerals
even with improved technologies. There will
also be increasing coapetition for world resources.
14. Environmental problems are increasingly inter-
national and ever qlooat in scope.
This is largely the result of the increasing
scale of industry in advanced nations, and the
spread of industrialization to Third World
countries. Examples of problems which cut
across national boundaries or invade the
world's commons are pollution of oceans and
aquifers, oil spills, acid rain, increases in.
atmospheric CO,, and the potential for radio-
active fallout.
15. The ability to detect and monitor slow-building,
Tonq-ranqe. and low-level but comulative health
eTfects of pollutants is increasing; it has out-
paced control tecnnoioqyj
This results from rapid advances in scientific
knowledge and Instrumentation. Recently
developed analytical techniques allow detec-
tion of previously undetectable levels.
16. Environmental support systems and renewable
resources are under intense and increasing
pressure.
Energy-conserving and mater-
ials-conserving applications
of telematics will be stimu-
lated. But any large require-
ment for strategic and crit-
ical materials for production
of telematics devices could
inhibit their development.
Worid population increased 7SX in the last three
decades and could reach maximum sustainable
levels in the next fifty years. Forest acr;age
is declining, grasslands are diminishing, crop
lands and fisheries are reaching their produc-
tive limits. The nusber of species is declin-
ing. Pressure on water supplies is increasing,
and depletion and contamination of groui.jwater
is already a significant problem in the U.S.
The general capacity of the natural environ-
ment to absorb damage ard replenish natural
systems is being diminished by reduction of
underdevelopment bid uninhabited lands.
International concern about
such problems will increase
the need for telematics for
monitoring and for sharing
data among nations.
Environmental monitoring
will push the development
of telematics.
In spite of advances in en-
vironmental legislation in
the U.S. and increasing at-
tention in other countries,
environmental conditions and
the problems of environment-
al management are likely to
worsen in the future. This
will tend to encourage envi-
ronmental fpplicstions of
telematics, both for the U.S.
and for other countries.
Increased domestic extraction
of dispersed minerals or in-
creased secondary recovery
will tend to Increase the en-
vironmental costs, as well as
the direct monetary costs of
assuring materials supplier
There will be pressure on
EPA *:o reduce regulatory costs
or barriers.
EPA work will gain a new inter-
national perspective and the
agency will be called on for
assistance in formulating
policy with regard to these
problems.
As other causes of -lisease
are redyced, Americans are
likely to pay more attention
to diseases associated with
environmental causes.
Public concern in the U.S.
and official attention in
other countries are likely
to sustain basic political
support for environmental
protection programs and
agencies.
57
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EXHIBIT 4-2: TRENDS RELATING TELEMATICS TO ERA'S MISSION (cont'd)
)7. Public support for environmental protection Is
Increasing and u luely to continue.
Currently politic*) attitudes appear to support
deregulation and a general diminution of Federal
activity in favor of state and local control.
But evidence suggests that public support for
environmental protection will not disappear.
Problems, as noted above, are likely to becone
more risible. Environmental diseases nay be
better recognized. Most importantly, environ-
mental constituencies are we11-established and
Institutionalized. They are reinforced by 1m.
supporting irdustrles (environmental lav. envi-
ronmental publishing), bureaucracies, and
organized interest groups, all of which tend
to be strongly self-maintaining.
Continuing need for pollu-
tion control technology and
monitoring devices will push
environmental applications
to serve needs of Federal,
state and local governments
and private sector nanagers.
EPA's basic aission and basic
constituency will continue.
but the agency may have to
•wke changes In its implemen-
tation strategies and proce-
dures.
18. Values, attitudes, and "orei In the U.S. are
increasingly diverse, flexible, and unstule.
In the last two decades, successive popular
movements wnlch at first appeared to represent
snail but highly vocal minorities, have suc-
ceeded in mobilizing public opinion and forc-
ing significant and apparently lasting social
Change (civil rights, environmental protection.
stop-the-war. femtnisn). More politically con-
servative popular movements (the Moral Majority,
Proposition 13) are now enjoying Increasing
Influence. More diversity in life style, dress.
speech, arts, and customs and values appears
acceptable than was tolerated in the past.
This diversity and instabil-
ity introduces considerable
uncertainty regarding public
acceptance or resistance to
telematics, at least in the
workplace. Either enthusiasa
for a new wave of high technol-
ogy which «ould reaffirm the
superiority of fctertcan science
and industry, or. on the other
hand, a negative reaction against
telematics as a tool of the
technocratic elite, or 'Big
Brother*, or a destroyer of
Jobs—or, indeed, both of these
extrene views at the saoe time-
are within the realm of credibil-
ity.
This trend runs counter to
and-places caveat on the
trend presented just above.
58
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SECTION 5
IMPACTS OF TELEMATIC TECHNOLOGIES
Anticipating future impacts of emerging technol-
ogies necessarily rests on a mixture of informed
judgment, creative imagination, and extrapolation
of current knowledge, rather than on empirical
data. This section concentrates on the primary
interests of EPA: the biota, public health and
safety, and the technoeconomy as the conduit and
mediator for secondary environmental impacts.
Possible risks of non-ionizing radiation from
microwave technology is discussed as a special
case. There are three areas where impacts will
depend on resolution of significant inadequacies
of the social infrastructure for telematics:
systems vulnerabilities, technical and legal
integration structures, and issues of privacy,
security, and access. A final subsection discusses
appropriate criteria for evaluating the importance
of the potential impacts for EPA research planning.
INTRODUCTION
Section 3 summarized the state-of-the-art in telematic technologies.
While all of the technologies are developed, or developing, they are not all
in common use now, and the timing of their dissemination will be affected by
the social context discussed in Section 4. Because of the uncertainties
involved in any discussion of the future, anticipating the potential impacts
of technology must involve not only extrapolation of current knowledge but
informed opinion and some orderly speculation and creative imagination. The
assessment team called this "educating our guesses".
During this assessment we examined well over a thousand documents and
reports, and talked with about one hundred experts in all aspects of telematics.
We discovered only a few investigations into the longer run and indirect
impacts of telematics. Two outstanding exceptions to this pattern are the
research into the safety of non-ionizing radiation, and analysis of the extent
to which telecommunications may or might substitute for transportation.
Virtually all consideration of the possible impacts of telematics, short-
range or long, is focused on their benefits. Some questions have been raised
about privacy, civil liberties, monopolistic practices, and the vulnerabilities
of some very large-scale systems. In terms of the environment, public health
59
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and safety, for many people it is unimaginable that telematics could do any
physical harm to living things. This is a not quite accurate perception of
the technology.
But indeed the assessment concluded that telematics in general is not
only benign but very beneficial; the potential benefits appear to far outweigh
the potential costs. There are, however, two caveats. We cannot merely assume
that all potential social benefits will automatically be captured by the
public. Also, it is not safe to ignore the potential costs we can foresee or
to assume that others will not appear. Nevertheless, the potential benefits
of telematics are so large as to be difficult to describe, and the potential
social costs are as yet either most uncertain or at least poorly understood.
As discussed in Section 2, the short-run effects of new technology tend
to arise from its substitution for some other technology in performing a
familiar activity or filling a felt need. In the course of this activity,
institutions adjust to the characteristics of the new technology; and new
capabilities may come to light which in turn stimulate the awareness of further
needs. Important, long-range impacts of technologies are likely to result from
the new capabilities. It is also important to watch for subtle impacts, which
seem insignificant but which are highly aggregative over large populations or
long periods of time. Thus we began to educate our guesses by looking for:
• impacts which occur simply from the existence of the technology;
• impacts which occur from the substitution of the new technology
for older methods of doing things; and,
• impacts which may occur as the new capabilities inherent in the
new technology are exploited.
We further educated our guess by factoring in the likely effect of the
economic, social, and political trends on the application of the technology.
The pace of development and marketing with telematic technologies is so
rapjd-that "the future is now". The applications of telematics are happening
"unevenly but at great speed. Some developments are almost instantly exploited,
while others more slowly flower. Therefore, it is difficult to separate fact
and conjecture regarding the field as a whole.
Because telematics is a collection of related technologies which have the
potential for application to virtually every aspect of life, this analysis
assumes that small perturbations in the pace or choice of developments will
have limited effect. For example, if insufficient capital or market
resistance were to block the widespread use of one technology for several
years, it would likely make little difference in the longer.run. It is so
because the impacts which will be felt after the year 2000 are coming from
the exploitation of the new capabilities, common to several telematic technol-
ogies, not simply of one technology. To illustrate, there are at least two
new methods for fast, distant, transmission of messages; digital coding and
(1) transmission via lasers and fiber optics, or (2) microwave transmission
relayed by satellite. If development of either one were to be stymied, the
60
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Other would still provide cheap, fast, high-volume transmission.
The goal of this section is to identify the reasonably significant and
likely impacts of telematics in the United States in the next 20 to 25 years.
They are organized according to the three primary foci of the Environmental
Protection Agency: the biota, human health, and the technoeconomy. Dividing
the material in this way may introduce some distortion, but some distortion
inevitably accompanies a systematic description of any complex matter.
Because the study plan is to couch the conclusions in terms of benefits from
telematics which may not be realized, and hazards from telematics which may
not be avoided unless EPA acts, the impacts are also presented in terms of
possible benefits and hazards (see Exhibit 5-1). These benefits and hazards
are presented within each EPA focus in the logical order of those which occur:
(1) simply from the existence of the technology; (2) from its substitution for
older methods; and (3) from its new capabilities.
i
POSSIBLE IMPACTS ON THE BIOTA
- In the biota we include the earth and its air, water, soils, mineral
resources and living things, except for human health which will be discussed
in the next section, and those minerals, animals, and plants which are the
direct object of the human technoeconomy. Among the latter are agriculture,
commercial fishing, and mineral extraction, which will be treated in the final
portion of this section.
Impacts from the Technology Itself
In all of this research into opportunities and problems, one direct
impact of telematic technologies on the biota appears potentially and
significantly detrimental: the effects of non-ionizing radiation. Because of
the large amount of uncertainty and controversy about this subject, we have
covered it as a separate case, discussed in the subsection below.
Aside from this concern, direct impacts from the physical characteristics
of the technology (as opposed to those which flow from the capabilities it
offers) would be limited to those which flow from the construction of
facilities, the manufacturing of devices and hardware, the raw materials
required, and the maintenance and operation of systems. In the literature
and research reports concerning telematics, there is little written on these
subjects but no important concerns appear to have arisen. In general,
telematics is a dispersed and decentralized technology requiring relatively
few large construction projects, and while a few controversies have arisen
about such sites (for example, a 370 ft. microwave radio tower in Wilton,
Connecticut, and the SANGUINE/SEAFARER submarine communications sites), the
concern has been because of supposed radiation effects. There appears to be
nothing in the construction, manufacture, materials requirements, or
maintenance of telematics systems which is both unique to telematics and of
significant new environmental concern.
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EXHIBIT 5-1: TELEMATICS-OPPORTUNITIES AND PROBLEMS
BIOTA
HEALTH
AND
SAFETY
POTENTIAL
OPPORTUNITIES/BENEFITS
• Monitoring and control mechanisms
for air. water, solid waste,
noise, radiation pollution control.
• Localized traffic control.
• Natural resource management (ex-
ploration, detection or tracking
of cinerals, fish schools, herds.
forest or crop disease, etc.)
• Improved weather monitoring, pre-
diction, and codification.
• Reduced pollution from transpor-
tation (uncertain).
• Use of robots in hazardous tasks-
and hostile environments.
• Detection & aonitoring of pol-
lutants in workplace.
• Detection & Monitoring of pol-
lutants in hone and office.
• Detection & monitoring of pol-
lutants 1n the environment.
• Devices for diagnosis and treat-
ment.
• Emergency services coordination
and routing.
• Rente consultation.
• Medical education.
* Medical information systems.
TECHNO- • Direct economic growth (elec-
ECONOMY Ironies industry, exports).
• Increased productivity in manu-
facturing, services, agriculture,
mining, etc.
• Miniaization of negative impact?
or social dislocations resulting
fron decentralizations.
TRANS- • New capabilities in large and
SOCIAL diverse fields,of activity.
POTENTIAL
PROBLEMS/COSTS
Effects of microwave radiation
(uncertain).
Future disposal of toxic substances
used In some telematics devices.
• Effect of microwave radiation
(uncertain).
• Toxic fumes from telematics devices
involved in fires.
• Ozone emissions.
• Physical and psychic stress from VDT.
• Increased costs of medical services.
• Increased dlsequities in health
care delivery.
• Increased impersonality In medical
care.
• Impact on employment, levels (uncer-
tain), reduction of unskilled/semi-
skilled jobs in some categories.
• Retraining of workers.
• Disadvantages for some sma'l, under-
capitalized businesses.
• Disturbance of relationships between
management and labor; erosion.of con-
stituency for occupational safety.
• Systematic vulnerability from reliance
on telematics.
• Need to develop: structures for syn-
thesis of Information, more sophisti-
cated programming; revised laws/regu-
lations to fit new activities and
new problems.
• Need for national and international
Information/communication policies.
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Impacts From The Substitution Of Telematics For Other Technologies
There are two primary areas of impact on the biota from the substitution
of telematics for other technologies: a cluster of benefits from the use of
telematic monitors and control devices and the environmental benefits or
stress which may result from substitution of telematics for transportation.
Much of EPA's work involves monitoring air, water, noise, solid waste,
and radiation pollution. Older spot-and-check-and-extrapolative methods of
monitoring were far less precise than newer telematic methods. Imprecision
can lead to errors of too much, as well as too little, restriction. Because
they may be remote, telematic sensors can ba a good deal cheaper than manually
collected samples, so monitoring organizations can use more of them and sample
more often, and even automatically randomize the sampling process. Data can
be collected from more points. By feeding this data into computerized
analytical systems based on sophisticated models, a great deal of flexibility
is gained. For example, in water programs, by monitoring a number of
pollution-point sources and other points which are not near sources of
pollution, it is possible to learn about the effects of specific discharges on
a watershed, river basin, bay, or other water system. Such knowledge can be
used to inform far better decisions about the management of effluents./j.
Similarly dramatic benefits can be gained in monitoring pollution which
•is due to automotive traffic. The Stanford Research Institute's 1977 report
notes that telecommunications facilities themselves are usually unobtrusive,
make no direct contribution to pollution, and entail little direct or indirect
energy consumption. In one test of the capability to monitor and organize
traffic flow via coordination of traffic signals, results "showed a reduction
of 30% in vehicle-miles traveled in the morning peak hour for tue same number
of trips." Among the impacts on the biota.which this implies, is the
potential to reduce the "need to build extensive new facilities that may
inflict severe environmental damage," such as airports and expanded highway
sys terns. /_2
Monitors, in conjunction with computer graphics technology, can present
a live picture of smog patterns and densities as they develop, just as the
smoke in a wind tunnel shows aerodynamic flows. The benefits in dealing with
the problem are obvious—particularly hard hit areas of a metropolitan area
can be warned, traffic rerouted, or even evacuated. In addition, the dramatic
impact to be derived from such displays may help those trying to encourage
car pool ing andmass transit use. Computer mediated simulation can build on
this new level of conceptualization and ability to manipulate knowledge-to
improve the public's understanding of the trade-offs involved.
In terms of noise pollution, monitoring devices could rapidly determine
noise levels and be used in the same manner as a speed radar gun. As the car
with the broken muffler rumbles by, an officer could take a reading and
present the driver with evidence that a noise ordinance has been violated.
The transportation/telecommunications trade-off. It is generally
conceded that telematics has substantial potential to increase "locational
freedom for office establishments"./! In other words, some people would be
63
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able to work in their homes; some large offices could te broken up into small
dispersed work centers distributed throughout a metropolitan area or even over
larger regions; and there would be little reason for similar institutions to
be clustered as they now often are—for example, financial districts in New
York and London, or Madison Avenue's advertising row. Although in theory
telematics could allow nearly unlimited dispersion, the vision of the nation's
"information handlers" (now more than 50% of the workforce) all working at
home terminals is unlikely in the next few decades. It seems likely that
professionals who typically work in a more or less independent way
(researchers, consultants, editors, etc.) and some categories of support
personnel (e.g., word processors, programmers) would be chiefly affected at
first. The literature shows little consensus on how many people this would
include. The modularization and dispersal of large offices into smaller
decentralized units may, however, have a significant effect eventually in
reducing traffic or constraining its growth.
i The possibility of telematics replacing some types of transportation is a
question of considerable importance. Because so much money is spent on trans-
portation, even a 5% or 10% substitution would have significant results.
There has been speculation that as telematic services improve and become
cheaper, a more or less direct trade-off will occur.
There has been a good deal of research on people's decisions regarding
travel and communication, and many attempts to measure the possible size of a
trade-off and its impacts. The research has focused primarily on two areas:
the Implications of transportation/communication substitution for energy
demand, and its prospects for decentralization and its results. We speak to
the second subject in a later section.
The two major areas in which people have projected energy savings from
the substitution of communication for travel are urban commuting and long
distance business travel. Since 42% of all urban transportation is tied to
commuting to work, it appears that the ability of teleinatics to allow
dispersal to suburban work areas or the home, and thus reduce commuting, could
result in substantial fuel savings. Specifically, "having half of all office
employees work in neighborhood office centers six out of every seven working
days could save 240,000 barrels (of fuel) per day. If these same employees
worked at home...the savings would be 320,000 barrels per day." /4
It seems safe to say, according to SRI, that there would be:
(a) "important localized (but not city-wide) reduction in traffic flows,
accidents, and air pollution;" (b) "increased potential effectiveness for
central area traffic restraint and environmental improvement plans;" and,
(c) "relatively slight reductions in noise level subjective effects."/^
Traffic congestion, air pollution, and noise are, city planners believe,
among the important factors that drive people out of cities, desolating
central business districts and eroding the urban tax base. But improvement of
the urban environment by dispersing the people and activities which make it
urban would seem to be self-defeating. Whether some balance point can be
found and maintained is still an open question.
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The question of telecommunication/transportation trade-offs, on long
distance rather than commuting travel, has not been satisfactorily resolved in
social science research. Kenneth Friedman reports that 505. of inter-city air
travel is business related./^ It has been postulated that "if total business
air travel were reduced 20%, it would save roughly 50,000 barrels of jet fuel
per day...Substituting 20% of all business travel by auto would save another
80,000 barrels per day."/£ Saving this amount of fuel would of course not
only reduce oil imports but would curtail air pollution from automobiles to
some degree. Reduction in travel could also lead to reduction in future
taking of land for highways and airports and therefore less disruption of
habitats, soil erosion, highway runoff, deforestation, and noise.
Exhibit 5-2 summarizes the line of research looking to substitution of
telematics for travel. However, there is considerable doubt that—if other
factors remain the same—this substitution really occurs. The telephone is
said to have increased the demand for travel by more efficiently coordinating
schedules, routing, and so on./8_ Harkness reports, "if the latent demand
for travel greatly exceeds the available time and budget, trips substituted by
teleconferencing will simply free time and budget to satisfy latent demand."/9
Many observers conclude that past improvements in communications
broadened market areas and increased the scale of commercial, social, and
intellectual exchanges, which in the long run increased the reasons for long
distance travel. The historical evidence is of course confounded by improve-
ments in quality of, and reduction of time and money costs of, transportation
during the same period. This improvement, however, may have been reversed
recently. Congestion, deterioration of transportation systems or services,
increased distance to airports, as well as energy costs, increase the
frustration factor. It is possible that this may make substitution for
transportation more attractive than in the past.
Most of the work on telecommunications/transportation trade-offs was done
before the price elasticity of demand for gasoline became apparent and the
price of oil forced Americans to use more fuel efficient cars. Since then,
the effects of rising oil prices have become a new primary variable, and this
throws much of the earlier research into question. We conclude that energy
costs are likely to be a far more important factor in reducing transportation
than the existence of telematics. However, as Friedman and Obermann note,
"recent substantial improvements in automobile fuel economy...encouraged by
foreign competition and high gasoline prices, have for many actually decreased
the cost of automobile travel ."/10_ In recreational travel, "super-saver"
airline fares, resulting in part from deregulation, have recently increased
vacation travel by airplane; however, the general trend in airfares is up, to
reflect energy costs.
In short, there is little evidence that telecommunications substitutes
for travel, other factors being equal. That is, telecommunications itself is
not a prime driver. However, if higher energy costs and increasing frustra-
tion incline people to reduce travel, telecommunications are likely to be a
facilitator since it would moderate social disruption.
Automobile applications of telematics, which is already beginning, should
contribute significantly to fuel efficiency and to reduction of emissions. It
65
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EXHIBIT 5-2: NONTRAVEL SUBSTITUTES THAT MAY SATISFY TRAVEL-GENERATING
PERSON-TO-OBJECT INTERACTIONS
Interactions
Face-to-face
Written or
printed
Audiovisual
Audial only
Type Of
Contact
Parties
one-to-one
one-to-many
one -to -many
several-to-
several
one-to-one
one-to-many
one-to-one
one-to-many
Nature
Of Activity
Purpose
Of Trip
work
personal
business
work
work
social
work
work
*.jrk
work
Purpose
Of Trip
Examples
private conference
visit to doctor
speech, demunstration
conference, family
reunion, party
memo, business letter,
report
presentation or
training film
dictaphone
paging system
Examples
Suggested
Nontravel Substitutes
2 -way audiovisual
—
2-way audiovisual
2 -way audiovisual
fascimile transmission
2-way audio-only
2-way audio-only
2-way audio-only
Suggested
Hon travel Substitutes
Visual only
Visual and
physical
inspection work
shopping
message work
orientation
use of fixed work
equipment
use of tools work
and instru-
ments
acquiring work
goods
acquiring work
information
meter reading, routine
stock purchasing
routine grocery shopping
typing
production line
carpentry, plumbing
materials or wholesale
purchasing
library research
2-way audio visual or
audio plus fascimile
fascimile- transmission
no substitute
no substitute
2-way audiovisual
remote computer
services
Source: Friedman, K.M. and Obermann, R.M. Transportation and Telecommuni-
cations: The Energy Implications. Annual Review of Energy, 1979
4.pp. 135-136.
66
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is also possible that automated highways—in the long-range future—or somewhat
sooner, improved traffic control systems and warning systems installed either
on the highway or within the vehicle can both increase the effective capacity
of highways, make traffic flow more evenly, and reduce accidents. These
improvements would tend to prolong the lifetime of both vehicles and highways,
with secondary environmental benefits of materials and land conservation.
The larger question of population and industry decentralization and its
environmental effects is discussed in a later subsection on technoeconomic
impacts of telematics.
Impacts From New Capabilities Inherent In The Technology
I Natural resource management is a primary area where benefits arising from
the new capabilities of telematics can be realized. There are many ways Lo
use telematics in natural resources management, and, indeed, the Smithsonian
Scientific Information Exchange (SSIE) reports a sharp increase in research
into such applications in the last several months./ll With the capability
for remote, unobtrusive monitoring, telematics offers us the ability to more
soundly manage virtually all of the land in the U.S., 33% of which is now
publicly owned.A2 This ability, if the Federal government should attempt
to extend its active management of undeveloped land, would clash with other
trends toward a new federalism and decentralization, and activate a number of
latent conflicts.
The satellite program known as LACIE (Large Area Crop Inventory Experi-
ment), organized jointly by NASA, USDA, and NOAA, has proven capable of
accurately predicting harvest on the basis of growing season monitoring from
space. The capabilities of this satellite also include early warning of
changes in production and quality of renewable resources, and thus improved
land use classification and management. Conservation practices may be better
assessed. Pollution detection and impact evaluation will be enhanced./13
SEASAT, another working satellite monitoring system, has been able to provide
geological mapping, information on ocean surface patterns, and detailed water
temperature data. Among other uses, these capabilities can aid in locating
mineral deposits and allow prediction of areas in which certain types of fish
may be found; an impact on the biota which is likely to be double-edged as
less fuel is used to catch more fish. /14
: Detailed and accurate weather analysis and prediction are on-going
functions performed by utilities, a capacity which might be used to predict
and, with the aid of other telematic devices such as automatic computer-
operated gates, control floods. Conversely, telematics may be invaluable in
monitoring the need for, and then initiating, irrigation over large areas,
ensuring equitable distribution of increasingly scarce water supplies. In
terms of wildlife management, remote sensing has the potential to keep track
of herds in otherwise inaccessible areas. Monitoring the movements of
individual animals tagged with transmitters provides accurate information on
populations and movement. This, in conjunction with data on availability of
fodder for grazing species, can aid in determining numbers to be culled,
optimum times and areas for controlled hunting, etc. Forest fire detection
may be enhanced in remote areas. Sensing the heat from orbit, the satellite
67
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can tell fire fighters the precise location of the blaze, its magnitude, and
the speed and direction of its movement.
POSSIBLE IMPACTS ON HUMAN HEALTH AND SAFETY
Telematics offers the possibility of enormous improvement in human health
and safety by improving the quality of health care which can be offered. It
can boost the basic sciences which support health care, most notably
epidemiology. It can offer new capabilities for promoting health and avoiding
injury. It can equalize the geographic distributi.on of medical services and,
by cost containment, equalize services across socioeconomic categories;
There are two general aspects to health—that which is widely viewed as
preventive, and that which is directed at treating disorders. We must search
systematically for impacts of telematics in both areas. As it turns out,
because so much of health care depends on gathering and processing information,
telematics is singularly applicable to all aspects of health care. On the
preventive side, it can be used to build good health by providing knowledge on
how to regulate one's body, as well as how to avoid hazards in the form of
environmental pollutants and other pathogens, violent crime, and accidents.
In treatment, telematics is being applied to both chronic and acute conditions
for diagnosis, treatment, and monitoring. As' T?P%ur discussion of impacts on
the biota, we will review these impacts according to the stages of adoption
from which they emerge.
Again, the most controversial and possibly significant direct detrimental
impact of telematics on public health and safety is the uncertain risk in
nonionizing radio from microwave applications. The reader is reminded that
this is discussed in a later subsection.
Health And Safety Impacts From Ths Technology Itself
There are some direct, potential hazards from telematics. With the
exception of microwave radiation, there has been little attention given to
health risks or research done to discover the existence and parameters of any
inherent threats. The paucity of research is probably due to several factors.
First, telematic technologies are almost universally perceived as benign-
people are unlikely to spontaneously suspect that they may be hazardous,
perhaps because there are few massive moving Karts, little noise, and little
visible evidence of power being expended. Second, many devices are not yet
so widely used that low probability dangers would emerge in noticeable numbers.
Further, several of the possbile adverse effects would develop over a number
of years or even generations. The types of hazards are:
• exposure to toxic chemicals from telematic equipment;
• exposure to noniom'zing radiation;
• physical stress from poorly-designed equipment; and,
• psychological stress.
68
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— Severe] toxic substances are used in telematics equipment: gallium
arsenide, selenium, and cadmium sulfide. Gallium arsenide is used as a
semi-conductor in diodes and in transistors. Gallium is obtained in very
small amounts from bauxite (of which it constitutes about 0.01%) and is
extracted during the production of aluminum; it is also sometimes associated
with zincblende, magnetite, and pyrite. Gallium itself is not highly toxic,
but all arsenic compounds are toxic and must be handled with care. Selenium
compounds are quite toxic. They are used in photographic and printing repro-
duction and selenium is also used in photoelectric cells and rectifiers.
Selenium is produced commercially from the anode mud of copper refineries.
Cadmium compounds are used in copiers. Cadmium compounds are highly toxic,
especially the vapors given off in heating. Severe poisoning is a recognized
danger to fire fighters and others when fires involve materials containing
cadmium. Cadmium is always associated with zincblende and is extracted along
with zinc./15
OHSA regulates mining and manufacturing involving these materials to
protect workers. There is no evidence that users of telematic equipment have
been harmed by them. However, they may present special risks in the event of
office and residential fires. /16
Disposal of telematics devices containing such materials is another
concern. In the course of this research, many experts were consulted about
this topic, and the universal response was that "no one has looked into that."
Nor could anything be found in the literature. Inquiries to manufacturers
indicated also that little attention had been paid to this subject; but it
appears that at present telematics devices and components have sufficient
value that they are almost always reclaimed for recycling by manufacturers.
It is possible that with the proliferation of telematics this will not always
be the case or will not universally be the case. Safe disposal could then
become a problem for local governments, and some waste disposal techniques,
involving heating, could be hazardous.
Electronic office equipment, and particularly copiers, emit small amounts
of ozone from corona discharge. The ozone can accumulate if ventilation is
poor. It is unclear yet how much ozone it takes to damage human lungs, but
recent studies indicate that repeated exposure to ozone concentrations of 1.0
parts per million causes chronic lung injury to small animals. Ozone
problems could be quite easily managed with proper office design. In general,
it seems that office design and architecture have lagged behind the rapid
pace of change in office equipment ./17
In summary, with regard to toxic chemicals in telematic equipment, we are
in the awkward stance of being unable either to point a finger or to reassure.
We must await further research in these areas. Neglect of these questions
appears to be a structural issue which requires community attention rather
than a question of personal or corporate blame.
The question of physical stress resulting from use of telematic equipment
is an occupational issue which affects operators of word processing equipment
and video display terminals. While the stress involved is real, as a hazard
69
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^i^sT TYPi^ GUIDE CHL-E:
ui-.KOf " '
7E>r _._
Htfv: r it has far less potential for damage than toxic chemicals or noniobi zing
radiation. It is also far easier to measure and correct. It is basically a
human factors issue in the design of terminals and associated eauipment.
c ;f *: While studies have identified the optimal physical arrangement of equipment,
!'; u many terminals now on the market are designed otherwise and may cause muscle
V;:;, . stress. The degree of resolution of the image on the screen is poor enough
^;.'.u \that prolonged use causes eyestrain. In May of 1981, the Norwegian Labour
'Inspectorate introduced draft rules and guidelines for firms which employ
people to use video display tenninals. They require a break every two hours
and recommend that nobody spend more than half their working time with them.
They also regulate high frequency sound in the units and require regular eye
examinations for workers. /18
i Recently, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
(NIOSH) studied the health and psychic stress of video display terminal
operators and non-operator control subjects at five work sites. They report
that job content factors and VDT use appear to interact in producing visual,
musculoskeletal, and emotional health problems. /19
i
i
L-J- -Questions of the physical stress of using telematic equipment easily
slip over into psychological stress. The psychological stress of living and
working with telematic technologies seems to differ more from person to person
than any other direct hazard. Some people, obviously, thrive on telematics.
Others are stressed. So far there are several lines of speculation about the
cause and nature of the stress, but no firm knowledge. One of these focuses
on the inherent alienation from interaction with computers. For example,
Thomas Sheridan recently identified seven such factors: '•.
• People compare themselves with computers and worry about their
i * inferiority and threatened obsolescence;
| • Computer control alienates by separating human operators from
! their ultimate task;
i
\ • Skilled crafts people who are "promoted" to button-pushers lose
'.' their skills, dignity, and self-image;
• Greater access to information and power by the technologically
literate puts all others at a disadvantage, including some groups
that are accustomed to elite status;
• There is mystification, i.e., the tendency to attribute nearly
magical powers to the computer;
• Decisions involve increasingly higher stakes—the costs of
j failure can be huge;
1 • Phylogenesis, i.e., the perceived threat that machines may become
more intelligent and powerful than humans, can occur./20
[^ ; : In a more generalized way, futurists such as Daniel Eell/2!and Alvin
c> 7,;,.r .sloffler/22 attempt to show that telematics syrcbo.lizes and exemplifies a major
$ ' : 70
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cultural watershed, equal in importance to the Industrial Revolution, which
will inevitably create a good deal of psychic stress as every part of human
culture is changed. In a different, but also quite profound analysis which
draws on a substantial body of other work, Mowshowitz/23. puts telematics
into the social, economic, and political context of present day Western
society. He sees the potential for stress and alienation which is inherent
in telematics as aligned with and part of other, more basic, driving forces:
the extreme centralization of power in society with technological development
as a salient feature of that process, and the reciprocal alienation of
individual resoonsibility.
• On a somewhat less grand scale, there is another line of speculation
which hypothesizes that working with telematic equipment can Le difficult
simply because it forces us to accommodate our thinking and working style to
the machine rather than vice versa. For instance, one researcher speculates
that the stress and fatigue which VDT operators experience comes from the
terminals' imposing the need for continual thought on us, whereas most of us
naturally think in brief spurts with long rest periods between./24 One
could just as easily cite the relentlessly linear logic of the computer in a
mismatch with human thought styles.
Health And Safety Impacts From Substitutions And New Capabilities of Telematics
i There are many health-related benefits to be gained by use of telematic
equipment. Such ur,e is supported by the rising expectations of what is
"normal, good health" among the general population, and the increasing
willingness of many people to allocate their resources, and even to change
their basic life habits, in order to improve their health. Such increasing
value and interest in health.is part of the on-going trend, noted in Sectior
4, toward improved health and social welfare. It is supported by the trend
toward greater general affluerce and an ever enlarging middle class.
Many applications of the new capabilities of telematics to health come
from the ability to extend the field of human action, both deeper within our
bodies and geographically outward, to remote or medically disadvantaged areas.
The same theme of extension applies to new abilities to sense allergens,
toxins, and other threats to health. Another set comes from the new capability
to manage complexity and information. It allows us to manage our basic under-
standing of iealth and threats to it, to improve our management of health care
of individuals.
Prevention. One of the more straightforward ways to improve health is by
preventing injuries. Robotic equipment and remote controls can be substituted
for people in many dangerous tasks, such as firefighting, toxic substance
cleanup and control, mining, and tunnel ing./25
The new capabilities of telematics permit the development of large- and
small-scale monitoring for environmental pollutants, toxiiis, and allergens,
thus creating a safer environment. We can expect to reap substantial health
benefits from improvement in the quality of air and water on a municipal or
regional scale. The health of individual workers can be improved on a
workplace-by-workplace basis by use of telematic monitors to detect hazards.
,: 71
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VT-J M "'. . J • * L U. •
In the home, the air can be selectively monitored for allergens or toxins.
With remote sensors which detect unusual patterns of heat, light, and sound,
home security systems will be able to detect dangers and automatically report
by telephone to one or more numbers.
The enhanced ability to predict and track violent weather systems, floods,
and drought will also help to prevent injuries to people. Building better
health is another benefit of telematics. Telematics may permit advances in
epidemiology and improved understanding of disease patterns. Electronic
biofeedback techniques can give people direct information about their own
bodies, and help them to be more self-regulating and thus to stay healthier.
Videotape and two-way television systems allow one to get advice and instruc-
tion about building health and preventive care at one's convenience. The
capability to consult a physician or psychiatrist without the difficulties of
travel, perhaps in the privacy of one's own home, and with fewer scheduling
problems, is likely to increase people's willingness to seek advice and help
for preventive medicine and for health problems.
Emergency care. Telematics brings a new ability to respond to medical
energencies in two ways: through the improved management and coordination of
ambulances and other emergency equipment, and through the ability to apply
medical expertise vaster. Time and distance from treatment are the primary
adversaries in medical emergencies, in most areas there are overlapping
systems of ambulances and medical evacuation helicopters which must transport
people within another overlapping system of hospitals which offer differing
special services: shock-trauma units, burn units, neonatal units, etc. The
task of managing the emergency vehicles is quite complex, and the cost of a
delayed response can easily be someone's life. With satellite assisted
conrounications, and computer mediated allocation models» we will have the
potential capability to optimize the management of this resource.
We are now able to equip emergency vehicles with a wide range of monitors
which can allow physicians to begin treatment of a patient who is still
en route to the hospital. With the cooperation of the attending paramedic,
and using satellite relays in very remote areas, the patient's vital signs can
be automatically monitored while diagnosis and treatment are begun With the
addition of centralized, computerized medical records, the patient's records
may be available at the same time./26
Diagnosis. Often new telematic diagnostic tools both substitute for
older methods and offer new capabilities. For example, the wide and growing
range of electronic monitoring and scanning devices, which quantify and/or
graphically display internal phenomena, in part substitute for other ways of
discerning internal states, and also extend the physician's range of
perception. This information can be instantly transmitted to one or more
distant physicians permitting long-distance diagnosis and easier consultation.
There has been considerable work done in telemedicine for the last two decades,
including several operating projects and a number of controlled experiments in
diagnosis. A review of that work done in 1974/27^ shows that even at that
time two-way television and an attending allied health service worker produced
good diagnoses in a number of areas, including general diagnosis, cardiac
auscultation, dermatology, radiology, and psychiatry. The substitution of
72
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telematics for transportation in medical consultation holds considerable
promise for extending medical care to areas which are inadequately served by
physicians and for optimizing the services of those specialists whose time is
oversubscribed./^ Again, complete, accurate, and quickly accessible
patient records can be available to inform the diagnosis. Telematic
technologies bring within the range of possibility complete and fully portable
medical records in possession ot each person. Such a development 'coil la'
protect the privacy of patients and give patients more control over their
health. Such a radical change could be expected to engender many other
difficulties of its own. This illustrates the intimate relationship between
information and power, and also the delicate balance of information distribu-
tion upon which our social structure rests.
Exhibit 5-3 displays a range of telematic instruments and implants which
may be used for diagnosis and treatment.
Treatment. Many of the same uses of telematics which give us new powers
of diagnosis are equally useful in treatment. For example, the substitution
of allied health personnel for physicians is possible with telematic backup
and instruction. Remote consultation can also be helpful in treatment.
Telematics has made possible the development of prostheses which far
exceed the capability of older, mechanical ones. Artificial limbs which
respond to electrical impulses in the nerve endings of the severed limb are
under development. There are clso experimental wheelchairs and robotic
devices with a quadriplegic can operate with his breath, lips, tongue or
eyelids.
The heart pacemaker was the first of a number of regulators which may be
implanted to help stabilize weakened vital organs. Other implants can allow
the patient complete freedom of movement while monitoring vital functions and
transmitting data to distant medical personnel. Indeed, it appears that the
capability now exists to produce implants to regulate or monitor almost any
bodily function, and it awaits only the customer demand to warrant the invest-
ment of substantial funds for the development effort./29_ Implants can be a
source of hazard in that under certain conditions other telematic equipment
operating in the vicinity can accidentally interfere with their operation and
endanger the health of their user./30
General Impacts. There are some general benefits, like computerized
medical information systems, which can facilitate the entire health care
process. Another is the improvement of medical education, where television is
particularly helpful as a teaching aid. The use of telematic technologies can
be integrated into the curriculum from the start. Videotapes have already
made continuing medical education far easier by allowing one to do the work in
one's own home or office and on one's own schedule. In this way, the best
instructors are accessible to more students as well.
A major source of indirect benefit to all of health care is the contribu-
tion which telematics can make to basic science. For instance, with the
ability to collect data worldwide and analyze great masses of it, we can
expect advances in epidemiology which will then help in the prevention,
73
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EXHIBIT 5-3: BIOMEDICAL TELEMATIC INSTRUMENTS
Retearcb nagiwuic Moanormc Tlwrmpcvtic Prmihetk
Micraekclroiuci for Tocaly aaplaatabhi Cmbral arcaaura Micrgekctrodci Cardiac pacemaker
locally implantabte Ickoaetryfor telemetry for neural •ucrockclronici:
telemetry of Row. coroaary bypaw •ucnMraa.oucen ttmilalor Cor auditory prrtthcw
preiwrc. mod dimro* (raft awojtonnf aad ckctreaici pain relief mcffectoclrMuci
' IKM. forcumpte
-- — SMpemuacoui MicrolnMduccrt tBfjnliMcpH Ambulatory cart Microrkclrooci Hcariflfaid
V- for animal backpack Ictemciry ECGlekmelry and ekciroajci
-- --- ukmelry of now npiuai mUiac't«« forbtaddcr
aad pn»yr«, ••llillli Iromci HimuUlor
> forcumolc
PcmUKom lupbauMc CalKner-lip Tnawnom Ckclrwat Hicnwmon
biopolc*Mial aad bkood aal P*CM< kad for MMiulnliwi br kft vvnlricl*
temperature mawe fl«MMooa| and of bude fur au«kl deki^'C
. ftHCrotrmasducen UMailalioa: enhanced
' witheilcnuliieil callicicr-up Kealiaf
; kadi preuMre tcnMM
TraMCvtaaeout Canwna ray micro- CmannneriHd Picioekcinc MicroteinpcnlMrc Miovupiical »e«ion
'. iranducer arrayv i-ray Hinnni'aiJlr inAw'wcer arrayi Knion for and laclik
forradionolope delcdor arrajn (or uJtrafoac brpennrroMa; M«itu*ai»Hi fur
«U|>a|:btood imapaf. blood nucmeiiiori Cor cvicaMo-laclik
•muirc BCMOT pa moajior ddtbhllalon readme aid
arrayMk amroicajim furUiebluvJ
pMUoremtiv*
I **icromjuducen
EuranUMCin EkcWM Man tpecuoaiclcr. Miiiarnre iJicoa Minoieaion let Vaic*-actiiaualr«> machine ccmlrolk.-
* Source: J.D. Melnll. in Science, 17 October 1980. p. 264.
diagnosis, and treatment of disease. Similarly, the improved ability to
collect data, transmit it, analyze and interpret it, will bring new under-
standing in other areas as well.
There are also some general problems which may result from extensive
applications of telematics to medicine. Interference between telematics
devices within the hospital, and interference between medical telematics and
other communication systems outside, could result in unanticipated breakdowns,
data distortion or destruction, and other failures which, in medical practice,
could sometimes be disastrous. This is already viewed as a potentially
serious problem by medical practice, could sometimes be disastrous.
Secondly, pervasive telematic capability in medicine may further
;impersonalize practice, emphasize fragmented responsibilities or large team
procedures, and reduce the independence, and possibly the psychic rewards, of
individual practitioners.
Telematics may enlarge the difference between a relatively few, large,
well equipped medical institutions, and many smaller, less well capitalized
institutions. This in turn could contribute to disparities in medical care
available to rural versus urban areas and the poor versus the more well-off
citizens. Finally, telematics could further stimulate the cost of medical
care, which has been rising much faster than inflation and has already made
cost containment a strong national objective.
None of these potential negative impacts are inevitable. They should be
looked at as agenda items for public policy formulation. Some of these
problems may be resolved or alleviated within the private/professional sectors
of society; others may require government involvement to prevent social costs
from seriously diminishing social benefits.
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THE SPECIAL CASE OF MICROWAVE RADIATION
One direct impact of telematics which is thought by some to be potentially
hazardous to health and safety and to the biota, and has already become some-
what controversial, is microwave radiation. It is beyond the state of current
scientific knowledge to make a definitive, precise statement about the extent
and significance of this risk, which would be useful and generally acceptable
to scientists, much less to the concerned publics. While there is public
concern, it has not as yet coalesced into a politically important issue.
There are also indications that if the Federal government does not provide
guidelines or standards, some local governments may move to regulate in this
area even without scientific consensus to what extent there is a hazard.
Such action could delay the development of some applications of telematics,
and also disrupt some existing telematics systems and retard productivity
growth.
The basis of controversy. Electromagnetic radiation consists of a
vibrating electrical field and a vibrating magnetic field moving through space
in the manner of waves through water. The radio, microwave, radar, infrared,
yls.iole light, and ultraviolet regions of the electromagnetic spectrum are
spoken of as "nonionizihg", as opposed to radiation at the upper end of the
spectrum (beta rays, x-rays, and gamma rays) (see Exhibit 5-4) and particles
and radiation emitted by radioactive substances, which are ionizing. The
lower end of the spectrum—radio, microwave, and radar radiation—has the
longer wave lengths, and these forms of radiation can be produced by
oscillating electrical circuits. Microwave radiation passing through human
skin and subcutaneous fat into underlying muscular tissue is converted into
heat. However, this effect varies with the frequency of the radiation./31
However, microwave radiation, often taken to include VHF, SHF, and EHF
bands, which is commonly emitted from TV and FM antenna associated with
transmitters and by radar transmitters, varies in frequency from 300 MHz
(megahertz) to 300,000 MHz. The controversy over biological effects ranges
over the whole radio frequency spectrum (Exhibit 5-4).
Ionizing radiation, which includes x-rays and cosmic particles, can
penetrate and disrupt atomic and cellular structure. Nonionizing radiation
in contrast passes through the skin with far less ^nergy and is thought to
have little effect on cellular or atomic structur- Damage is known to come
from the engendered heat, and researchers in the I \ have generally held that
it was for the most part acute but short-term and versible./32
Some concern began with questions about effec .f microwave radiation
on radar operators in World War II. In the last d _.de there was public
alarm over possible hazards of color TV sets and m.crowave ovens; this popular
concern was reflected, and stimulated, by a book by P. Brodeur, The Zapping
of America./33 The U.S. embassy staff in Moscow was supposedly worried at one
time about excessive radiation from remote "spying" devices aimed at their
building by the Soviet government. The concept of a solar power satellite
which would beam microwave radiation to earth, has been attacked on similar
grounds — the uncertainty of the nonionizing radiation's effects.
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EXHIBIT 5-4: RADIO FREQUENCY BANDS
Frequency
IGHr
Trt If HT -
a HZ —
Wave Length)
Bend* Oeif^nttion
Extremely high frequency
(EHF)
Super high Irewencv
ISHFJ
UiUi high frequency
(UHF)
Very rugh frequency
(VKf|
rboft frequency
-------
>:R?T
or a politically potent issue as has, for example, opposition to nuclear power
plants. But it could.
In the last several years, newspapers have been adopting telematics
rapidly. The Newspaper Guild, a labor union, at first expressed concern that
video display terminals (VDTs) might be emitting x-rays (imaging radiation):
,(then, as the equipment was better understood, shifted its concerns to non-
ionizing radiation./34 In 1976, two employees of The New York Times developed
cataracts, and since both were relatively young for this disability, they
decided it must be more than coincidence. Although the National Institute of
Occupational Safety and Health, after investigation, concluded that levels of
radiation to which they had been exposed were too low, and at too low a
frequency, to have caused this problem, an ophthalmologist took up their cause
and has defended their claim in hearings, lawsuits, and the public media./35
Employees of the Toronto Star brought similar charges when several people, who
worked with VDTs, gave birth to deformed children. After a number of investi-
gations, the Canadian Minister of Labor officially announced in 1980 that there
was no evidence of genetic damage from that radiation./36
A subcommittee of the Science and Technology Committee of the House of
Representatives held hearings on VDT in May 1981,/37^and the Food and Drug
Administration (FDA) also conducted an investigation. The FDA discounted the
possibility of excess radiation from VDTs, saying that such unfounded fears
would distract attention from the real, but relatively minor, problems
associated with VDT work: eyestrain, headaches, and boredom./38
Ongoing research. There has been 40 years experience with microwave
radiation, beginning with concern about radar workers in the second World War.
For years, U.S. scientists found only that for frequencies above 10
megahertz,power densities of more then lOOmW/cnr were harmful to humans. In
1966, the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) set a 10mW/cm2 safety
limit for workers. Meanwhile, the USSR had a level which was a thousand
times lower. Now ANSI has proposed a more stringent duplex standard varying
from lOOmW/cm2 to lmW/cm2./39
Although the evidence is not conclusive, recent research in the U.S. has
begun to reveal a wide range of effects in laboratory animals. These include:
morphologic changes in the brain tissue, immunological and behavioral changes,
blood chemistry effects, and interaction effects with drugs./40 /41 /42
There is a good deal of ongoing research designed to determine the
applicability of such findings to humans and to pin down the nature and extent
of any hazards. The conclusions remain quite controversial, particularly in
the newer work on low-intensity exposure. For example, in a report prepared
for the Department of Energy on the Satellite Power System (SPS)/43, over
"1,000 English summaries and two hundred original (or trans latedTTapers" were
reviewed./44 Sol Michaelson performed a similar task for the IEEE in 1980,
reviewing many of the same documents; Glaser, Cleveland, and Kielman for the
Society for Occupation and Mental Health./45
Possible microwave radiation problems are of paramount importance because
most developing telematics technologies depend at some point on microwave
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K'-'o'N
transmission. If microwaves should prove to have irreversible effects on some
broad class of living things, the effects would be likely to cascade through
all forms of life. Therefore, it is good that research in this area is
proceeding, but the pace may be too slow and the scope too uncoordinated to
meet the needs of public policy.
— Potential microwave related impacts on the biota include behavioral
changes such as the heightened submissiveness noted in radiated chickens ;/46
interference with birds' and insects' navigational ability, as postulated by
Burks and Graf in relation to a 300- meter tall TV antenna which seemed to
disorient and attract birds/47;, the ability of some species to detect and
avoid high levels of microwave irradiation, as did the parakeets studied by
Tanner, et al., which often avoided an irradiated area that contained food
despite their hunger /48 /49_; and pit vipers, which are highly sensitive to
thermal energy. /50_ There is also the large unstudied issue of effects on
flora, where research has generally been focused on high level radiation and
seed germination or weed control. One study did show that plants may have an
advantage over fauna in their ability to the rmoregu late through transpiration.
It has been shown by Baranski and Czerski that chromosomal and mitotic
abnormalities can be expected to result from high intensity microwave radia-
tion, but that levels below 10mW/cm2 produced no genetic effects. They
caution, however, that there is insufficient data to state this conclusively
for long-term, low intensity exposure. /52 Dr. Radhi S. Dwivedi at Howard
University is currently conducting research on potential damage to cellular
structures resulting from microwave exposure. His findings on single cells,
while not conclusive, point to chloroplast and mitochondria damage at levels
of 10mW/cm2. Mature bean plants were less susceptible to this damage than
were young ones. In whole animal studies, Dr. Dwivedi has found damage to
cell membranes and to mitochondria. Interestingly, he found that a 60% to 70%
reversal of damage, followed cessation of exposure. /53
Many of these questions become both compounded and more crucial when one
considers 'emergence1— "as a system becomes more complex, there is an
increased likelihood that data based on its elements as studied in isolation
cannot be generalized to the system as a whole. "/54
It appears that one can find supporting data for either side of the
question of whether microwave radiation at low power densities produces
harmful effects on the biota; from the position that the central nervous
system may be damaged/5^, to the possibility that immunological responses may
be improved. /56_ There are also studies which seem to show that physiological
adaptation to radiation can result from repeated exposures./^ Part of the
lack of consensus may be blamed on the "inadequacies of either technical
facilities and measurement skills or insufficient control of the biological
specimens and the criteria for biological change," according to Michaelson.
The difficulties inherent in an attempt to correct this situation when dealing
with complex biological interrelations are many and increase dramatically when
investigation moves from the laboratory to the natural environment.
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Regulation. The EPA's Office of Radiation Program, was expected to issue
guidelines in 1978 for other agencies to use in formulation and enforcement of
their own regulations regarding exposure to nonionizing radiation. These
have not been forthcoming and EPA is still studying the matter, but it is
generally thought to be a low priority item for the Office, which seems to
prefer to wait until there is more conclusive scientific evidence on which to
base guidelines. Staft members at FCC expressed some frustration at EPA's
slowness to act, since they bear the brunt of the occasional controversies
which arise.
The more serious risk is that local governments, when faced with active
concern by their constituents in a particular situation, may move ahead to
regulate microwave radiation. This almost happened in 1978 in New York City.
At that time: nine TV broadcasters were using 18 transmitters to broadcast from
the Empire State Building tower and the FCC, in preparation for their expected
move to the north tower of the new World Trade Building, approved an additional
two transmitters./53_ The New York City Board of Health proposed an amendment
to the City's Health Code (Section 175.125). According to the TV broadcasters,
the effect of this regulation would have been:
• a power reduction to 1/30 of that authorized by the FCC;
t a loss of 53% to 60% of the broadcast area;
• 1,327,000 fewer homes served;
• degradation of quality in reception of the remainder.
The present guidance available from the Federal government is an
"advisory" from OSHA under its "General Industry Standards and Interpretations"
which says that over frequency range from 10MHz to 100,000MHz, the average
radiation in 0.1 hour should not exceed 10 milliwatts per square centimeter.
The proposed New York Standard would have been 50 microwatts per square
centimeter.
EPA, in a letter to the Board of Health, said (July 1978) that it
"expects to arrive at a decision on the need for guidance...shortly." The
U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare said that, "...it is simply
not possible to arbitrarily establish a safety level..." The Department of
Defense said that the proposed action was "premature" and that more
"dispassionate studies" were needed.
The New York City regulation was tabled. However, it is possible that
other local governments may in the future be inclined to take action. The
effect of many different local regulations cuuld not only be a barrier to
development of particular telematics applications, but more importantly could
disrupt national communications systems.
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BEGIN
r IMPACTS ON THE TECHNOECONOMY ' "•
| Earlier parts of this section considered the physical environment and
public health and safety, which are central to EPA's mission. This subsection
looks primarily at social and economic changes which may occur as a result of
.telematics. These charges, however, may themselves have impacts on the
"•environment and public health, and it is quite possible that in the long run,
'these indirect environmental effects of telematics may be far more important
than some of the direct effects we have discussed.
| Society, its institutions, and people's behavior change in response to
new technology; they adapt themselves to make better use of its capabilities.
The technoeconomy is a comprehensive concept for the artifacts and interactions
•of the technology, the economy, and people; the products of this interaction;
jand the rules and conventions within which things occur.
The technoeconomy therefore includes factories, workers, things produced
Jin factories or in cottages, the harvest of trees and mining of minerals for
production of other goods, government regulations which affect technology, and
taxes which pay for that regulation. Telematics is itself a part of the
/technoeconomy and affects and is affected by other parts. Major changes which
telematics will bring about in society, which will in turn affect the environ-
ment, include:
• the electronics industry;
• decentralization of population and industry;
• work; and,
• the built environment.
The Electronics Industry
'• The most direct way the development of telematics affects the environment
is by means of its own production cycle—i.e., the procurement of raw materials,
and the production, use, and disposal of telematics products. The procurement
of the requisite raw materials is not notably disruptive of the environment,
and none of those presp.ntly in use is especially rare or otherwise difficult
to obtain. As noted before, the production process involves the use of some
toxic chemicals, and is regulated by OSHA. The human health and safety portion
of this section highlights some potential hazards to human health in the use
of computers and copiers, particularly under conditions of poor ventilation or
in a fire. At present, there is no problem about end-of-cycle matters, such
as the recovery and recycling of valuable and potentially hazardous parts, or
;their disposal in other ways, because economic interests encourage safe
idisposal practices. This may not be the case forever and this possiblity
^hould be watched.
i The telematics/electronics sector of American industry is already large
.and will almost certainly be a major stimulant of -conomic growth in the
.future. It is likely to provide major exports, contributing to a favorable
;' * 80
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REGIN
,-.,v:r TVf-i.X'j C.Ui'Jt-
-balance of trade, and to provide significant employment. Indirectly, this
healthy economic growth will benefit the environment because prosperous
nations are apt to allocate more resources to environmental protection and
improvement than those which are economically depressed. As an industry,
telematics/electronics does not appear to be highly polluting. This favorable
portrayal of the industry should perhaps be viewed cautiously; by the nature
of the industry, it is likely to be a leader in automation. As new generations
of industrial robots are developed, they are likely to have capabilities, such
as "sight", which will enable them to replace workers on assembly lines.
Reduction of this kind of employment can have severe impacts on the local
economy in many areas of the country.
|
Decentralization
As noted in Section 4, decentralization of population and industry has
been proceeding for about two decades. Decentralization has several aspects:
the movement away from the heavily populated Northeast, toward the West and the
South; movement from large cities to smaller cities, from metropolitan areas
to non-metropolitan counties, and from urban to rural areas; the movement of
commercial activities from central business districts to suburban malls and
of industry from manufacturing cities to industrial parks and rural locations,
and finally, the tendency for individuals to work at home rather than traveling
to work, already discussed under "transportation/communication trade-offs".
The movement toward the Sunbelt became strong during the decade 1970-1980.
During this period, U.S. population increased by 23.2 million people, or 10.2%.
About 90% of this growth was in the South and West. The western region grew
by 24% and the South by 20%, while the Northeast showed no growth (see Exhibit
5-5). Nevada, Arizona, Florida, Wyoming, and Utah all had growth rates of
more than one-third (38% to 63%)./59_ The reversal of the long trend toward
greater urbanization was also striking, with non-metropolitan counties for the
ifirst time growing faster than metropolitan counties.
There are many reasons for this shift. The older'irass movements—of farm
families to the cities, and of southern Blacks to the Norths-had about run
their course. Farm workers and their families declined in numbers from 30.5
million in 1935 (25% of total population) to 8 million in 1978 (3.7% of total
population), as farm employment dropped from 12.5 million to 3.9 million./60
The wellsprings of this migration had about dried up. The shift of Blacks
from South to North had also continued for several decades.
In part, people are seemingly pushed from larger cities by pollution,
congestion, crowded housing, fear of crime, the perception of school deteriora-
tion, and the higher cost of living; and drawn to suburban and rural areas by
government housing policy (veterans' mortgages) and mass tract development,
which lowered housing costs. The movement toward suburbia, however, began
early in the century as public transportation and workers' improved wages
brought a house and land within economic reach for the masses. Industry .began
to move outward in the 1950s and 1960s, choosing to replace aging factories in
suburban and rural rather than traditional urban locations because of cheaper
land, lower taxes, lower prevailing labor rates, improved highways, and
special incentives offered by states and local governments eager to attract
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EXHIBIT 5-5: MAP—TOTAL POPULATION INCREASE BY REGION, 1970 to 1980
tot** Poputolton *«*c«nl lncr«*«« by FWglon: 107O to I960
Source: DUA Labs Register. No. 7, Spring 1981.
employers. With better employment opportunities at home, fewer young people
have been forced to move to the northern cities. Overall, the most important
factor may have been that increasing affluence allowed more people to exercise
their locational preference, which in America has seemingly always been
biased toward small town living. In the last decade, the increased costs of
home heating have added further stimulation toward moving south and west,
especially for the increasing numbers of the elderly and retired.
In these movements, there is no evidence that telecommunications or
telematics has been a primary driver. However, by reducing the barriers of
distance and time (which in industry, and also in preserving family and
friendship ties, directly translate into economic costs), telematics permits
and facilitates a decision to move. In particular, advances in telematics
contributed strongly to increasing efficiency of transportation, which probably
was a primary driver in the relocation of industrial and commercial activities.
There is as yet little indication as to how far these movements will go.
Redistribution of people and activities could follow the familiar S-shaped
curve of technology-substitution; but there is little evidence yet for the
eventual shape of this trend. Clearly it will net approach its outer
theoretical limit of even distribution of people across the land, which would
mean about 65 people per square mile if it occurred today, or one person for
every 10 acres.
One major impact of population redistribution is political change. In
the reapportionment which follows each census, western states and Florida will
gain votes, and some suburban and rural areas in each state will gain at the
expense of cities. This is generally expected to increase the strength of
what has been called the "Sagebrush Revolution," meaning a reassertion of
State rights over public lands and natural resources and a diminution of
Federal control. It should be noted, however, that while some western and
southern states have maintained that some environmental regulations, such as
air pollution standards, have been excessively stringent and rigid in the
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':' jl-
;-context of regional differences, the western population also is intensely
concerned about water availability and quality, protection of beaches, coastal
areas, fisheries, and fragile ecologies. It is likely that some priorities
with regard to the environment may change; it is also likely that there will
be sharply increased controversy and conflict over the competing demands for
resource development and environmental protection and between the interests
involved in multiple use of lands.
The implications of decentralization for the environment are also not
clear cut or undimensional. Decentralization of population and industry will
certainly mean differences in the kind of stress imposed on the environment.
Uhether or not it will reduce the stress overall is less certain. The popula-
tion will continue to expand for several decades at least so that a shift in
proportional distribution of population does not necessarily mean a reduction
from present levels in most areas. Very large concentrations of population
and industry tend to impose on the environment insults which may exceed local
carrying capacity or regenerative capability, and concentrations of pollutants
may be necessary before there is a significant threat to public health.
Decentralization may therefore relieve or prevent some acute environmental
problems. This is the strategy advocated by adherents to the appropriate
technology and "small is beautiful" movements. Lower concentrations of popu-
lations allow the utilities, the public service infrastructure, and the
industries which employ and serve them, to be smaller in scale and thus to
:inflict a much smaller volume of pollutants on the immediate environment.
However, "dilution is not the solution to pollution," according to
another line of thcjght. Many widely dispersed sources of pollutants are more
difficult and more costly to monitor end control. Some forms of treatment—
sophisticated omission control technology and tertiary waste treatment for
example—may be too costly for small plants and small population centers. A
more dispersed population is likely to intrude on presently pristine areas and
on fragile environments such as arid lands. There might, overall, be far less
'undeveloped land (even though urban land would be less intensively developed)
to provide regenerative capacity. Use of energy might be less efficient,
given the expanded transportation network which would develop.
If decentralization proceeds (and there are some signs that it may not,
such as the re-urbanization or gentrification which is developing in some
cities;, EPA will have to develop different strategies for accomplishing the
same objectives even if there is not a political reallocation of responsibility
between State and Federal levels of government. Telematics again can be a
facilitator, reducing some of the costs and difficulties of dispersed environ-
mental management. Pollution monitoring, measurement, and control on a highly
dispersed basis is not impossible; with appionriate telematics it may become
highly efficient. Alternatively, telematics could allow a centralized data
bank and information system to provide support services for many institutionally
separate environmental agencies.
A decentralized population, with substantial numbers of people working at
home or in neighborhood work centers, would also have important implications
for the environment. First, it would throw the present system of taxing
businesses into confusion. If a company has itc workers scattered across many
83
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communities, something telematics permits it to do, why should it pay all of
its taxes to the jurisdiction where its headquarters happens to be and none to
the others where the workers are located? This ties in with similar questions
of allocating responsibility for pollution now that telematic monitoring
allows us to trace it. What about pollution which is primarily felt far away
from its geographic source? If increasing numbers of functions which have
traditionally been connected with political jurisdictions become geographically
detachable, what is the meaning of political jurisdiction?
Another type of impact which may result from telematics-supported
decentralization of the population and local workplaces is the type of invest-
ment which people may make in their communities. Citizens are likely to
become more involved in municipal affairs if there is no separation between
the community in which they work and that in which they live. They may become
more demanding consumers of government services if they are more dependent on
them. People are also likely to become more socially dependent on their
neighbors if there is no alternative community in the distant workplace. This
is consonant with on-going trends toward local involvement, regional interests,
interest in community building, and smallness of scale. If it should take
hold, it would signal a reversal in the 20th Century technological trends in
which technology has the net effect of socially separating and isolating
people while making them, through their mutual dependence on the technology,
more unobtrusively interdependent.
i
*
The Management Of Industry
Decentralization of the workplace would require changes in the management
of industry. This would most obviously affect knowledge workers, but
industrial manufacturing processes no longer need to be centralized either.
There would be both a difference which comes from managing a geographically
dispersed work force, and a difference in managing a work force which is a
iconglomeration of independent agents rather than a salaried team. There may
in fact be a resurgence of cottage industry. This could raise all the equity-
related issues which were thought to have been on the road to solution over
the last century or so: child labor; discrimination on the basis of race, sex,
religion, and age; standards of pay; unionization; etc. Workplace decentral-
ization would thus throw both management and labor into a very different
orientation.
Decentralization of the workplace is also likely to bring into focus the
independence of geography and power, ihe new capability of telematics which
permits the physically decentralized organization of work also enables a sharp
increase in the centralization of power. This is so despite the tendency of
complexity to lead to decentralization, because one of the special new
capabilities of telematics is the control of complexity. It is such a major
shift that there is quite likely to be a period of discontinuity and
disruption as people adjust.
Management issues are only one aspect of impending change for business
and industry. The nature of the work to be done will also change a great
deal.
84
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Industrial sector. Few areas will have greater consequences for managers
than the increased use of robots. It will affect investment planning,
production capabilities, and Icbor relations, while it progressively changes
the physical nature of the workplace.
The concept of robots performing manufacturing tasks is hardly new, but
f several emerging factors have made this an increasingly important subject for
discussion and analysis.
U.S. industry, hard hit by inflation in labor, materials, energy,
regulatory costs, and capital costs, and facing ever tougher overseas competi-
tion, has recognized tha need to revitalize operations. Output must increase
as production costs decrease. Nowhere is this more evident than in the U.S.
automobile Industry, which is now the largest market for robots.
The development of the microprocessor has been the key to bringing
robotics into full swing, allowing machinery to go beyond simple automatic,
repetitive movement to performing more complex tasks. More important, the
computer chip, in conjunction with other information processing and trans-
mission capabilities, has allowed development of robots which can be quickly
and easily re-programmed.
One example of the adoption of this flexible manufacturing system is the
factory of Normalair-Garrett in Crewkerne, England./61 The plant makes and
assembles parts for an airplane bomb release system containing some 100 parts.
On the basis of instructions from the main computer, it is possible for the
robots to stop machining a particular piece and begin working on another.
The implications of this are enormous when one considers that for many
firms it is not possible to use conventional automated machinery which can
only be used in large production runs. Peter Marsh of New Scientist notes
that 75% of all metal parts made in Britain are produced in batches of less
than 50./62 Thus, with the aid of robotics, it is possible to have an
automatic production system which promises great elasticity of supply, by
allowing precise control of inventory. For managerial purposes, this is very
important: response to buyers can be more timely, energy inputs can be used
more efficiently^ and planning in general can be r,ade more precise.
It is possible that flexible manufacturing systems will enable small
companies who might otherwise be unable to do so, to compete with larger,
conventionally equipped ones. Certainly there will be some degree of
increased ability to enter a field and hope of finding a niche through
aggressive marketing.
This is true in the United States as well, where Time reports that, "60%
of U.S. manufacturing is done in batches too small for assembly lines...and it
is estimated that they (robots) can reduce costs in small-lot manufacturing by
80%-90%."/63
With these figures in mind, it is reasonable to assume a dramatic
increase in robotics, and in the larger sphere of computer-assisted design and
computer-assisted manufacturing (CAD/CAM). An indicator of this is the fact
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that "more than half a dozen new suppliers (of robots) have sprouted up in
the past two years, including three so far this year (1980)."/64
There are many areas w'lere robots will be able to perform tasks beyond
human capabilities. Humans come in a fairly standard shape and a rather
narrow range of sizes. Robots, on the other hand, may be designed to fit a
task requirement, such as pipeline inspection, or movement of heavy objects in
a confined space at awkward angles. Likewise, robots can function in a much
wider range of environments than human workers, for virtually any length of
time, and with a negligible rate of error. For example, Westinghouse u:.es a
robot in the making of tungsten light bulb filaments, a process involving the
stretching of 21-inch rods to 37 inches, with exactly a .467-inch diameter.
As part of this, the rods must be placed in a 3200°F furnace. Before the
robot, this job took three workers, whose performance understandably
deteriorated toward the end of the day. The robot "does it flawlessly for
about 16 to 24 hours a day. It will pay for itself in 2^ years."/65_ The
further refinement of sight and touch capabilities will make it possible for
robots to perform complex assembly tasks that currently can only be done by
human workers.
It is not so much the complexity of the assembly process which makes the
robots now on-line incapable of performing more complex tasks. Rather, the
problems are in such areas as the robot's knowing when a bolt is tight enough,
and the need to have parts positioned and aligned perfectly by operators,
since the robot must function blindly. Digitalization of video images and the
development of "tactile" abilities are already far advanced, although there
are still bugs to be ironed out and costs are high. Renault, the French auto-
maker, has a robot which can identify and discriminate among 200 parts
presented on a conveyer, and Draper Labs has developed a robot "hand" which is
sensitive enough to jiggle a bolt into place./66
A key question for management and workers surrounding the robotics
discussion is that of social costs, or the impact of CAD/CAM on labor.
Organized labor has not yet marshalled its forces against this technology, at
least partly because many applications have been to tasks that humans cannot,
or will not, perform. In addition, unions are generally more concerned with
the present rather than the future, and have thus far regarded robotics as
acceptable so long as the substitutions are linked tc normal attrition rates
and compensation is not decreased. The fact that robots themselves must be
maintained and supplied the parts with which they are working seems to allay
the fears of many that there will be a net decrease in employment. Rather, a
set of new types of jobs, and more of than, will be created according to,
among others, Raj Reddy of Carnegie-Mellon University./^
Perhaps this is true, but at this time we must deal with projections;
and not all of them are optimistic. Figures cited earlier show that there are
strong incentives for firms to replace workers, especially those who are less
skilled. Normalair-Garrett, for example, has projected that, "each person
can, with the new machinery, make things worth five time? as much as his
counterpart in a conventional workshop."/^ For those companies that retain
conventional systems, there is danger that their automated competition will
force them into bankruptcy, resulting in layoffs. Even if one assumes that,
86
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in the long run, there will be no overall loss of jobs, the transition period
will be a difficult one for many. Who will pay for retraining programs? What
will happen when union funds are not able to support the affected workers?
What types of changes will take place in union structures as a result of
changes in constituency? It is in the interests of organized labor to consider
these questions now if they are to act effectively in the robotics-oriented
future.
There were estimated to be about 1500 industrial robots in use in the
U.S. in 1977 (current figures are not available; many companies guard this
information as proprietary)./^ Projections of robotics sales have been,
over the last decade, over-optimistic in hindsight, because capital investment
was slowed by inflation. At present, with the new interest in re-capitaliza-
tion for greater productivity, robotics projections appear to be converging
at about 70,000 in use by 1990. The investment firm of Bache Halsey Stuart
Shields, Inc. estimates that robotics in use by 1990 could be anywhere between
23,000 and 70,000, unless (as has been widely rumored) three large telematics
producers move into the market, in which case the number may go as high as
200,000./TO
Industrial robots are now performing the following jobs:
• spot welding
• paint spraying
• handling and moving materials
• bending, cutting, heating, quenching, and assembling materials
and parts
• stamp press loading
• die cast unloading and trimming
• hot forge press loading
• die transfer
i drop hammer forging
t glassware handling and transfer
• brick hacking and setting
• bobbin doffing
Future generations of robots with visual capability and other advanced
capabilitities will be able to handle many more manufacturing operations. In
these jobs, each robot can replace at least three workers (operating three
shifts a day) and has a lifetime of five to eight years. They are considered
a cost effective investment if they replace two workers and last five years./71
Business Week magazine reported this year that General Electric plans to
replace 2000 workers with robots soon and will eventually replace one-third
of their 27,000 assemblers./72_ We estimate that there were, in 1977,
approximately 2.7 million jobs in the U.S. which could have been filled by
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robots. According to a Bureau of Labor Statistics projection, about 1.6
million new blue collar jobs will be created by 1990 at expected economic
growth rates (this projection, made in 1978, is probably nc longer considered
valid, but we will use it for rough estimates).A73 If this v.-as correct, other
conditions remaining the same, the introduction of 70,000 robots would reduce
these new jobs by 13%, and 200,000 robots by 38%. Thus, industrial robots
have the potential of severely restraining the growth of new employment even
if not reducing the total number of jobs.
Whether or not industrial robotics will reach this level of use by 1990
depends on a number of factors, of which interest rates and their effect on
capital investment are one. Managers are usually motivated to switch to
robots for appropriate tasks by rising labor costs, high labor turnover,
unacceptable error rates, and the rising costs of occupational safety and
health regulations. If there is competition for available jobs, holding labor
costs down, ^obot.s would still be attractive for tedious, monotonous, but
exacting jobs where error rates mount toward the end of a shift, and
absenteeism and high turnover is a problem. Robots are also particularly
attractive for tasks which are hazardous or require special protection for
workers.
This suggests another possible indirect impact of robotics. If displace-
ment by robots is perceived as a risk, workers and their unions may be much
less inclined to identify and protest hazardous conditions and demand
appropriate protection. The existence of robots as an alternative to human
labor, therefore, could serve to undercut the movement for improved occupa-
tional safety and health.
The model described in Section 2 suggests that a new technology at first
substitutes for older technologies, in this case, for human labor; this
causes the host institution to undergo internal changes to adjust to the new
technology; then the technology's new capabilities allow the development of
new activities and the acnievement of new objectives. We have so far spoken
only of the initial substitution of robots for human workers. Hrvover, robots
are likely to be adopted in conjunction with (or to encourage the (jarallel
adoption of) "flexible manufacturing systems" and "group technology." With
these systems, the factory floor is rearranged or redesigned so that
industrial robots are surrounded by their materials and tools, forming cells,
and parts are routed by computers from cell to cell in a sequence determined
by the work to be done on them. This transformation of the workplace not only
calls for fewer human production workers, but in fact makes the factory floor
an inhospitable place for humans—it is designed to fit the needs of machines
and not workers. Thus, the adoption of additional robots encourages physical
adjustments which stimulates the adoption of additional robots or other forms
of automation. For these reasons, our analysis indicates that under economic
conditions which would make a significant level of capital investment possible,
adoption of robotics would be likely to proceed very rapidly.
Such redesigned factories would be pla-.ned for maximum efficiency i" use
of materials and energy, and would be very likely less polluting than older
factories built when such considerations were given less attention. On the
other hand, if adoption of robotics proceeds very rapidly, there may be enough
\
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displacement of workers tc bring about social conflict and a strong reaction
against them.
Coming generations of robots, with greatly expanded capabilities, will
provide us with opportunities which are now beyond reach. Robots can be
designed to function in environments in which humans cannot intrude, or can
venture only with such elaborate support systems that their ability to do any-
thing useful is sharply curtailed. Such hostile environments include, for
example, outer space, the deep ocean, deep mines, or volcanic interiors.
Robots therefore could eventually be designed for exploration, mining, space
manufacturing, rescue, or specimen gathering, extending the reach of humans
bv/ond their own limitations. Such activities could well extend our knowledge
of environmental relationships and our ability to attack environmental problems
where humans can live; but unless carefully planned and monitored, they could
conceivably also extend humanity's pollutants into new areas and poison the
source of environmental resources.
Agriculture. Agriculture is another sector whose organizations is likely
to change radically with increased application of telematics. Two agricultural
revolutions in this century—mechanization and chemicals—by analogy suggest
the magnitude of impacts which could result from telematics. Only a few of
the possible applications have been developed so far. Yet almost every aspect
of agriculture offers opportunities for dramatic improvement with the applica-
tion of telematics. Many farmers already use computers to keep their accounts
and records, and there are sophisticated information systems to predict and
interpret weather in terms of the type and location of a farm. With satellite
sensors and computerized models, the science of meteorology is making enormous
progress. We can expect earlier, more accurate, and location-specific fore-
casts.
Farmers and commodity markets will be affected by satellite prediction of
crop yields well in advance of harvest. With computerized models and
specialized information systems, the farmer can determine the best time for
harvesting produce, selling livestock, or the best mix of crops to raise, or
feeds to offer the animals. Virtually all of the applications of telematics
to human health have analogs on the farm, from implanted monitors in livestock,
to veterinary care, to better control of data.
As more intensive use is made of telematics in agriculture, we can also
expect significant change in many patterns of social interaction, from the
exchange of commodities to migrant labor patterns.
This kind of control will enhance some of the trends now characteristic
of agriculture. It is already a very high overhead business, and telematics
will make it more so. It now requires a deep and broad understanding of the
technoeconomy to succeed as a farmer, and telematics will raise the knowledge
and integration stakes. It will facilitate agribusiness on an even grander
scale, and make an extremely competitive, high-stakes enterprise more so. It
will become more uncertain in that one will need to have the best information
in order to compete, and that will involve even higher overhead.
At the same time, small family farms are likely to be even more hard
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pressed than now to compete with larger enterprises. However, if present
trends continue, we may see a resurgence of the quasi-homestead lifestyle,
in which a family depends in part on homegrown produce and animal products,
and in part on the cash economy./74
Mining and fishing. As extractive industries, mining and fishing stand
beside agriculture in the technoeconomy. The pattern of their use of
telematics and its implications for the environment closely resemble the
applications of telematics to natural resource management as described earlier
in the selection on the biota. Satellite-based sensors and computerized
pattern recognition procedures show the location of specific mineral resources
in the earth. Similar procedures can locate the most likely patches of ocean
for fishing certain species. From the environmental perspective, the impact
is more effective managenent of the resource: fish are not depleted, and
minerals may be extracted with little disturbance to the biota.
Knowledge industries. Knowledge industries/75 are likely to undergo
equally profound changes as a result of the application of telematics. While
agriculture and manufacturing have been automated for some time, information
businesses are automating right now. This implies profound change for
industries which are built around the matching of questions and answers, such
as travel agencies, insurance companies, investment brokers, and retail
merchandising, which have traditionally been labor intensive.
Some of them may die out as a result. All are built around the sale of
scarce information which they collect, screen, and synthesize for che buyer.
With the same raw information commonly available via teletex, enough people
may choose to do their own screening and synthesis to sharply reduce the
demand for such services. While a home computer and teletex is considered a
luxury item today, in 20 years, personal service may be the luxury.
1 Clerical work will become more technical, as workers operate word
processors, automated filing and indexing systems, and do their own programing.
The amount of capital which is baing invested in the industries today for
automation is very large indeed. We must understand tt-» effects which their
use will have on this sector lest we unwittingly build u syscem which is
adversarial and divided within itself.
Workers
There are three clusters of issues related to telematics for workers.
Firsl, there are a number of issues relating to the changing skill requirements.
Telematics will probably bring about a mismatch in the array of jobs to be done
compared to the array of skills among the work force. New jobs will be
created, and some old ones will no longer need to be done. The choice will
become retraining or job loss for many. The traditional distinction between
blue and white collar work will vanish. There is also likely to be an
increased demand for workers in such jobs as electronics maintenance. While
some unskilled jobs will probably never be automated, especially personal
service work, the net demand for unskilled labor is likely to decrease.
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•lob loss will be uneven. The loss of jobs will primarily be due to the
substitution by telematics. For example, it has been estimated that 128,000
American auto workers will lose their jobs by 1985 due to manufacturers'
investments in increasingly sophisticated and adaptable automated equipment..
/76 The creation of new jobs, conversely, will be in part in producing and
selling telematics, and in part the result of developing the new capabilities
which are inherent in telematics. Whether or not there will be a net loss of
jobs remains to be seen. Recent studies by the WorldWatch Institute/77 and
the ILO/78_predict a net loss of demand for workers. Peter Marsh has put the
transition to telematics into a very long-range historical context, and
concludes that while adjustments always compensated for labor displacement
before, this time it may well not be so./79 For nations like Norway, where
there is a perennial shortage of labor, the semi-official policy decision has
been made to back CAD/CAM as the only way to increase industrial output./80
On the other hand, many people do confidently predict a net gain in jobs.
Some new jobs will, no doubt, be created as the new capabilities of telematics
are exploited.
Telematics will affect the power relationship between workers and manage-
ment in several ways. First, it will be far more difficult to organize and
maintain labor unions if the work force becomes physically decentralized.
Also, increased competition for jobs may tend to hold wages down, and decrease
both the incentive to organize and the inducements to adopt telematics. By
the same token, management supervision will face problems from decentralization
as well. Flexible manufacturing can make businesses more vulnerable to strikes
because of reduced inventories. Thus, management is likely to monitor the mood
of the work force more closely, and plan thsir inventories accordingly. This
tactic could lead workers to engage in more wildcat strikes. Small
manufacturers may see some benefit, in that case, in organizing mutual aid
societies to protect themselves against strikes.
An interesting question in relation to organized labor is retraining of
workers displaced by telematics. Who will pay for it? Unions? Employers?
The Federal Cjovernment?
Certain groups of workers may be more affected by these telematics-
related changes than others. Workers in the telematics industry itself will
be in a strong position. There is continuing controversy about the impacts
on postal service workers./S^ We have already discussed the cloudy outlook
for manufacturing and knowledge industry workers.
The Built Environment
There is a strong possibility that telematics technologies will be
applied to the redesign of city structures and the offices within them. The
land use patterns of urban areas have developed in accordance with the
proximity-related needs of the many groups within them. Just as the streetcar
changed workplace/home proximity requirements, so will telematics be a
facilitator- in changed use patterns.
As the telematic office becomes an accomplished fact, there will be a
need for planners and managers to design workspace in line with the specific
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requirements and capabilities of the technologies. In light of the recent
findings on the effects of ozone emitted by copiers, it is necessary to design
adequate ventilation into their site within the office. Users of video
display terminals must consider a number of site-related requirement* in order
to avoid stressed, uncomfortable, and sore-eyed operators. Telematics will
accelerate a need for an environment planned around technology. This will be
accomplished, at least in pa»*t, by using the machines' own capability to do
the designing.
SOCIAL DISCONTINUITIES
The biota, human health, and the technoeconomy are the foci of EPA's
interests. There are three other sets of potential impacts which are so broad
that they cut across the structures of society including the biota, health and
safety, and the technoeconomy. Because they are so general, they could be
called meta-impacts. They are potential forces of societal discontinuities on
a grand r.cale. If these impacts should come to pass, they would vitiate many
other benefits and trivialize the other problems associated with telematics.
The first of these is the possible fragility of a telematics-intense
society. Any technology on which society becomes broadly and intimately
dependent for normal functioning presents a critical vulnerability of that
society. If that technology Tails on a large scale, society is disrupted,
e.g.,as by a regional blackout. The technology failure could be the result of
natural disaster, hostile actions, interruption of necessary supplies, or
merely the cumulative results of a great many small component failures. The
GAO has investigated, this with regional ADP systems./82
A telematics-intense society is vulnerable to terrorism. Another
fragility is the susceptibility of our electric power supply to fluctuations,
due to suddenly increased demand or shortages of fuel (blackouts and brownouts).
Telematics are dependent on a power supply which is interruptible through
accident, hostile intent, or its own systems failures. A third type of
fragility is the difficulty of maintaining and repairing extremely precise,
complex, small equipment. There could be, under some occasions, a shortage of
people who are skilled in such maintenance. A fourth, newly recognized
fragility is susceptibility to electromagnetic pulses. An electromagnetic
pulse would be a by-product of high-altitude nuclear explosions that would
blanket huge areas of the world with peak fields of 50,000 volts per meter.
Defense strategists.suggest that a single detonation 200 miles above Nebraska
would knock out unprotected communications equipment all across the United
States./83 A very large part of our telecommunications systems, including
the Bell System and most of our military networks, are unprotected. There
.appears to be little disagreement about this vulnerability, should an external
or internal enemy succeed in setting off such a detonation; disagreement is
only about whether and how the military authorities are prepared to cope with it.
The second neta-impact is technical. There is widespread agreement
regarding the critical need to develop structures for the synthesis of infor-.
mation, and the analogous critical need to develop more sophisticated methods
of programming which will exploit the technical capabilities of presently
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developed machines. A third technical structure which needs immediate
attention is the system of laws and regulations. They need to be adapted to
telematics and the new problems of regulation which it raises. If this
intellectural inventing is not done, the telematics-intense society cannot be
sustained.
Finally, there is a political meta-impact. It comprises a set of policy
stances toward the distribution of information. While there is much talk
about the economics of information, the fact is that information is not a
commodity like any other, and that ordinary approaches to establishing its
price or value are not used and are not likely to be used. A new approach
must be developed. The question of access to information is related. Is it a
right? Is it a commodity? Who will have access to what information and who
will not? These questions sound deceptively simple, but they are profound.
If they are not seriously addressed soon at the highest levels of public
authority, then it is likely that telematics will prcve to be a social time
bomb. Rather than a society of haves and have-nots it could become a society
of know and know-nots.
WHICH IMPACTS ARE "MOST IMPORTANT"?
CRITERIA FOR SORTING
The sweep of the potential impacts already identified argues for some
sorting out to help set priorities for further study, and for other actions.
The assessment team developed and used several sorting systems or criteria
sets discussed below. In addition, two workshops were held; participants,
who included government officials, industry representatives, and other experts
on telematics, and representatives of groups of potentially affected parties,
vigorously discussed with the team appropriate criteria for evaluating impacts.
Criteria for meeting EPA's research objectives. The widespread
conclusions in the scholarly literature and among those who worked on this
project are that the long-term consequences of telematics for American and
world society are as profound as the effects of the Industrial Revolution.
Against that panoramic sweep of revolutionary change, the interests of EPA are
muted in at least two ways. They are muted in the general discussion of
impacts and consequences of telematics, and they are muted in the relevancy of
the sorting criteria to EPA's mission. In this section, the focus is directly
on criteria for selecting projects to meet the long-term early warning
objectives of the Office of Strategic Assessments and Special Studies of EPA.
The Environmental Protection Agency, an organizational product of the
problems of the 1960s and early 1970s, and its legal charge, its organizational
structure, its staff ambience, its orientation toward the Federal system, and
its social role, are framed around problems that matured over the last three
decades. Insofar as telematics represents a revolutionary family of technol-
ogies and social developments, one could expect a mismatch between EPA's
organizational categories and what will consistently prove to be important
the future.
One can expect substantial dissonance between the problems that will
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become increasingly important and the present structure of the agency. By
analogy, the same argument holds at the next higher level of abstraction in
regard to how the total responsibility for dealing with society's problems is
divided up among Federal agencies. The functions dealing with occupational
health and safety, biomedical developments, educational needs and opportunities,
and so on, will all be dislocated by the pervasive impacts of telematics
technology. In each case, there will be dissonance between the new problems
and opportunities and the established governmental structure.
A four-stage approach used to identify the most fruitful areas for EPA's
long-term research includes:
• A taxonomy of causes of future environmental problems presented in
EPA's Research Outlook 1980 in the chapter on "Anticipating Future
Environmental Problems."
• A list of criteria emphasizing scope, scale, importance,imminence,
and uncertainty over the opportunities or problems, i.e., the
benefits or the costs of the telematics technology to society.
• Attention to government's role, especially where government's failure
to act will lead to either lost opportunities or the fulmination of
undesirable environmental impacts.
• Direct attention to EPA's established statutory role in research
development monitoring, problem identification, and information
transfer, as well as attention to such matters as researchability.
These four points are discussed in order.
The causes of future environmental problems. Exhibit 5-6, drawn from the
chapter on "Anticipating Future Environmental Problems" in Research Outlook
1980, identifies eight generic causes of the environmental problems which have
come to be so important in the recent decades. Changes in social values often
change behavior or social objectives in a way to create or aggravate a problem.
New knowledge can raise our concern and intention about what had otherwise
been ignored. Population and economic growth are overwhelmingly dominant
arivers in drains on natural resources, production of waste, and the consump-
tion of energy. Frequently, the neglect to the end of a life cycle of an
industrial or commercial process leads to environmental problems. Almost all
solid waste disposal problems are of this sort. Acid rain also illustrates
that more intensive use of material can create a problem. One might
anticipate, if we went to the use of more exotic materials in an'electric
automobile fleet, new or uncommon materials could become widely dispersed.
Scale—that is, the simple volume or size of a facility—can create special
problems, often by exceeding carrying capacity of the local environment. And
finally, new technologies themselves may create problems which we are slow to
catch on to, for example, DDT's side effects.
These points are displayed in some detail in Exhibit 5-7. When used as
first criteria, they raise the question as to whether the anticipated impact
relates to any of these generic causes. If they do, they are more likely,
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EXHIBIT 5-6: CLASSES AND CAUSES OF FUTURE ENVIRONMENTAL PROBLEMS
Changes in
social values.
New knowledge.
Population
ana economic
growth.
Neglect of
life cycle.
Neglect of
life cycle.
Potential
Problem
Indoor pollution
from domestic toxic
materials, such as
carbon monoxide
and accumulation of
offensive odors.
Removing or adding
trace materials in
the human, animal,
and plant environ-
ments.
Irreversible melting
of the polar ice cap.
Clean up after a
nuclear event or
reactor deconmission-
ing.
Dam silting.
Description Problem
Energy conservation in Known
space heating results in problem,
substantially lower unknown
rates of air turnover. scope.
Growing knowledge or the Known
role of trace materials, problem,
and increasingly sensitive unknown
instruments for their scope.
detection and measurement
may cal1 for new measures
to regulate trace materials.
If the greenhouse effect Unknown
from carbon dioxide in the problem,
atmosphere, from expanded potentially
use of organic fuel, is a discernible.
real threat the heat could
melt the ice at the poles
and flood most coastal
areas.
We may be unprepared to Known
clean up after a nuclear problem,
power plant accident or a unknown
limited nuclear exchange. scope.
A major spate of contern- Known
porary dam building oc- problem,
curred during the second unknown
quarter of the 20th cen- scope.
tury. Therefore, during
the first part of the next
century silting may become
a world-wide problem. Only
two of the 25 largest dams
in the world were completed
before 1955 (1932 and 1940).
More intensive
intensive
use.
Mew environmental
pollution from cad-
mium, lead, sulfur,
zinc, nickel, and
other materials.
It is plausible that elec- Contingent
trie cars may develop into problems.
a substantial fraction of
the auto fleet. They would
have to use some kind of
battery storage system based
on lead, mercury, cadmium,
sulfur, zinc, nickel, or
other materials not now
generally deployed in the
environment in large
quantities.
Source: "Anticipating Future Environmental Problems," Research Outlook 1980.
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Research & Development 600/9 80-006,
February 1980, pp. 189-190.
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EXHIBIT 5-6: CLASSES AND CAUSES OF FUTURE ENVIRONMENTAL PROBLEMS (cont'd)
More
intensive use.
Potential
Problem
Rural land pollution.
Scale.
Neoler.f c*
life cycle.
Destruction of
ancient and modem
architectural and
structural artifacts.
Urban vermin.
Neglect of
life cycle
and scale.
New
technology.
Sulfur wastes.
Ocean pollution from
industrial pollution.
Class of
Description Problem
The general lack of land Known
use control in rural problem,
America coupled with the unknown
increasing rate of intro- scope.
ducing new technologies
into rural America will
lead to greater waste
disposal, land pollution
and aesthetic problems.
As industrialization pro- Known
ceeds in the Third World, problem,
at current low standards unknown
of pollution control, scope.
structural artifacts and
art work, such as the Taj
Mahal, will undergo
serious deterioration.
Rats, roaches, and other Known
vermin in urban areas are problem,
increasingly resistant to unknown
control agencies, while the scope.
use of control agents is
being more restricted.
Aside from the offensive
nature of vermin, they are
disease vectors.
The growing use of sulfur-
rich fossil fuels will,
under present regulations,
lead to the accumulation
of large quantities of
sulfur from de-sulfuriza-
tion. Disposal presents
problems.
With the large-scale
mining of the seabed
resources possible, we
find that we have
relatively little under-
standing of the effects
of the oceanic equivalent
of mine tailings. Mine
operations are likely to
raise large quantities of
trace materials, as well
as vast quantities of
particulates, into the
life zones of the ocean.
Known
problem,
unknown
scope.
Contingent
problem.
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EXHIBIT 5-7: BASIC CAUSES OF FUTURE ENVIRONMENTAL PROBLEMS
A. Population growth
Increased demand for:
— Food
— Shelter
— Energy
— Goods
— Raw materials
Increased:
— Congestion
— Waste production
B. Economic growth
Increased demand for:
— Food
— Shelter
— Energy
— Goods
— Raw materials
Increased:
— Congestion
— Waste production
— Industrial growth
C. Changing social values
D. New knowledge of:
— Causes
— Effects
— Remedies
E. Neglect of life cycle of:
— Goods and materials
— Processes
F. New technologies
G. Systems vulnerabilities
H. Scale
I. More intensive use of resources
and facilities
than otherwise, to enhance cr diminish adverse or desirable environmental
outcomes. If an impact is not related to one of these causes, or if some
special argument cannot be made on its behalf, it is not likely to become a
major environmental benefit or cost.
With regard to each of these causes and each of the impacts, we kept in
mind the EPA interest in effects on the natural environment—the biota and th<
ecology—human health and safety, and the technoeconomy, i.e., the man-made
environment.
Importance criterion. Having done some sorting organize .ion at the abovi
stage, one would then move on to using the following short list of criteria
which define the importance of the impacts under consideration. Whether good
or bad, will they:
• affect large or small numbers of people,
« affect identifiable groups differently,
• be irreversible in effect,
• be intense or diffuse,
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• be transitional or more long lasting,
• be incremental or precipitous,
• be certain in effects,
• be specific to a certain environmental interest:
— hunan physical or mental health,
— air
— water
— solid waste
— noise
— biota
— aesthetics
• affect major infrastructure or resources such as:
— natural resources
— renewable resources
— the work force
— industrial processes
— the national security system
— the national institutions
— cities
— agriculture
— rural life
• have impacts on the technoeconomic structure, particularly:
— productivity
— the location of physical facilities
— vulnerability of social systems
— vulnerability of technological systems
— control or manageability of complex systems
• provide or generate new information or deliver a capability for
understanding environmental effects.
Impacts may be sorted by the above criteria, using as summations of
judgments, scalings from 1-10. Or one might just develop an essayistic
analysis incorporating the above points.
Government's role. Recognizing that we are talking about long-term
effects and major outcomes, we see that the government role on these long-term
matters should be driven by two questions. Will the failure to act be highly
likely to cause:
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• an undesirable outcome?
• a potential social benefit to be lost?
EPA's role. Finally, a sorl along the questions of EPA's direct role
should use criteria such as:
t Is the problem unequivocally outside EPA's mission?
• Is the issue tractable by EPA's major forms of action?
• Is new knowledge likely to inform those actions?
• Can that new knowledge be related to specific EPA R&D ana information
activities such as:
— research
— development
— monitoring
— evaluation
— public information
— knowledge transfer
— constituency building, inside and outside the government.
This system of sorting is likely to lead EPA's research program to
concentrate on new developments and second order impacts and consequences, and
to soft-pedal research in those effects which are only marginal additions to
existing or already known problems, or which will at worst have self-limiting
or only highly localized impacts.
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SECTION 6
ISSUES AND STAKEHOLDERS
Major issues with regard to telematics and
environmental protection are: what role should
government play in telematics development? How
will latent environmental problems be identified?
How will public concerns be resolved? This
section identifies major stakeholders and their
active interests. Industry, government agencies,
and special affected groups are discussed. None
have an economic, institutional, or social self-
interest or a definite legislative mandate which
assures that environmental problems will be
identified for early attention, and that
environmental benefits will be fully realized.
EPA can fulfill this function, but it will have
to identify and understand its latent constituency
and provide it with needed information.
A most basic issue with regard to telematics in the U.S. is: what role
should government play in its development? Currently there is a movement
toward deregulation or reducing the Federal governmental presence in many
spheres of activity; and the present Administration has enunciated a policy of
leaving technology development to the private sector. As discussed in the
final portion of this section, this is a change in the long-standing situation
in at least one part of the telematics industries, telecommunications, where
until recently major actors enjoyed their position as regulated and protected
monopolies.
A closely related issue is: how will public concerns about telematics—
especially environmental, health, and safety concerns—be resolved, and how
could latent problems be identified in a timely manner, if there is no new
Federal responsibility with regard to telematics? There are indicators that
local governments may act with regard to some concerns if the Federal govern-
ment chooses not to act, and in a manner which would be unnecessarily
destructive of the public benefits promised by future telematics development.
This section is concerned with stakeholders, potentially affected parties,
issues which will affect the speed with which telematics matures, and the ways
in which environmental and health issues related to telematics are likely to
emerge and to be defined.
Stakeholders are the people, organizations, and institutions that have
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a direct and strong interest in the future development of a technology. The
most visible stakeholder often has explicit expectations of profit and loss as
a result of the market performance of the technologies. Government agency
stakeholders have a legislated and limited responsibility for some aspect of
a technological development or use. Other stakeholders have a strong interest
in the consequences of the technology for themselves; those consequences are
often driven by economic interest, e.g., impacts on small businessmen;
occupational consequences, and structural unemployment on workers; health and
safety effects on the individual; concerns about consumer safety. Stakeholders
are likely to seek to influence the design and operating characteristics of
the technology, the structure of the market and of the industry, and the way
in which the technology is priced, distributed, and regulated.
Almost always there are conflicts among the objectives and responsibilities
of major stakeholders, and out of these conflicts are defined policy issues
which must be resolved. It is rarely in the interest of any advocate stake-
holder to identify and call attention to some possibly troublesome characteris-
tic of the technology and thus to define it as an issue to be dealt with.
Usually a problem is overlooked until the technology is widely utilized and
the problem has become visible beyond doubt. Similarly, if it is not in the
interest of any major stakeholder to identify and plan for beneficial applica-
tions of the technology, some of these may be overlooked. More often than
not, the advocate stakeholder is interested in the relatively short-term
effects of the technology on his market. He is interested in the short-term
benefits. He is interested in creating or expanding into a market. The
short-term considerations so characteristic of American business therefore are
consistent deeply structural distractions away from longer term markets,
longer term economic developments, and longer term societal concerns.
The theme of this chapter is that the interests of the dominant techno-
logical stakeholders will not draw attention to the potential environmental,
health and safety implications of telematics technologies, either benefits or
costs. The stakeholders are focused on the problems of coalescence and
convergence of telecommunications, computers, and information technology.
Their focus is on the question of moving into new markets. Those stakeholders
who have traditionally been unregulated, such as computer manufacturers, are
interested in moving into and integrating with those areas previously highly
regulated, such as telephone, radio, and television. The technological stake-
holders are to a large extent devoted to managing the questions raised by the
regulatory apparatus that they are currently immersed in. Other technological
advocates are concerned with the questions of intruding into those regulated
technological areas with institutional, economic, organizational, and techno-
logical innovation. As will be seen in the discussion of affected parties,
their concerns, as they now stand with regard to telematics, are relatively
circumscribed, focusing on such questions as privacy, monopoly, constitutional
guarantees, copyright, and equity of access.
The fact that not even the largest stakeholders in the telematics game
have a plenary interest in its benefits and costs in no ways implies criticism
of those stakeholders except insofar as the failure to attend to cost and
benefits works to their own detriment. The technoeconomic system in the
United States, with its strong economic incentives coupled to the
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institutionalization of technology promotes a tendency to limit rather than
to broaden the scope and time horizon of each actor's concerns. The fact that
the sum of individual self-interests does not'fully map longer term conse-
quences is again neither an explicit nor implied criticism of the dominant
actors. It is just another aspect of our technoeconomic reality. These two
situations, however, are no justification and ought not to preclude attention
by government to a full range of potential benefits and possible social costs.
Only when we understand the limitations on the likely range of actions of each
of the dominant actors can government becjin to frame the special, necessary,
and complementary role for its own actions.
If EPA is to effectively introduce environmental considerations into
discussions of national information/cosmunication policy, it must take into
account the advocate stakeholders' and interested parties' self-interest and
related indifference to some matters.
WHY ANY EPA (OR GOVERNMENT) ROLE WITH REGARD TO TELEMATICS?
One widely accepted guiding principle for defining the appropriate role
of government in regard to technology, is that government should intervene
only to balance imperfections in the market. This phrase unfortunately is
almost meaningless with regard to telematics. One branch of the technologies
which are rapidly converging and integrating to make up telematics—telecommu-
nications—has, as already noted, long been dominated by regulated monopolies
which still enjoy and are constrained by some anomalies of that position.
The other two streams from which telematics is developing—electronics/
computers and information services—have throughout their development been
heavily subsidized by military and civil sector agencies through research and
development funding and procurement. In many forms of telematics, Federal
agencies are major actors (for example, electronic funds transfer, in which
the Federal Reserve System operates some of the critical systems and links);
in many other forms, Federal agencies are critically dependent on the technol-
ogies (for example, military dependence on communication systems and
satellites). Telematics provides the indispensable interface between our
nation and other nations, and between the various parts of our nation and of
our government, a fact which in most countries is recognized by government
ownership of communication systems.
The electronics/computers and information services components of
telematics have not been much regulated, and in fact—because they have
developed rapidly and their capabilities are to a large extent historically
unprecedented—older laws and legal conventions and precedents often dc not
"fit" them. There have been cases of courts ruling that computer theft of
data could not be prosecuted because that which was allegedly stolen was not
tangible. Another example is the confusion and controversy attending copy-
right law and telematics.
It therefore seems that the appropriate role for government with regard
to telematics cannot, realistically, be no role at all. At the same time, in
accord with prevailing political attitudes, it should be defined to be
limited by some commonsense rules. This assessment, of course, was not
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aimed at formulating an appropriate role for the Federal government with
regard to telematics, nor an appropriate role for EPA. But in offering
guidance and advice with regard to research needs, as they relate to
telematics, we have of necessity had to consider EPA's legislated mandate and
authority in the context of future telematics development. The assumption
which we have used, which should be stated explicitly here, is that:
t Within constitutional limits, resource constraints, and political
realities, the Federal government should act where the potential
public benefits of telematics would not be delivered without such.
actions, or where avoidable social costs would be imposed without
such actions.
• With regard to environmental protections end public health, EPA
should similarly act to achieve potential benefits of telematics
which would not be provided by private sector actions, and to avoid
or minimize potential costs which would otherwise be imposed on the
public.
The next part of this section identifies major stakeholders and describes
their stakes in the future of telematics, in order to see whether opportunities
for beneficial environmental and health applications are likely to be quickly
realized; and whether any possible environmental or health impacts of a
detrimental nature are likely to be anticipated and controlled in a timely
fashion. The following part considers the potentially affected parties, a
broader group which includes not only stakeholders but all of those who may
be indirectly impacted by telematics but are less able to influence its
development.
Some of these potentially affected parties will find their well-being,
opportunities, and choices increased and improved. Some will inadvertently
be subjected to undesirable health, social, environmental, or other costs.
In the case of telematics, it is likely that the potentially affected parties
include nearly everyone in the society. Most are unlikely to have informed
and explicit expectations about these effects. Unlike institutional stake-
holders, ordinary citizens are likely to know little about telematics as it
develops, and to make little effort to have an influence on its design or
use. Of course, in the American political system, there is no voice for the
generality. Organized power is the only power which affects public policy
decision-making. Consequently, those concerned with the effects of telematics
are likely to find their most effective voice when organized into groups
capable of impacting on the legislature, the regulatory agencies, and other
elements of government.
A fourth subsection looks more closely at economic and market issues
since thsse will affect the timing and scale of utilization of telematics and
thus the significance of possible environmental, health, and social impacts.
The final subsection treats public policy issues in their relationship to
environmpntal concerns.
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MAJOR STAKEHOLDERS: OBJECTIVES AND ENVIRONMENTAL INTERESTS
Industry
Because telematics development is taking place largely within the private
sector, the key stakeholders are corporate developers, suppliers, and
promoters. The "telematics industry" is in actuality many industries, now
converging, colliding, and coalescing. There are, first, the telecommunica-
tions companies—the common carriers and specialized carriers. They include
the regulated monopolies which dominated the older telecommunications
industries, and scores of more recent competitors ranging from very small
specialized new companies to multinational corporations.
The telegraph, telephone, and submarine cables were quite different means
of communications, and each tended to have the characteristics of a natural
monopoly.l\_ They came to be regulated accordingly. Newer technologies have
broken down the old categories to compete with existing systems and with each
other. These conflicts between stakeholders have caused questions of market
structure, entry barriers, pricing policy, and a range of services to be
defined as dominant policy issues. We will come back to these in the fourth
section below.
Secondly, there is the computer/business-machine/calculator industry—those
who develop and those who manufacture the hardware, and those who develop and
sell the software. This industry is itself very diverse. Some companies are
integrated backward or forward—back to research and development, forward to
information banks and consumer services.
Thirdly, there is the information industry—those who use telematics to
collect, aggregate, analyze, manipulate, package, and sell or provide data of
one form or another.
Even so broad a categorization, however, is misleading. One might, for
example, speak of the electronic funds transfer industry as a subspecialty
with telematics, and even this is a highly diverse set of actors including
financial institutions of many kinds, communication links, government
organizations, third party services, insurers, etc. There are numerous
amalgamations of telematics with older, even competing, industries such as
publishing.
With so diverse an industry there are obviously many differences in
objectives, policies, stakes, and stances. But there are also stakes which
are common to these private sector actors. First, they all wa.it the telematics
market as a whole to grow; they want the public to accept telematics, to expect
and demand continual imp-overrent and advancement, and to structure their work
and leisure activities and institutions to be dependent on telematics.
Secondly, they want freedom of competition preserved since in a very fluid
situation each company sees opportunities to expand its market, diversify its
products, and/or integrate its services so as to invade new areas of activity.
At the same time, each wants competition limited so as to protect past invest-
ments and future expectations. Government support and protection is sought,
especially vis-a-vis foreign competitors, but government regulation is
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generally viewed as an onerous and costly burden. No philosophical or
political position is implied in this description; it is merely realistic to
recognize that these major stakeholders want to maximize their opportunity
for future profits, growth, and stability.
older quasi -monopolies and the new competitors are scrambling to use
the latest scientific and technical developments in telematics. It is not in
the interests of these major stakeholders to identify or call attention to
any environmental, health, and social problems associated with them, which
they believe to be unimportant, not their responsibility, or effects which
will te.ke care of themselves with the passage of time. Such problems can for
the mcnent be ignored, deferred for later, or treated as externalities until
there i* public pressure to recognize them.
It is in the interests of these stakeholders to develop new users and
customers for telematics, including environmental and health applications,
such as pollution monitoring devices. But since these are only two areas of
need among many potential lucrative markets, it may require some initiative
and encouragement by potential users to assure timely development.
Government
Because of events and decisions made early in the history of the American
communications and information industries, the government role with regard to
tnem is powerful but limited and reactive. In most other countries,
telegraph and telephone systems are combined with the postal service and
operated by the government. In the U.S., private sector investment and
entrepreneurship built these systems with little or no government assistance
/2, and reliance on the private sector has continued to be a fundamental
tenet of government communications and information policies. When the
government undertook to regulate these industries in 1934, it was in order to
deal with economic and market issues and to regulate the spectrum as a scarce
resource. £3
The most important government sector with regard to telematics has been
the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), a regulatory agency, although
Federal R&D— especially military R&D— has contributed much to telematics
development. Like most U.S. regulatory agencies, the FCC has a specific,
limited legislative charter, and it has no special responsibilities for
environmental and public health concerns related to telematics. It deals
with market issues and to a lesser extent with programming content.
The consequences of historical development of control over the telecommu-
nications industry in the United States and the division of responsibility
within the industry differ from those in other advanced nations. One effect
has been to blunt any integrated forward look by the telecommunications
regulatory apparatus. The effect of that, one can see even in the most casual
evidence. The Canadians, French, and British are all far ahead of the United
States in developing modern telematics systems, information utilities, and
broad-scale intervention experiments to test and evaluate the technologies.
The major opportunities for long-term development are lost in our parochial
squabbling. The lack of a national policy on telematics and telecommunications
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Is leading to an inchoate system of development. Coping with that incoherence
is a major activity of both the regulators and the regulated.
The National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA),
established by Executive Order 12046 in 1978 within the Department of Commerce,
is the principal Federal agency for development and implementation of national
policies on electronic communications. It inherited the functions of two
older offices, the Office of Telecommunications Policy which had been within
the Executive Office of the President, and the Office of Telecommunications in
the Department of Commerce.
NTIA has five responsibilities:
• to advise the President on policy issues related to domestic and
international communications and information;
• to present and advocate the Administration's policies to Congress,
the public, the FCC, and other Federal, State, and local government
agencies;
t to encourage the development of r.ew technology and management
techniques which will maintain the effective growth and application
of telecommunications;
• to manage the Federal government's use of telecommunications and
recommend procurement policies for all Federal agencies; and
• to coordinate Federal assistance to State and local governments in
planning and use of telecommunications systems.
The thrust of NTIA's responsibilities are promotional and developmental.
The agency, however, also concerns itself with problems and issues related to
telecommunications. For example, at the initiative of the President's Office
of Science and Technology Policy, in 1979, NTIA organized an inter-agency task
force to prepare a detailed plan for a Federal program on understanding the
biological effects of nonionizing radiation, and published a report in June
1980.* Other problems of concern to NTIA are questions of system security and
privacy, issues of deregulation, management of the broadcast spectrum,
extension of telecommunications services to remote and rural areas, and
planning for expansion of electronic mail and electronic funds transfer.
The Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation of the
97th Congress, 1st Session, favorably reported out a bill to establish a
cabinet-level International Telecommunications and Information Task Force
which would operate for three years to "develop consistent and comprehensive
U.S. internation telecommunications and information policies." The bill
(S.821) provided a clear justification for a government role in telematics
development:
* Nonionizing Electromagnetic Radiation Safety, A Program of Coordinated
Federal Activities Related to Biological Effects of Nonionizing Electro-
magnetic Radiation (0-300GHz), NTIA-SP-80-7), June 1980.
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"The Congress finds that -
(1) the United States telecommunications and industries make an
important contribution to international commerce and are vital to the
economy of the United States;
(2) although many governments of the world have recognized the
strategic importance of their telecommunications industries and have
developed policies to promote those industries, and the United States
has no coordinated international telecommunications and information
policies "
(Sec. 301, to be cited as the "International Telecommunications and
Information Coordination Act of 1981.")
A bill introduced in the House (H.R.3121) has essentially the same purposes.
The Department of Defense may in fact have a greater influence on tele-
matics development than the FCC or NTIA. Communications and computers are of
course critical to military security and for four decades the Department of
Defense has funded basic and applied research in these areas. DOD has the
largest private switched telephone network in the world—Autovon, built by the
Bell System./4_ It also has communications satellites, such as the Defense
Satellite Communications System, but leases an equal satellite capacity from
commercial vendors. The needs of the military forces are an important driver
in design and development of telematics because DOD is one of the largest
users. Its influence extends further. The U.S. Justice Department brought an
antitrust suit against AT&T in 1949, aimed at forcing divestiture of Western
Electric. In 1953, the Secretary of Defense advised the Attorney General that
breaking up the integrated Bell System would pose a threat to military
security./^ The suit ended with a consent decree in 1956 with no substantial
breal ing up or limiting of the Bell System. At present there is much concern
in DOD about vulnerability of communications to electromagnetic pulse, as
mentioned in the last section, and it is thought that this may eventually
stimulate greater use of fibre optics, which are not susceptible./6
The early telecommunciations technologies—the telegraph (1840s), sub-
marine cables (1860s), and telephones (1880s), had few detrimental environ-
mental effects. Those effects were mostly associated with stringing trans-
mission lines, which began at a time when environmental values were low. No
public health problems were ever identified in connection with these technol-
ogies. On the contrary, there were obvious and substantial benefits in
medical care delivery and in response to disaster. Neither the public nor the
government therefore had any reason to associate communications technologies
with environmental assault.
From the .-ginning, the telegraph system helped to open up and civilize
the West. The telephone and radio later also improved the quality of life in
rural and remote areas. Communications and postal systems along with the
railroad and later the highways, pla>ed a major part in integrating the U.S.
economy and policy across a huge land area with diverse topography, climate,
resources, and population. Communications thus contributed to the spread of
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population and to present patterns of communities, population densities, lines
of commerce, and industrial location. These technologies had, and telematics
will have, great but indirect impacts on our environment.
These are indirect impacts because in affecting regional population
patterns and industry location, telematics is largely a facilitator rather
than a prime mover. The appeal of the Sun Belt may be enhanced by ready tele-
communications and data access, but climate nevertheless is the primary factor.
The desire to abandon aging center cities, populated with a questionable work
force is a primary corporate driver to suburbia. The fact that a telecommuni-
cations line may provide central control to distributed work centers is a
facilitator. Moreover, the U.S. does not have and has never had a national
population distribution policy, Or a national land use policy.
There is, therefore, no Federal agency with a primary mandate to define
land use issues or investigate environmental impacts with regard to telematics.
The exceptions to this are OSHA and EPA's Radiation Health Program which are
clearly the agencies responsible fo~r health and safety of microwave radiations.
Division of governmental labor means division of governmental responsibility,
which means fractionated, limited approaches to complex problems.
Telematics can be contrasted with some emerging technologies for which
the Federal government has taken at least partial responsibility in develop-
ment stages, for example, aviation, oil shale, solar energy, hydropower, and
public transportation. When a government agency such as the Department of
Energy or the Department of Transportation is given developmental responsi-
bility it is also mandated by law (NEPA, and others) to give thorough attention
to environmental concerns. It comes under immediate and intense scrutiny by
public interest groups who watchdog government agencies.
In the case of telematics, however, the Federal government by and large
is not a developer for civil sector use. Even though Federal R&D influences
development and the government has a strong influence as a major potential
user, its involvement does not have the direct and driving implications and
effects that it has had with regard to public transportation, hydropower, and
aviation. Thus, only such general environmental and health agencies as EPA
and OSHA have a responsibility, and that implicit rather than explicit, to
raise questions about environmental and health aspects of telematics. But
even the structure of EPA and OSHA and the realities of bureaucratic life are
likely to act as strong deterrents to either of those agencies undertaking a
synoptic examination of the future impacts of telematics. This reluctance is
in part accidental to the structure of American government and not intrinsic
to the structure of government. A recent volume by Nora and Mine, The
Computerization of Society: A Report to the President of France, does attempt
a synoptic view of telematics and does attempt to deal with the issues which
in the American system are perceived as interstitial and hence lost in the
cracks.
Users of Telematics
Individual and institutional users and potential users of telematics are
also stakeholders. They actively seek appropriate applications of telematics
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in the belief that these technologies will increase the effectiveness,
productivity, and efficiency of current activities or allow them to develop
rewarding new activities. Potential commercial users are likely to seek
further information about the technologies and to try to influence their
development and design. To the extent that potential users include environ-
mental managers and health care practitioners, this self-interest will fit in
with supplier motivations to speed up new and putatively beneficial applica-
tions. Exhibit 6-1 lists some present and potential users of telematics.
Users, however, are not equally able to anticipate—or equally motivated
to anticipate—possible benefits or detrimental outcomes. Such foresight
often requires scientific and technical information which is proprietary, or
otherwise not available to potential users. Also, environmental and public
health effects are likely to be subtle, diffuse, and broadly distributed, as
well as only peripheral to the specific concerns of any one corporation,
institution, or household. Finally, in spite of the environmental legislation
of recent decades, most environmental impacts can be and are still treated as
externalities to be ignored or passed on.
Workers .--..-.
A fourth major category of stakeholders is labor. This includes workers
who manufacture telematics devices; workers who provide telematics services
and otherwise work with and on telematics devices; and workers who may be
replaced by telematics. This last group is discussed in a later section.
; Workers employed in production of telematics generally fit into estab-
lished labor categories such as assembly line worker or operator, and have in
general concerned themselves with the same kinds of issues as other production
workers, namely wages, benefits, hours, promotions, and security, rather than
focusing on the technology itself. However, workers often raise questions of
occupational health and safety before they are recognized by either medical
practitioners or industry. It sometimes takes a long time for their complaints
to be recognized and officially investigated and acted upon.
Those who work with telematics devices have tended to identify themselves
as professionals (e.g., computer programmers) and managers whenever possible,
and otherwise as white-collar workers. Such workers generally tend hot to be
organized, and tend to identify themselves with the interests of the employer.
Their telematics machines, moreover, often become a badge of status and a
symbol of expertise. In spite of these inhibitors, however, it is from these
groups that there have been recent allegations of health problems associated
with telematics.
Exhibit 6-2 lists a number of labor unions with direct interest in
telematics. They are concerned with the installation and maintenance of
telematics equipment or represent workers employing telematics in their jobs.
With the exception of the acute attention that the Communication Workers of
America (CWA) has given to telematics and its future because of its direct
occupational connection with it, we find that most of organized American
: labor, and presumably, therefore, an even greater percentage of nonunionized
'American labor, is unaware of and effectively unconcerned about the long-term
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EXHIBIT 6-1: STAKEHOLDERS AND POTENTIALLY AFFECTED PARTIES
Stakeholders and Potentially
Affected Parties
I. Stakeholders
. Developers/Promoters
Equipment developers and
Manufacturers
Software Developers
Information Providers
Providers of Communication
Services
Communications coimon car.
Domestic:
• Established systems:
AIII. Western Union
Competitors: many
new and potential
private line and
microwave services.
International:
Established: 6 IRCs*
AHT. Comsat
Western Union
AHT
Kajor Concerns, Interests, and
Obleclives
Environmental and Health Concerns
Market shares, growth, profits. Positive: markets/clients for
patents, big systems and big volume environmental monitoring and
products. control devices.
Negative: environmental/health
regulations would constrain
options and add to costs.
Sane as above.
Maintaining position
Position as protected/regulated
monopolies; market shares for
competitive private line services;
profits, growth, patents; protect-
ing sunk Investments.
Competitive position; profits ,
market share, growth; all depen-
dent oh deregulatory 4:id other
decisions by Congress and FCC.
Same as domestic established
systems.
Rectslon of Sec.222; agreements
with PTTs; new clients.
Same as above.
Positive: markets/clients for
environmental/health related
programs.
Rons specific.
Negative: confirmation of hazards
from Blcrowave. nonlonlilng
radiation, etc., would threaten
or constrain new options and
opportunities.
Same as above.
Same as above.
Same as above.
Same as above.
Many potential new competl- full reellion of FCC barrte.s to
tors. competition; agreement with
PTTs; new clients.
federal Government
KflA
fCC
U.S.Postal Service
Other Federal civil
agencies
Mission to encourage telematics
development, orchestrate Federal
role; reflect Administration
policies.
Implementation/enforcement of
regulatory legislation dealing
with economic and market Issues
and spectrum use.
Competition of electronic mall
services with USPS constitutional
ironopoly, especially erosion of
revenue producing categories of
mall service entry Into electronic
nal I.
Procurement of appropriate tele-
matics devices, services, and
systems for carrying out mission,
within Federal guidelines.
Sane as above.
Ho primary concern; when critical
concerns I Issues arise, will be
responsible for advising President
and developing policy.
No specific responsibility.
None
No environmental/health guidelines
yet developed. Some potential
Interest In health and environmental
agencies.
International Record Conrounteat Ions Companies.
no
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EXHIBIT 6-1: STAKEHOLDERS AND POTENTIALLY AFFECTED PARTIES (cont'd)
EPA
OSHA
Congress
Courts
No specific mission with regard
to telematics.
ho specific mission with regard
to telematics.
General: legislation for national
security, general welfare, etc.
Constitutional conir.erce clause
Bin of Rights, etc.
loterpetatlon/appltcatlon of
legislation, protection of
rights and liberties, settlement
of disputes, equity.
Radiation safety Implementation of na-
tional environmental t/oltcles and laws;
environmental monitoring, standards-set-
tng. etc. (Early warning
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EXHIBIT 6-1: STAKEHOLDERS AND POTENTIALLY AFFECTED PARTIES (cont'd)
2. T.I* Potentially VfcCted Parlies
». General
Telecommunicat tons-focused
Public Interest Groins
environmental Interest
Croups
labor (general)
Individuals.households.
B. Special Interests
tlderly
Disabled/handI capped
Heilth care professionals
Ar-.hltects. engineers.
builders, building managers
Firners. agribusiness
Wood products Industry
and forest managers
Flthlnq Industry
Minerals l.vfc/stry
Public lands managers
Disaster response
Free speech. clv>t liberties, free-
dom of (govt.) Information;
privacy;
content: libel, false advertising.
pornographf. I» violence, etc.;
equity of access
to special Interest or corcera.
Generally (ocuird on po Mutton
a«4 haiards reltled to resource
develcfMtent, fossil fuels.
faclitlles construction, trans-
portation. Industrial byproducts,
po»er central Ion. etc. little
attention to effects of deceo*
tralKatlon or other Icrvg tera
structural questions. Spotty
Interest In use of teleMltcs.
suck as reaale sensing, etc.
Occupational safely and ncaltn.
General concern for en»lro**ent
tnoughl to be stable and rela-
tliely strong, ^ut focuses on
klgn «lslblltty Issues. Gro>ln^
concern for Internal environment.
Cn.Ironaental threats to health.
(•plo>*enl. securlt>. vages.
teneflts. hours, Mrtlng condi-
dltlons. etc.
Diverse: economic and social
welltielng In high priority.
Maintenance of accustoaed quality
of life, generally under conditions
of reduced or restricted tncooe.
hcillh. •oblllty. and social
relations.
Overcralng constraints on noraal
functioning and •oblllty. co«%)
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EXHIBIT fa-2: LABOR UNIONS WITH AN INTEREST IN TELEMATICS
t Communications Workers of America
• American Postal Workers Union
t Associated Actors and Artists of America
— Actors Equity
— AFTRA
— Screen Actors Guild
• National Association of Broadcast Employees and Technicians
• International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers
• American Federation of Government Employees
• American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees
• National Association of Letter Carriers
• Laborers International Union of North America - Mail Handlers
t International Association of Machinists
• American Federation of Musicians
• Newspaper Guild
• International Print and Graphic Communication Union
t American Radio Association
• International Alliance cf Theatrical State Employees and
Moving Picture Operators of the United States and Canada
• American Federation of Teachers
• United Telegraph Workers
• International Typographical Union
• International Labor Press Association
All of these unions come under the AFL-CIO's Department of Professional
Employees.
role of telematics in American society. Organized labor is the sleeping giant
among stakeholders in telematics, considering its enormous potential for
framing positive alternative futures for American work life, American home
life, and American society in a highly telemated world.
Exhibit 6-3 is a vignette of one stress and health hazard problem of
workers in the office of the future.
In summary, the key stakeholders—those who could most easily raise to
public attention some public policy issues which should be addressed with
regard to telematics—are:
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EXHIBIT 6-3: TELEMATICS HEALTH HAZARDS-A VIGNETTE
In San Francisco this winter 1100 members of the Office
and Professional Employees Union No. 3 began picketing the
offices of Blue Shield of California in a contract dispute
involving wages and the working conditions of half its mem-
bership, video display terminal (VDT) operators. Demanding
improvements such as hourly breaks for the operators and re-
negotiation of data entry production standards, the union has
had minimal success in affecting a dialogue with Blue Shield.
The company has stated that improvements have already been
made (window curtains to reduce glare, dimmer switches for
overhead lights, and keyboard changes), and that rest breaks
are not negotiable since "employees should be on the job to
work and if »hey don't want to, they shouldn't be here" (John
Rogers, management spokesman, quoted in Computerworld. 2/16/01)
Although both sides have stated that it will not affect
negotiations. Blue Shield was one of five Bay area sites studied
by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health(NIOSH)
last year at the request of a coalition of area unions. The
other four sites for this investigation into employee health and
VDT use were "newspapers or related operations". The result?,
while not blaming VDT's for all increases in job-related stress
and physical health problems, did point to specific detrimental
Impacts among certain groups of workers. (Select Research Reports
on Health Issues in Video Display Terminal Opera tors ;NIOSII, Div.
of Biomedical and Behavioral Science, April. 1981)
HIOSH included in its study 254 VOT operators, clerical and
professional, and 157 clerical control subjects. Of the profess-
ionals, none worked for Blue Shield, and ell of the participants
were volunteers. The study found that professionals using VDT's
experienced less stress and physical complaints than clerical
operators or members of the control group; apparently because
they exercised more self-coiitrol over jobs having greater variety.
The clerical workers using VOT's experienced the highest levels
of stress and discomfort, and throughout the study proved to be
the most affected of the three groups. They reported heavier
workloads, more boredom and fatigue, and more anxiety over job
futures. Paradoxically, they also appeared to have higher self-
esteem than the other groups. According to NIOSH this means that
VDT's may Increase stress where it already exists, but are only
a cooponent of the overall problem.
For physical problems, the effects of VOT's are clearer.
Visual complaints related to image resolution, lighting problems,
and viewing distance are perhaps as much related to design of the
workplace as to the terminal itself. Musculcskeletal complaints
resulting from the posture necessary for viewing and keying are
also t.ied to both machine and environment.
i *
For the strikers in San Francisco these results have inter-
esting implications. It has been shown that their complaints
are real ones and largely a result of the design of the work-
place. There was no strong correlation found between tine spent
at the tern-inal and health complaints, a point in the company's
favor. Since clerical VOT operators apparently achieve high
self-esteem despite health complaints, it may not be difficult
for Blue Shield, or any other company, to replace the striking
workers, and it may be to the company's advantage to go this
non-union route. It is clear that employers contemplating the
use, or increased use of VOT's should design new facilities, or
redesign existing ones to conform with the physical needs of
the operators. It is not enough to simply place terminals in
a room and commence operations now that appropriate design tech-
niques have been established.
*Source: NIOSH, Select Research Reports, April, 1981
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EXHIBIT 6-3: TELEMATICS HEALTH HAZARDS-A VIGNETTE (cont'd)
Percentage >t VDT Operators and Controls Reporting Frequent Levels
of Particular Stressors Shoving Significant Differences1
Stressors
Clerical VDT Professional VDT
Control
Interesting work
Borei vlth vork
Work Is dull
Increased concentration required
Able to choose own work
Dislike vorkload
Unhappy vlth vorkload
Have to work too hard
Behind in work by at least
one veek
Heavy vorkload
Dissatisfied vlth vorkpace
Have to work too fast
Can sec ova. vorkpcce
Certain la career future
Promotion opportunities
Worry about repriaands
24
48
42
45
4
45
36
76
27
82
41
82
41
14
13
24
76
1}
13
26
28
15
17
S3
10
70
17
65
61
37
37
3
53
23
27
34
18
21
21
61
8
73
18
65
73
44
31
b
Significant at the 95 percent confidence level or greater using a Chi Square
test for homogeneity.
• corporate investors, developers, manufacturers, suppliers, and
promoters,
• users and potential users, spread widely through both public and
private sectors,
• the labor force associated both with telematics developers and
telematics users, and
• two Federal agencies, the FCC and NTIA.
Some members, at least in the first three groups, have a stake in
realizing the potential environmental and health benefits from telematics by
encouraging further applications for environmental monitoring, pollution
control, and similar uses. None of the four major groups appears to have a
strong stake in investigating, anticipating, assessing, or revealing any
undesirable environmental and health characteristics of telematics. Certainly
none has specific responsibility for considering or acting in respect to
indirect effects such as decentralization, or changing population and land use
patterns.
The attention of some of these stakeholders has been drawn to some aspects
of telematics by quite conventional mechanisms; acute episodes of health
effects, such as the exposure of soldiers to radar; inexplicable actions of
foreign powers, such as the bombarding of the American Embassy in Moscow with
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microwaves; sharply localized concerns about military sites such as Project
Sanguine, the attempts to use the courts to provide relief frorn real or alleged
technological injury; a widespread institutionalized suspicion of new articles
in commerce, as reflected in consumer product safety concerns; and finally,
interest in a major new macro engineering project, the solar power satellite.
Each of these illustrations has heightened interest in the human and environ-
mental consequences of microwave radiation. Few telematic techniques have
such continuing, diverse, and convergent attentive publics.
Other major government stakeholders as suggested in Exhibit 6-1, such as
the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Department of Transporta-
tion, the Department of Energy, and the Department of Commerce, are effectively
indifferent, to the potential primary impact of telematics technology on their
areas of concern. Even more remote in awareness and concern are the financial
institutions of government which have tremendous power to influence the out-
comes in the employment of new technologies. The Federal Home Loan Bank Board,
and institutions concerned with monetary and fiscal policy such as the
Treasury Department and the Internal Revenue Service, have chosen to put them-
selves completely out of it.
Government as stakeholder also includes the Congressional committees
(Exhibit 6-4). They have so far been slow to demonstrate real interest and
concern over telematics, awareness of the potential for the future, or will-
ingness to act in an integrated and coherent way.
POTENTIALLY AFFECTED PARTIES
Should telematics become as extremely pervasive as many thinkers believe,
nearly everyone will be affected. Some institutions and some groups will
enjoy especially large benefits and some will be subjected to unusally large
penalties or social costs. Such groups are in fact stakeholders in the future
of telematics, but because they are outside the primary decision-making
process (in this case, the market or buyer-seller-regulator relationships)
they have little direct leverage for influencing the technologies' development.
In many cases, of course, potentially affected parties have little or no prior
realization that they will be affected by the technology.
When such latent interest groups do realize that they will be affected,
they often attempt to find some leverage by creating or joining,a public
interest group.
In the past, most of the social and political controversies which have
arisen around communication and information technologies (in addition to the
economic issues defined by the major stakeholders) have dealt with:
• constitutional guarantees of freedom of speech and associated civil
liberties,
t citizens' demand for information about government actions and
decisions,
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EXHIBIT 6-4: CONGRESSIONAL COMMITTEES WITH INTERESTS IN TELEMATICS
U.S. Senate
Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation
Subcommittee on Communications
Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs
Subcommittee on Health and Scientific Affairs
Subcommittee on Financial Institutions
House of Representatives
Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce
Subcommittee on Communications
Committee on Science and Technology
Subcommittee on Transportation, Aviation, end Communications
Subcommittee on Space Science and Applications
Subcommittee on Investigation and Oversight
Committee on Banking, Finance, and Urban Affairs
Subcommittee on Financial Institutions Supervision, Regulation, and
Insurance
Committee on Government Operations
Subcommittee on Government Information and Individual Rights
Committee on House Administration
Subcommittee on Libraries and Memorials
Subcommittee on Printing
Policy Group on Information and Computers
Committee on the Judiciary
Subcommittee on Civil and Constitutional Rights
Committee on Post Office and Civil Service
Subcommittee on Postal Operations and Services
Subcommittee on Postal Personnel and Modernization
Joint Committees, Boards, Etc.
Joint Committee on Libraries
Joint Committee on Printing
Joint Economic Committee
Board for International Broadcasting
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• threats to the privacy of individuals,
• the content of programming and messages: libel and slander,
advertising, pornography, violence on television, etc.,
• copyright and patent law, and other questions of protection for
ownership of information and ideas, and
• equity in access to systems, information, and services, and consumer
prices.
Public interest groups which direct their attention to FCC actions and
to the communication and information industries have generally formed them-
selves around one or more of these issues./5> They are not oriented toward
environmental and health concerns and have little interest or information on
them. On the other hand, the broader public interest groups direct their
limited technologies on technologies such as resource extraction, power.
generation, and transportation which have had severe, localized, and highly
visible unequivocal effects on the environment or demonstrably detrimental
implications for public health. Because of the competition for their attention
and resources, established interest groups are unlikely to give much attention
to telematics unless new environmental and health problems are clearly
demonstrated.
Labor in general has not so far defined itself as a major stakeholder with
regard to telematics. Both the older industries such as telegraph and
telephone systems, and later computers, microprocessors, end ether telematic
applications have created thousands of new jobs. Automation in the office and
the factory has undoubtedly also destroyed many jobs, but while the economy
was expanding this did not become a divisive issue./6_ There have, however,
been significant exceptions to this; for example, labor conflicts and strikes
associated with the introduction of telematics into newspaper publishing.
There are likely to be more such cases as telematics comes into craft occupa-
tions such as printing and highly unionized production jobs.
A special case is the production workers—assemblers, operators, and
other manufacturing employees—whose jobs may be taken by robots. Until
recently, the relatively small number of industrial robots were dedicated to
work which is hazardous, conducted in toxic environments, or numbingly
monotonous. In most cases robots were, and were perceived by the workers to
be, generally beneficial in terms of occupational safety and health./]_ As
telematics makes stronger incursions into factories, the number of jobs in
some categories, especially those requiring minimum education or training,
will be reduced, and there may be growing antagonism and resistance to the
new devices on the part of labor. If so, this would dispose workers and their
organizations to look more critically at all characteristics of telematics,
including their occupational health and safety characteristics, and may also
lead to an extension of the concept of health and safety to include mental
health.
Having looked at two broad categories of affected parties—the general
public, represented by public interest groups, and the labor force—we can
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summarize more specific categories of people and institutions who will be
affected, especially with regard to health, safety, and environmental quality,
from the previous discussion of potential impacts (Exhibit 6-5).
It is unusually difficult to talk about alternatives to telematics, and
thus one category of possible stakeholders is hardly mentioned in this
analysis. Telematics has the special characteristic of either creating
entirely new capabilities or transforming the ways in which things have
traditionally been done rather than merely providing a marginal, incremental
improvement in efficiency over older technologies. And yet it has repeatedly
eliminated whole categories of crafts and employment classifications or
changed their work beyond recognition. We need offer only one example here.
Computer assisted makeup and imaging systems (CAMIS) is the combination of
electronic page makeup or formatting ';;ith automatic printing on demand
through computer driven imaging system. Introduced into the printing and
publishing industry—which thereupon b:M-.c.:es not a competitor but a user, and
thus a positive rather than a negative :.cakenolder in telematics development—
CAMIS eliminates a number of pre-press aid press-run operations which have
been regarded as a skilled craft, and thus eliminates not only discrete jobs
but the baHs of a lifetime identification of men with a kind of work in which
they took great pride./8
Telematics has also affected the relationship between the news gatherers
and editors. The ability in principle to go directly from typewriter to
press drastically modifies the cycle of review and editing within the news-
paper. As has already happened in more than one newspaper office, the
prankster can introduce fake news, to hassle the editor. Presumably what one
can do for amusement, one can do for gain or for spite. The question of
vulnerabilities of the newsroom to these interventions is a matter that the
press has so far chosen to ignore. It does illustrate the interesting matter
of shifting vulnerabilities against a framework of static belief.
The magnitude of potential social impacts such as this, and the number
of people and institutions which may eventually be impacted, explains why many
people expect that telematics will be the basis for a social revolution or a
new kind of society. Thus ubiquity of factors mocks any effort to specify
potential stakeholders except in general categories.
FACTORS INFLUENCING THE DISSEMINATION AND USE OF TELEMATICS
As described earlier, the key stakeholders—chiefly corporate developers
and users—have historically defined economic, especially market, questions
as the dominant public policy issues related to telematics. Concerned publics
have most often raised constitutional and libertarian issues. This section
offers a brief look at the kinds of economic market issues which have affected
telematics in the past. These may also affect the rate of adoption in the
near future.
Issues related to market structure, competitiveness, fair practice, and
pricing systems are complex because of the characteristics of information
when considered as a market commodity ./9_ Some of these characteristics are:
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EXHIBIT 6-5: LATENT INTERESTS OF AFFECTED PARTIES
Potentially Affected Parties
• Individuals and households
• Medical and emergency delivery
institutions and specialists
• Local governments
• Designers, builders, building
managers
• Industry: owners, managers
• Labor
• Farm owners, farm workers
• Resource development managers
• Environmental managers
• Disaster response managers
Ana Their Latent Interests
• Improved interior environment!
(indoor monitoring, alarm systems)
Improved emergency and health care
systems
Improved prosthesis for the
handicapped
Improved communicatic-, comfort,
convenience, entertainment, etc.
Possible impacts on medical care
and housing costs
Possible impacts of microwave
radiation
• More effective and efficient
technology
Possibly higher costs
Possible reduction in professional
independence
Increased Disparity between large
and small institutions
• Improved too is for coordination and
control of a variety of public
services si'Ch as traffic control,
disaster response, water and sewer
treatment, air quality, crime
prevention
Possible problems with telematics
device disposal (tcxic substances)
in the future
Risk to firefighters from toxic fumes
Effects of decentralization of pop-
ulation, industry, and work centers
(Facilitated by telematics)
• Degradation of indoor environment;
ozone emissions
Monitor'ng of indoor environment
Chances in work flow and indoor
traffic flow
• Improved productivity and efficiency
Enlarged market opportunities
Labor/automation trade-offs, labor
relations
Redesign of tne work place -
transformation of the factory
Diverse effects on regulatory costs
(OSHA)
• Employment levels
Skill requirements
Occupational safety and health
• Increased productivity and efficiency
Advanced market information
Increased capital costs; disparities
between large and small farms
• Applications for monitoring, advance
warning, pollution detection, etc.
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• The same bit of information can be possessed and used by many people
at the same time, unlike a gallon of gasoline, a diamond, or a loaf
of bread;
• Information may become obsolete but it is not used up or depleted,
and it is difficult to destroy;
• The same information can be generated by many people, from different
sources, at the same o** different times. Consequently, it is usually
difficult to identify or prove the source of information;
t It is often difficult to display the value of information, without
revealing the information itself;
• It is difficult to limit access to information; even those who have
been induced to purchase it will often freely give it to others;
• The value of information often depends on its context or on its
timeliness, like the results of this afternoon's horse race.
As noted in the case of electronic communications, market structure and
regulation are complicated by other factors. The co;rmuni cat ions industry
tended, so long as there were relatively few and discrete modes of electric
communication, toward natural monopoly since the efficiency and effectiveness
of the system increases geometrically with the number of individual connections.
The high costs of equipment and government regulation also have tended to
raise high entry barriers in this area. Universality of access, which has
been an important but implicit objective of national policy (e.g., rural tele-
phone lines, low postal rates for printed material) has led to interdependent
pricing and cross subsidies./Id On the other hand, other parts of telematics,
especially computer services and software production, has spawned hundreds of
new companies and intense competition, with competitors ranging from multi-
national corporations to small businesses. The structure of the industry is
highly fluid, with many kinds of horizontal and vertical integration being
tried.
Competition is particularly acute in the information services segment of
the industry. Computerized information services have proliferated; their
data bases cover subjects and specialties ranging from the extremely broad to
the highly specific and include proprietary and open information. A particular
issue, i.e., conflict, which arises here is the relationship between govern-
ment services and private sector services. For example, the National Library
of Medicine has an information system called MEDLARS which encompasses 20
data bases, of which the largest is MEDLINE, containing indexes to 600,000
pieces of biomedical research literature. NML makes this information avail-
able at $15 per computer hour. This is less than a quarter of the cost of
similar services offered by private companies, which are lobbying for
legislation which would force the library, and presumably other government
libraries and information services, to refuse the service to commercial users
or to charge competitive rates. Libraries, however, insist that these
services are merely logical extensions of their traditional activities and
services.
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AT»T Sl'^l1arl-y to those Wh9 would skim the cream off the market created by
Al&l, tht private information services now wish to skim the cream off a system
institutionally and technically created by the National Library of Medicine.
These kinds of conflicts can be expected to proliferate simply because
the area of telematics is in more vigorous ferment than ever before. The
collision, coalescence, and competition among the numerous technologies (see
Section 2) for communication, computation, and information handling is more
complex, profitable, and fluid than ever before.
Economic Issues. In order to specify the issues which have driven or
directed the development of the existing telematics industry and the stakes
which the various actors seek to protect, and the issues which, as a result,
do and do not emarge into the public forum, it is necessary to look briefly at
the history of communications.
The telegraph was the first major communication mode to transmit messages
faster than humans could carry them by voice or in writing. (There were ex-
ceptions, such as smoke and drum signals, or semaphores. But they were very
limited as to distance, content, speed, and accuracy.) The first landline
telegraph in the U.S. was constructed in the 1840s. Transoceanic telegraph
cables began with the transatlantic cable in 1866, and domestic telephones
in the 1880s. The direct environmental impacts of these technologies were
minor and, by and large, ephemeral. There were few or no health effects
(other than making health care somewhat more accessible). They were hailed as
great triumphs of human ingenuity. Public and governmental concerns focused
only on access to the systems and economic impacts; ownership; and to some
extent, privacy ana censorship.
In most countries except the United States, domestic telegraphs and tele-
phones were combined with the postal service and operated by the government.
These postal, telegraph, and telephone administrations are now generally called
PTTs. In the United States, private sector investment and entrepreneurship
built these systems with little or no government assistance, and they began
and remained under corporate ownership. A series of takeovers and mergers
began almost as soon as the telegraph wires were strung. When the overseas
cables were laid, interconnection with them increased the natural tendency
toward monopoly. By the 1930s, AT&T and Western Union Telegraph dominated
the telephone and telegraph systems, respectively./ll
The progress of consolidation into monopolistic clusters is definitively
illustrated with the historical example of telegraphy from 1850 to 1870
(Exhibit 6-6).
These systems, along with the railroad and highways, played a major role
in integrating the U.S. economy and political system. Rural electrification
in the 1930s and'40s, together with radio and universal postal service, went
a long way toward reducing urban/rural disparities in culture, lifestyles,
and values. At a later stage, radio and television may have helped to lure
young people to the more glamorous life of large cities.
The policy issues which did become a big concern were the tendency of
communications systems toward monopoly. In 1934, to have monopolies such as
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EXHIBIT 6-6: TELEGRAPHY'S PROGRESSIVE CONSOLIDATION INTO MONOPOLISTIC CLUSTERS
fVJ
CO
-------
AT&T and Western Union operate in the public interest and offer rea;onable
rates. Congress passed the Comnunications Act. It established the FCC and was
the first regulation of electric communications in this country. The legisla-
tion was modeled on railroad legislation; it was based on the assumption that
competition would lead to wasteful duplication of capital facilities and
services./12
The parallel to the legislative model for the FCC is the technical focus
on AM radio broadcasts. Over the years each new innovation, from the FM radio
to television to CB and cable, has been treated as variations on this one
technology. The result is that early decisions become embellished and
encrusted with incremental change directed at saving initial preconceptions.
The FCC, an independent commission, was to regulate both interstate and
foreign communications by licensing and regulating common carriers. Common
carriers were companies providing communication services for hire to the public
and government by radio, telegraph, telephone, and later satellites. There
are now about 1,000 common carriers, but this includes about 785 land mobile
radio carriers and about 69 microwave radio carriers./13 Western Union Tele-
graph dominates the telegraph field, and AT&T, the telephone system. AT&T and
its integrated Bell System now includes 23 independent local operating
companies and a Long Lines Division, and Bell Laboratories and Western Electric,
a manufacturing subsidiary./14 After the completion of this report, the
Justice Department settled its seven-year long suit against AT&T which will
lead to massive divestiture.
AT&T offers two kinds of services. The first is the well-known message
toll service, and the closely related Wide Area Telephone Service (WATS)
which provides leased lines under a monthly rate. The second type of service
is a private line service which can transmit messages by voice, signal, tele-
vision, or data transmission directly to a client's location./15
The evidence is that the message toll service must be technologically
integrated, as it in fact is, nationally and internationally. That techno-
logical integration argues strongly for economic and management integration.
The arguments are less clear with regard to the second class of service, since
many kinds of institutions and many kinds of technological alternatives are
able to supply private lines or dedicated facilities. Of course, the fact that
there is a situation which will draw new big investors into telematics to
compete with the established markets of the AT&T system is derivative of
AT&T's success in establishing a mass market for its services. The newcomers
are therefore in some sense competing for the market created by the telephone
system. But this is in no way new to the American economy or the American
political community. A crucial question which legislators and regulators have
such great difficulty in addressing with regard to these questions is what is
in the long-term public interest.
The old categories around which regulations were framed are rapidly being
broken down by new technologies which do not fit distinctions between print
and electronic, wire and broadcast, broadcast and point-to-point, voice and
record services. Are cable tele ision and videotex, for example, appropriate-
ly regarded as broadcast media? Many of the current issues which affect the
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market potential and dissemination forecasts stem from this breakdown of old
technological categories.
As early as 1949, the FCC allocated space on the broadcast spectrum to
mobile radio, which competed with telephone./^ In 1959, non-telephone
companies were allowed to use microwave frequencies for point-to-point trans-
mission. Other companies were claiming that they could provide equipment
charges. In 1968, in the Carterphone case, the FCC allowed non-AT&T equipment
to be connected. In 1971, the FCC allowed new "specialized carriers" to offer
private line services in competition to AT&T, and in 1972 it opened the
domestic satellite to competitors. AT&T has fought all of these changes. The
FCC has moved slowly, and this has been a brake on telematics development.
In international communications, the cables, the first of which were all
British, were unchallenged for about 40 years. In 1901, Marconi first trans-
mitted telegraph signals by wireless, but this was used mostly for ships at
sea. The Marconi company was also British, and at the outbreak of World War I
the U.S. Navy took control of these facilities in the U.S. In 1918, the Radio
Corporation of America (RCA) was formed to take over and operate these
facilities within the private sector./17
After World War II, transoceanic telephone, and later satellite communi-
cations, provided further alternatives to telegraph cables and radio. Both
government policy and industry practice insisted on maintaining the economic
viability of all of these modes to assure rational security and reliability of
communications ./18_
Market structure has also been the major public policy issue in inter-
national communications. The FCC in theory takes into account the benefits of
competition in making entry decisions, but the Supreme Court has ruled that
new services "must benefit the public," and that there must be enough traffic
to sustain both old and new companies in allowing additional entries./19
FCC rate regulations encourage uniform rates and services. International
record communications companies (IRCs) therefore present the appearance of a
cartel; that is, a small number of companies with uniform services and rates
and high entry barriers. Laying cables or sending up satellites is very
costly, which further reinforces entry barriers.
In 1956, the first voice quality cable, TAT-1, was laid by AT&T and a
PTT (European Postal/Telegraph/Telephone administrations). Later voice quality
cables were also jointly owned. These modern cables also handle non-voice
communications, i.e., record or telegraph n.essages, and are thus used by the
IRCs which have a quasi-ownership interest in them. Responsibility for a
message passes at midpoint of the cable from an IRC to a PTT./20
In 1943, Section 222 was added to the 1934 Commun"! cations Act. It
prohibited Western Union from offering international services, and it
prohibited the IRCs from offering domestic service, except delivery of inter-
national messages to clients in a very small number of "gateway" cities
specified by the FCC. Western Union divested itself of Western Union Inter-
national, which has since been an entirely separate company. The FCC allows
Ai&T to offer only all-voice service overseas. IRCs cannot offer all-voice
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service, but they can transmit voice/data either simultaneously or alternatively
ever private lines, as well as providing cablegram and telex services./21
The INTELSAT satellite is owned by Intelsat Signatories, the U.S.
signatory being COMSAT. The IRCs are half owners of the earth stations and
lease a half-circuit from COMSAT—to the satellite, with the other half being
leased by a PTT.
As of 1978, there were six IRCs: ITT Worldcom, Western Union International,
RCA Giobcom, TRT, and two much smaller companies. An FCC audit showed that the
IRCs enjoy a very high rate of return: from 18.6% to 58.3% on telex services,
and 19.6% on their private line services./2£ This is the reason that there
are a great many would-be entries into the international services market.
The IRCs, as already noted, can deliver messages directly to U.S. clients
in only a few gateway cities; Western Union completes che deliveries to
clients in other cities. However, in 1979 the FCC allowed Graphnet, Inc. to
compete with Western Union for these services. The FCC also opened 20 more
"gateways" in major cities for direct service by IRCs, and allowed Western
Union in return to send telex messages overseas through Canada or Mexico
rather than through the IRCs. However, Federal courts ruled that the FCC
could not allow Western Union to do this because of Section 222. There is
legislation pending to remove this barrier./23
Also in 1979, the FCC ordered IRCs to cease "bundling" their rates. This
was a practice whereby the costs of terminals for private line customers, the
costs of access loops and connections to IRCs at the gateway, and overseas
rates were combined or bundled. This allowed the IRCs to provide the
terminals for free, or nearly so, whereas Western Union was required to charge
for terminals and local access loops./24
In April 1980, the FCC initiated a rule-making procedure to let COMSAT
deal directly with the public rather than only with AT&T and the IRCs. The
FCC also wants to remove barriers to IRC and AT&T re-sale of access and shared
use of their leased circuits, to encourage new entries into the industry./2S.
In fact, four new retries had already been authorized, but their entry
has been blocked by refusal of the PTTs to conclude cooperative agreements
with them, concerning interconnections and division of revenues. The PTTs are
willing to reach such agreements with AT&T and Western Union, but they fear
that additional entries may fail, or that they will divert customers from the
PTT's use-sensitive-rate services to private line services./26
Thus, the FCC is moving—albeit with agonizing slowness—to increase
competition in both donfistic and international services. This results from
recognition that the new technologies, by breaking down old distinctions
between modes, have made nonsense of many of the old regulations and
restrictions and destroyed the case for "natural monopolies." The established
providers of services are being challenged by many entities with proposed
services and systems ranging from computer-based message systems to improved
facsimile transmission systems and communicating word processing systems.
For example, Xerox is proposing to establish a nationwide common carrier
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network called XTEN to offer high-speed digital communications. Satellite
transponders leased from domestic satellite carriers would be used in
connection with a terrestrial point-to-point microwave system to carry the
signals between earth stations and city nodes, from which the electronic
message system spectrum would carry them on to individual client locations.
Systems such as these will, of course, also strongly impact the U.S.
Postal Service, creaming off the most lucrative portions of their business and
leaving USPS with those delivery services which do not support their own costs.
This could make rural delivery and journal/newspaper deliveries, for example,
prohibitively costly.
Most experts believe that the end result of these changes will be
dramatically lower costs for telecommunication services and a new wave of
innovation in both services and equipment. Because the old boundaries between
storing, manipulating, and transmitting data are breaking down, advances in
telecommunication technology also means advances in all related information
technologies, so that these issues—involving conflicting interests and
objectives of multiple competing companies and technologies, and the under-
lying assumptions of the FCC, U.S. regulatory policy, and even other govern-
ments and international bodies—have implications for all of telematics in the
future.
SOME IMPLICATIONS FOR E,'A
The issues highlighted in this chapter are only a portion of the concerns
of the dominant stakeholders in and out of government in the field of tele-
matics. The thrust of those issues is overwhelmingly in the direction of
market competition, accommodation to telecommunications regulatory constraints,
propagandizing and lobbying for access to new markets, coping with problems at
the technoeconomic level o^ convergent integrating technological systems. For
other stakeholders, the concentration is principally on short-term economic
consequences, job displacement, job upgrading. For others, the focus is
principally on civil liberties, civil rights access, an agenda of issues
coming out of a steady stream of economic concerns dominant in the mid-decades
of the present century.
There is no prime actor in the telematic scene with a basic long-term
perspective or concern for issues of health, safety, ecology, and transforma-
tions of and impacts upon the technoeconomy. Consequently, if EPA is to
successfully engage a long-term anticipatory program of research on the
environmental consequences of telematics, it must beg-in a systematic program
of constituency building, broad-scaled but salient engagement of stakeholders,
and emphasis on the value of early and timely investigation, monitoring, and
resolution of potential problems before they burgeon into structural
deficiencies in our complex society. The telematics technology itself will
have very few direct effects. The major consequences will come from substitu-
tion and from the capabilities implicit in telematics as discussed at fuller
length in Section 5. Consequently, these dominant effects are indirect,
downstream, second order, and derivative of the primary factors driving
legislators and regulators, the forces in the market. In order to cope with
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the major consequences of telematics foresight, images of the future,
alternative goals and perspectives, and an integrated cooperative program of
research and monitoring, perhaps accompanied by real world intervention
experiments, is the only way to effectively engage this future.
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SECTION 7
FINDINGS AND CONCLUSIONS
1. The potential benefits of telematics to the economy, the environment, and
to health and safety, are very large and numerous. Benefits will far
outweigh the potential social costs.
The benefits of telematics will extend over almost
all facets of society. With regard to environmental
quality and public health, telematics will strongly
support detection, monitoring, and tracking of
pollutants and advances in control technology both
in the open environment and in the indoor environ-
ment. It will allow natural resource management,
minerals development, and management of fisheries,
herds, and forests to be done on a more environmen-
tally sound basis. It will assist in international
cooperation to attack global environmental problems.
Telematics will provide advances in prevention,
diagnosis, arid treatment of diseases, including
those which are related to environmental causes, and
facilitate delivery of medical and disaster response
services.
2. No government organizations or private sector groups are systematically
: planning to exploit the environmental benefits of the rapidly proliferating
telematics technologies on a scale commensurate with their benefits.
3. Most of the benefits of telematics are likely in the long run to be
provided by the private sector. The timely development of positive
environmental applications and the prevention of environmental abuse by
private initiative alone is far less certain. The most socially beneficial
environmental applications should be developed and promoted by the Federal
government, especially EPA.
Industrial and commercial applications of telematics
are likely to lead telematics development and
marketing, with military and diplomatic applications
also being a driving force. Continuing inflation,
high interest rates, or public resistance based on
unacceptable rates of employment displacement could
be strono inhibitors of industrial/commercial appli-
cations. With or without such inhibitions, environ-
mental applications nay lag unless EPA is fully
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cognizant of the capabilities offered by telematics
and urges their realization on industry, government?,,
and the public.
4. There are some potentially troublesome environmental and health impacts
associated with telematics. Their significance is now uncertain. It is
not in the self-interest or the legislative mandate of other major stake-
holders and actors to call attention to and assess these potential
problems. This implies an important role for EPA which is now being
neglected.
The four most important potentially undesirable impacts of telematics
which are poorly understood are:
• microwave radiation;
• indoor pollution, ozone and other materials
produced by telematics equipment;
• solid waste disposal of toxic materials in
telon-.atics devices at the end of the use cycle;
• human factors, design failures, and psychological
and physiological stress in the modern telemated
office.
The most potentially important and socially divisive,
and the most uncertain, potential problem is the
effects of nonionizing radiation. Public concern,
although not strong at present, is rising. EPA has
delayed for several years in providing guidelines on
microwave radiation and has not taken steps to
provide the public with credible, useful information
on the subject. Scientific knowledge at present is
inconclusive. But there are already clear signs that
local governments may act, in the absence of EPA
exercise of responsibility, in ways which cause
systematic problems for the nation and for future
telematics development.
5. The failure of the Federal government and EPA particularly, to act in a
timely, unequivocal, judicious manner on microwave radiation's effect could
substantially inhibit the enormously productive'application of telematics
to the American economy, by encouraging the proliferation of vast numbers
of incompatible local and state rules and ordinances.
The adverse effects or> the economy of equivocation
and uncertainty would be a major economic setback.
It should further be noted that in many of the
applications where microwaves could be employed
there is an alternative technology—fiber optics.
Consequently, acting in an early and timely fashion
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would clarify productive development and innovation
in the area of telematics.
6. Telematics is a facilitator rather than a primary driver in decentraliza-
tion of population and industry.
The future implications for environmental management
of decentralization include changes in the nature
and location of environmental impacts both positive
and negative in effect, and complications in the
detection, monitoring, and control of pollutants.
EPA should now be doing strategic planning to adjust
to these changes. Analysis shows that it is not in
the self-interest of major actors in telematics
development, not in the charter responsibility of
Federal agencies primarily concerned with telematics,
and not within the limited resources of organized
public interest groups, to take the lead in antici-
pating and studying these potential problems. EPA
is the logical agency to do so. EPA will need to
understand and develop information exchanges with
its latent constituency in this area and with the
other stakeholders and actors.
7. Public support for environmental protection will fluctuate but is likely
to remain strong, and to grow in the long run. Changes in national
priorities and political attitudes will, however, require a more flexible
and innovative strategy for carrying out EPA missions in telematics.
Environmental concern is now fairly well institution-
alized and buttressed in law, bureaucracy, support
services, and organized constituencies. Surveys
currently report continuing strong support for
environmental protection despite the movement toward
deregulation. Cross-national and global environ-
mental problems are becoming international issues,
with other countries concerned about the U.S. as a
chief offender. Deterioration of the global environ-
ment will become more visible in the future. Public
concern is likely to focus increasingly on environ-
mental causes of disease as other sources of ill
health are brought under control. Scientific capa-
bility to trace the link between pollution and health
effects is also likely to increase. For all of these
reasons, support for environmental protection is
likely to remain strong in spite of short-term
fluctuations in political priority.
However, we are in a period of renewed assertion of
regional, state, and local prerogatives vis-a-vis
Federal programs, and reliance on detailed regula-
tion and uniform standard setting as the sole or
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chief means of achieving environmental quality is
undpr oupttinn
under question
8. The environmental problems and opportunities of telematics cut across the
institutional lines within EPA and the jurisdictional lines of EPA and
other Federal agencies.
These factors alone would suggest the need for new
strategies and orientation toward coping with
telematics opportunities and problems. A third and
equally important factor, however, is that the
nature of the problems, their origins, and presumably
their remedies will not comfortably fit with the
strategies developed in the 60s and 70s and therefore
there is a. major opportunity for innovation in the
early and timely engagement of these problems with
the private sector.
9. The best evidence is that telematics does not motivate people to reduce
travel to any significant degree, other things being equal. But if travel
is cut back for other reasons, telematics will moderate the social
disruption and inconvenience which would otherwise occur.
The rising cost of transportation fuel is probably
the strongest potential factor in reducing transpor-
tation needs; frustration arising from congestion
and deteriorating transport systems could be another.
In the absence of these factors, better communication
probably encourages travel by enlarging the effective
area of social and commercial relationships.
Telematics will permit some people, especially
independent professionals, to work in their homes;
and some large-scale information -handling organiza-
tions may decentralize into smaller dispersed work
units. In itself, there is little convincing
evidence that this change would be large.
Reduction in commuting would be likely to have both
beneficial and negative effects on city environments,
reducing some sources of pollutants but eroding the
tax base which supports environmental and public
services. Working at home could increase the
willingness to make financial and personal commitments
to the home community, including environmental
protection.
10. The telematics industries consume energy and materials in manufacturing
and in providing services. In general, however, the industry itself
appears environmentally benign.
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Telematics industries appear to impose nc unique
environmental burden, and none comparable to some
other industries which contribute as much in GNP,
exports, employment, and technological leadership.
The possibly significant exception could be micro-
wave radiation, but scientific information on this
subject, as already noted, is now inadequate and
inconclusive.
11. The biggest effects from telematics will result directly from substitution
and from new capabilities.
Examples of these effects are remote sensing,
giving us the capability to 'anticipate crop yields
around the world. Microprocessing will permit
real-time, highly localized monitoring and control.
Word processing will, by being a "black box"
process, lend itself to unexpected uses.
12. A federal role with regard to telematics is necessary and inevitable,
but it need not be and should not be a dominant role.
A Federal role is justified by the public resources
invested in telematics over more than a century,
and by the uce of the public domain (e.g., the
broadcast spectrum). Telecommunications, and in
the future telematics, is critical to the function-
ing of government in a complex society, to military
security, and to relationships between nations.
Congress has recognized the absence of, and the need
for, international communications and information
policy. In a broader sense, telematics is clearly
a form of commerce within the meaning of the
Interstate Commerce Clause. However, since the
1830s development of telematics and its predecessors
has been primarily within the private sector and
should continue to be so.
This report argues that the Federal government
should act when necessary to capture societal
benefits which would otherwise be lost, and to
avoid societal costs which would otherwise be
unnecessarily imposed.
13. There are three classes of meta-impacts, which would result from the
large-scale pervasive use of telematics in American society, each of
which could in itself have far more important environmental impacts
than any other effects we have come upon.
These are: a) Vulnerability to systems collapse.
This can come about from terrorist actions,
electromagnetic pulses, electric power failures,
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maintenance failures, and systems breakdowns.
b) Technological failures, notably the lack of
structures for the adequate synthesis of
information, c) Politically related issues
involving such matters as the value and price of
information, privacy, and management of data bases.
14. EPA has a unique and necessary role to play in researching and assessing
the potential positive and negative impacts on society of the telematics
revolution.
If EPA is to successfully engage a long-term
anticipatory program of research on the environmental
consequences of telematics, it must begin a
systematic program of constituency building broad-
scaled but salient education of stakeholders, and
emphasis on benefits and on the value of early and
timely investigation, monitoring, and early
resolution of potential problems.
15. The United States military and national security system is fully
committed to telematics. The implications of that intensive involvement
and dependency on telematics technology in peacetime, in a conventional
war, or in case of a nuclear exchange, is outside the scope of the
present study, but it is of such prime importance as to merit independent
analysis.
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SECTION 8
RECOMMENDATIONS
RECOMMENDATIONS TO EPA
The first group of recommendations coming from this assessment are
intended for EPA (the sponsor of this assessment) and specifically for the
Office of Research and Development. The report should also serve a larger
audience. The final three recommendations involve actions in which EPA could
not be the primary actor but should play a strong supporting role.
1. EPA should continue to expand its role in exploratory research and
assessment of the societal implications and potential impacts of
telematics.
While this research and assessment should focus on
the environment and public health, EPA's primary
responsibility, it should not neglect the broader
technoeconomic impacts, since changes in this sphere
will have secondary impacts on the environment and
public health which may in the long run be more
important than more immediate direct impacts.
2. EPA should accelerate its address to the questions of microwave radiation
effects and coordinate its work more tightly with the FCC, the Armed
Services, industry, and others concerned with this matter.
Although present scientific knowledge about non-
ionizing radiation is far from conclusive, continued
delay in clarifying policy actions opens the
possibility of a gradually rising level cf public
disquiet which could become entrenched and reduce
the credibility of later EPA guidelines. If there
are sudden acute alarms, no matter how ill-founded,
telematics could eventually face something of the
resistance which nuclear power now suffers. Another
possibility is precipitous regulatory action on a
piecemeal basis by local jurisdictions, as was
proposed in 1978 by New York City's Board of Health.
EPA should press for funding for continuing and
expanded microwave radiation research.
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3. EPA should conduct further research and assessment on the impact of
telematics on the indoor environment.
Emissions of ozone from telematics devices, and
toxic fumes from the devices if they are caught in
office or residential fires, are of some concern.
4. The human factor elements in the telemated office and factory of the
future will become increasingly pressing and urgent. Further research
of the human factor considerations, including body shape and size, the
body in motion, and the body at work, should be begun immediately in
conjunction with NIOSH and representation from labor and industry.
Once office designs and equipment patterns are
frozen and widely used, it will be extremely
difficult to bring about structural changes
however important they may be. The human factors
area is the clearest, most unequivocal opportunity
for fresh initiatives which will have undeniably
beneficial outcomes.
5. EPA should assess and monitor the ultimate disposal of telematic devices.
Under present conditions, the presence of toxic
substances in these devices is apparently not a
problem because the manufacturer takes care of
recycling or disposal. This is not a firm
conclusion, because information on the subject is
sparse. Safe disposal could be a problem in a
telematics-intensive future, especially for local
governments which may use disposal techniques
inappropriate for the exotic substances in the
devices.
6. To accelerate the positive use of telematics for environmental enhance-
ment, EPA should exhaustively review, within the framework of its
established programs and missions in air, water, solid waste, noise, and
toxic substances:
• the extent to which telematics are now used or available for
environmental monitoring and control
0 specific needs and requirements which could be met, now or
potentially by telematics
• design criteria which would be necessary for telematics to fill
such needs
• the likely effects of more extensive telematics use in carrying
out mission and program responsibilities
0 costs or cost savings from use of telematics
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• internal or external inhibitors to use of telematics for
environmental protection.
Information generated by this review should be systematically shared
through a handbook and other information mechanisms, with:
• telematics producers and service providers
• industries looking for cost-effective ways to reduce their
pollution
• natural resource managers in Federal, State, and local agencies
• environmental interest groups
• the interested public.
As a short-term and highly productive stopgap measure, EPA could
initiate a program to prepare software packages on environmental matters
usable on mini- and micro-institutional and personal computers.
The software package could be very useful in
assisting the monitoring of energy or waste
production. They could be concepturallyoriented
to promote the understanding of open issues, or
they could have educational, recreational objectives
to inform and delight.
EPA should take the lead in initiating discussions and joint studies with
other agencies about the applications of telematics to their missions
where the responsibilities of the other agencies have secondary environ-
mental implications. Examples are:
• Department of Interior—resource management, off-shore drilling,
etc.
• Department of Agriculture—farming and forest, crop and grassland
management
• Department of Commerce—weather prediction and warning of natural
disasters
t National Bureau of Standards—building standards and indoor
environments
• Department of Energy—pollutants from energy conversion
• Department of Transportation—traffic control and emissions
• National Institutes of Health—environmental diseases
• Occupational Safety and Health—telematics workers, human factors
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• Federal Emergency Management Agency—disasters and vulnerabilities
t Office of Science and Technology Policy—a national commission
• Department of Housing and Urban Development—home and office
design and public policies for a telematics use.
BROADER FEDERAL RESPONSES TO WHICH EPA COULD MAKE A STRONG CONTRIBUTION INCLUDE:
1. A National Commission on Telematics Policy under Presidential or
Congressional sponsorship should undertake to define the long-term
national policy choices toward telematics.
Where many interests are affected as with telematics,
but no organization has responsibility or authority,
the policy forces drive attention to the immediate
and the parochial. The absence of goals encourages
diffuse responsibility and piecemeal approaches.
There are proposals in Congress to establish a
commission or inter-agency task force to.develop
international telecommunications and information
policy. The problem is broader than that. There
are, however, models among the advanced industrial-
ized nations demonstrating both the feasibility and
the practical significance of nationally-based
policy studies. The Nora/Mine study for the
President of France, Telccm 2000 by the Austrialian
government, and the work of the Secretariat for
Future Studies in Sweden are partial models for what
America needs to do.
Many of the items recommended below could legitimately
be subsumed under such a study. However, anticipating
the worst, that such a commission would be slow in
starting, the two following recommendations are put
forward as if such a study were not to be undertaken.
2. A number of large-scale, real world intervention experiments should be
planned and undertaken under multi-agency auspices with effective but not
dominant participation by EPA. These experiments would help to determine
the causes, behavior, and consequences of telematics. This information
could guide public and private policy choices.
The Mitre Corporation, almost a decade ago, began
experiments of this sort in Reston, Virginia, but
the nation needs a more comprehensive, up-to-date
series of such experiments dealing at least with:
• the office of the future
• the telematics-intensive household
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• the robotized factory
• natural resource management
These real world experiments would be an excellent
opportunity for new. private sector government
ventures in a collegia! and cooperative approach to
defining the system and the policy actions which
will serve the public interest, promote national
productivity, give an expanding role to the United
States in world markets, and be socially and
environmentally sound.
3. An inter-agency coordinating committee under the sponsorship of the
Department of Commerce or NTIA or OSTP in the area of telematics would
be a useful intermediate step toward clarifying policy choices and
• coordinating research and study activities.
One must recognize the limitations on inter-agency
mechanisms. They primarily are limited to informa-
tion coordination and exchange. Generally, inter-
agency committees are weak with regard to policy
formulation or effective direction. Their informa-
tion transfer role reduces redundancy and protects
bureaucratic turf. Within these constraints good
is sometimes done.
The overall thrust of these recommendations is that EPA begin defining
for itself a responsibility and task with respect to telematics which is well
within its existing Congressional and Presidential mandate to protect the
nation's environment, and which without EPA initiative will not be undertaken.
In that case, potential benefits to the environment and to public health and
safety may be delayed or lost, or unnecessary societal costs may be imposed.
These recommended actions if taken would also begin to identify the latent
constituency for EPA telematics assessments.
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REFERENCES
SECTION 2
1. Brodeur, Paul. The zapping of America: Microwaves, their deadly risk.
and the cover-up.New York: U.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 19777
SECTION 5
1. Schanda, E., editor. Remote sensing for environmental sciences.
New York: Springer-Verlag Berlin.Heidelberg, 1976.
2. Harkness, R.C. Technology assessment of telecommunications/transporta-
tion interactions. Menlo Park, California: Stanford Research Institute,
1976, p. SB-34.
3. Ibid. Volume II, pp. 4-10.
4. Ibid. Volume II, p. SC-41.
5. Ibid. Volume II, pp. 4-23.
6. Friedman, K.M., and Obermann, R.M. Transportation and telecommunications:
tne energy implications. Annual Review of Energy, 1979, 4_, p. 137.
7. Harkness, R.C. op. cit., Vol. I, p. xiii.
8. de Sola Pool, I. Communications technology and land use. The Annals of
the American Academy of Political and Social Science. 451, also The
communications/transportation trade-off. Policy Studies Journal, 6^ (1),
1977, pp. 74-83.
9. Harkness, R.C. op. cit., Vol. 1, p. xiii.
10. Friedman, K.H., and Obermann, R.M. op. cit., p. 137-
11. Carson, W. Personal communication, June 2, 1981.
12. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Statistical Abstract of the United States:
1978. (99th edition.) Washington, D.C. 1978.
13. McDonald, G.B., and Hall, F.G. Global crop forecasting. Science.
May 16, 1980.
140
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14. Elachi, C. Spaceborne imaging radar: geologic and oceanographic
applications. Science. September 5, 1980.
15. Van Nostrands' Scientific Encyclopedia. 5th ed. Ed. by D.M. Considine.
New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold Co., 1976.
16. Olishifski, J. and McElroy, F. Fundamentals of Industrial Hygiene.
Chicago: National Safety Council, 1977.
17. Ibid.
18. Tight rules for screens in Norway could set precedent. New Scientist,
May 7, 1981, p. 334.
19. Smith, M.J. et al. An investigation of health complaints and job stress
in video display operations. Cincinnati, Ohio: U.S. Department of Health
and Human Services, National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health,
1981.
20. Sheridan, T.B. Computer control and human alienation. Technology
Review. October, 1980, pp. 61-73.
21. Bell, D. The cultural contradictions of capitalism. New York: Basic
Books, Inc., Publishers, 1976.
22. Toffler. A. The third wave. New York: Bantam Books, 1980.
23. Mowshowitz, A. The conquest of will: Information processing in human
affairs. Menlo Park, California: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, 1976.
24. Kearsley, G. Personal communication, February 24, 1981.
25. Eikonix Corporation. Technology assessment: The impact of robots.
Burlington, Massachusetts: Author, 1979.
26. Emergency medical care demonstrated via ATS-3. Telecommunications,
March, 1978, p. 14.
27. Park, B. An introduction to telemedicine. New York: Alternative Media
Center, New York University, 1974.
28. Meindl, J.D. Biomedical implantable microelectronics. Science 210.
October 17, 1980, pp. 263-267.
29. Malevich, S. Personal communication, June 12, 1981.
30. The electronic traffic jams. The New York Times. May 1, 1981, p. D-l.
31. Olishifski and McElroy, op. cit.
32. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Research outlook 1980.
Washington, D.C.: Author, 1980, pp. 643-693.
141
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TYPIN1 GUIDE
33. Brodeur, P. The zapping of America: Microwaves, their deadly risk, and
the cover-up. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1977.
34. Marshal, E. FDA sees no radiation risk in VDT screens. Science 212,
June 5, 1981, pp. 1120-1121.
35. Ibid.
36. Ibid.
37. Ibid.
38. Ibid.
39. David, L. A study of Federal microwave standards. McLean, Virginia:
PRC Energy Analysis Company, 1980, pp. 19-20.
40. Kichaelson, S.M. Human exposure to nonionizing radiant energy—potential
hazards and safety standards. Proceedings of the IEEE. 1972, 60 (4),
pp. 389-421. ~~" •
41. Michcielson, S.M. Microwave biological effects: an overview. Proceedings
Of the IEEE. 1980, 68^(1), pp. 40-49.
42. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, op. cit.
43. The Satellite Power System is conceived as a set of six, enormous solar
collector satellites rotating in fixed orbits from which they would
transmit power to rectifying antennas on earth in the form of dense beams
of microwave energy. The SPS is a uniquely powerful source of microwave
radiation in that its beam is of particularly high density over a
relatively small area. SPS is not a form of telematics and is not
properly the subject of this assessiient, but the hearings and literature
on SPS can be a useful source of information on microwave effects.
44. U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Energy Research, Solar Power
Satellite Project Division. Program assessment report statement of
findings: Satellite power systems concept development and evaluation
program. Washington, D.C.: November 1980.
45. Michaelson, S.M. Microwave biological effects: An overview. Proceedings
of the IEEE. 1980, 68. (1), pp. 40-49.
Glaser, Zory R., Cleveland, R.F., and Kielman, J.K. Mechanisms of inter-
action and bioeffects of radiofrequency (RF) and microwave radiation,
from: Health implications of new energy technologies (W.N. Rom & V.E.
Archer, eds.), Proceedings of the environmental health conference, held
1979 in Park City, Utah, sponsored by the Society for Occupational and
Environmental Health. Ann Arbor, Michigan: Ann Arbor Science Publishers,
Inc., 1980, pp. 705-746.
142
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TYPING GUIDE SHEET
-'46, Clarke, cited in U.S. Department of Energy, op. cit.
47. Burks and Graf, cited in U.S. Department of Energy, op. cit.
4G. Tanner, et al., cited in U.S. Department of Energy, op. cit.
49. Janner and Romero-Sierra, cited in U.S. Department of Energy, op. cit.
50. Gamow and Harris, cited in U.S. Department of Energy, op. cit.
51. Barthakur, cited in U.S. Department of Energy, op. cit.
52. Baranski and Czerski, cited in U.S. Department of Energy, op. cit.
53. Dwivedi, R. Personal communication. June 4, 1981.
54. Justensen and King, cited in U.S. Department of Energy, op. cit.
55. Adey, cited in U.S. Department of Energy, op. cit.
56. Marmor, cited in U.S. Department of Energy, on. cit.
57. Michaelson, S.M., op. cit.
58. Information in this subsection is taken from a formal Brief prepared by
the TV Broadcasters All Industry Committee, New York, and submitted to
Patricia •]. Caruso, Secretary, City of New York Board of Health,
September 5, 1978, entitled: Proposed Section 175.125 of the New York
City Health Code.
59. DUALabs Register. No. 7, Spring 1981.
60. Stat. Abstr., 1979.
61. Marsh, P. Britain advances in computerized factories. New Scientist.
March 19, 1981, pp. 751-753.
62. Ibid.
63. The robot revolution. Time, December 8, 1980, p. 75.
64. Robots join the labor force. Business Week, June 9, 1980, p. 65.
65. Time, op. cit., p. 77.
66. Business Weejc. op. cit., p. 76.
67. Ibid. p. 64.
68. Marsh, P. op. cit., p. 751.
143
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69. Information in the remainder of this subsection, not otherwise
attributed, is derived from analysis being conducted at Carnegie Mellon
University (Department of Engineering and Public Policy) by Dr. Vary T.
Coates in conjunction iwth Prof. Robert Ayres and others. Manuscript in
preparation.
70. Business Week, op. cit.
71. Cannole, Anthony W., Human aspects of automation, Proceedings of the
first annual symposium on industrial robots, April 2-3, 1970. Chicago,
Illinois: Illinois Institute of Technology Research. Also, Engelburger,
J.F., Robots make economic and social sense, Industrial robots (Vol. 1,
Fundamentals), ed. by W. Tanner. Dearborn, Michigan: Society of
Manufacturing Engineers, 1979.
72. Business Week, op. cit.
73. U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Employment
Projections for the 1980s, Bulletin 2020, 1979.
74. Toffler. A. op. cit.
75. Porat, M.U. The Information Economy. An invited article submitted to
the Scientific American. Institute for Communication Research, Stanford
University, 1976.
76. Kendall, P.M.H., et al. Chip technology and the labor market. London:
Metra Consulting Group, 1980, p. 7.
77. Norman, C. Microelectronics at work: Productivity and jobs in the world
economy. WorldWatch Paper 39. Washington, D.C.: Worldwatch Institute,
1980.
78. International Labor Organization. The impact of microelectronics.
New Scientist, February 12, 1981, p. 421.
79. Morsh, P. The mechanization of mankind. New Scientist, February 12,
19&1, pp. 418-421.
80. Nornan, op. cit.
81. Commission on Postal Service. Report of the Commission on Postal Service.
Washington, D.C.: Author, April 1977.
82. The Comptroller General, U.S. General Accounting Office. Host Federal
agencies have done little planning for A5P disasters^. Washington, D.C.:
Deceiiber 18, 1980.
83. Nuclear Pulse II, Ensuring delivery of the doomsday signal. Science 212,
June 5, 1981, pp. 1116-1120.
144
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SECTION 6
1. Coates, V.T. and Finn, B. A retrospective technology assessment:
Submarine telegraphy. San Francisco Press, 1979, pp. 57-60.
2. Ibid.
3. U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on Interstate and Foreign
Commerce, Subcommittee on Communications. Fundamental changes needed
to achieve effective regulation of communications common carriers.
Comm. Print Mo. 15, 94th Cong., 1st Sess., November 10, 1979.
4. Nuclear Pulse (II): Ensuring delivery of the doomsday signal. Science
212, No. 4459, June 5, 1981, pp. 1113-1120.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid.
7. Mayo, L., Anthony, R. et al.. An exploratory technology assessment of
computer assisted make up and imaging systems (CAMIS). A report to the
National Science Foundation by The George Washington University,
March 31, 1980.
8. Bushkin and Yurow, op. cit.
9. Ibid.
10. U.S. House of Representatives, op. cit., p. 2.
11. Auckenthaler, A. Removing PIT barriers, Telecommunications, April 1981,
p. 26.
12. U.S. House of Representatives, op. cit. p. 2.
13. Ibid.
14. Ibid.
15. Ibid.
16. Auckenthaler, op. cit.
17. Coates and Finn, op. cit., pp. 176-179.
18. FCC v. RCA Communications, Inc., 346 US 86 (1953).
19. Auckenthaler, op. cit.
20. American Telephone and Telegraph Co., 3f FCC 1151 (1964).
21. Auckenthaler, op. cit.
145
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22. Ibid.
23. Brandt, R. Telex in wonderland, Teleconmunications. April 1981, p. 46.
24. Deregulation roils the telex industry, Information Processing,
Business Week. December 22, 1980, p. 62.
25. Auckenthaler, op. cit.
146
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. . . . APPENDIX A
ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY ON TELEMATICS
INTRODUCTION
The following bibliography was selected to represent the most important
literature on telematics.* The scope is broad, including descriptive material
on the various technologies and their applications; studies of the impacts on
the environment, human culture and other technologies; related research and
policy issues; and material about the development of telematics in other na-
tions. Foreign developments are included even though the scope of the study
is not international because of the impact of developments elsewhere on U.S.
domestic policy.
While the scope is broad, every effort was made to keep the number of
documents small. The set is intended to form a well-selected introduction to
telematics for the policy-maker who has no particular technical background in
the area. The ninety or so items would fill a shelf or two -- what one could
assimilate in a couple of weeks. Some documents were included because they
represent a genre, for example, Running Wild. Others represent important
streams of research, the stance of important organizations, or the best sum-
mary of a particular area. Thus, under each general heading is an array of
literature which varies in depth, complexity, and perspective.
The literature is organized'into six areas: 1) comprehensive works,
2) descriptions of technologies, 3) impacts -- subdivided by focus of impact,
4) applications, 5) international -- subdivided by nation, and 6) research
and policy issues.
*Telematics is a new term for telecommunications, computational and informa-
tion technologies, which are rapidly coalescing to form new information,
analytic and control systems.
147
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I. COMPREHENSIVE WORKS "" "
Arthur D. Little Inc. Telecommunications and Society: A Report to
the Office of Telecommunications Policy, Executive Office of
the President. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Author, June 1976.
This report gives the reader a sense of the impacts, both
positive and negative, which may result from telecommunications.
It includes five detailed scenarios on the future of tele-
communications, each with its own introduction and commentary.
These scenarios analyze the future of the Postal Service,
citizens' band radio, broadband distribution to the home,
consequences of broadband telecommunications technology, and
the growth of a public service satellite system. The final
chapter discusses factors such as industry structure, pressure
group operation, and subsidization issues.
Bowers, R., A, M. Lee, and C. Hershey, eds. Communications for a
Mobile Society: An Assessment of a New Technology. Beverly
Bills, California: Sage Publications, 1978.
This book examines the implications of the expansion of mobile
communications for commercial, private and public purposes.
It includes several papers which discuss the development of
mobile communication technologies; the environmental and health
risks posed by the technologies; and the energy, transportation,
economic, and political issues raised from their use. The
issues of spectrum allocation, impacts on work pa-tterns, and
potential legal problems of privacy, liability, and individual
freedom are also discussed.
Dertouzos, M. L. and J. Moses, eds. The Computer Age: A Twenty-
Year View. Cambridge, Massachusetts: KIT Press, 1979.
This book explores trends in the development of computer technology
and examines many of the potential human, social, and economic
impacts from these trends. Written for the general reader,
several of the articles look at the future applications of
computers in homes, education, business, and scientific work.
Other articles in the book discuss the socioeconomic framework
for computer development. They include essays on centralization
and decentralization, regulation, economics of information, and
world affairs as impacted by computers. Written by experts in
their respective'fields, the book provides an incisive and
thorough analysis of key issues in computer development.
Evans, C. The Micro Millennium. Hew York: Viking Press, 1?79.
This book project? to the year 2000 the advancements in computer
technology and their transforming impacts on society. Written
for the 'layperson, it examines the impacts of short, medium,
and long-term future developments in computer technology with
148
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an emphasis on the political and social chances that are likely
to occur. Predictions include the collapse of the work ethic,
the erosion of the power of the professionals, the coming of
the cashless society, and the revaluation of intelligence with
the development of Ultra-intelligent machines. The book begins
with a brief discussion of the evolution of computers, their
present state of development, and the driving forces behind the
coming change.
Martin, J. The Wired Society: A Challenge for Tomorrow. Englewood
Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1978.
The author writes a stirring account of what life would be like
with the rapid development of teiematic technologies. Using
non-technical languages, the author describes the possible
effects of the increased use of telematics on shopping,
banking, work, education, government, and social organization.
He views the development of teiematic technologies as an
important means of solving resource problems and improving the
quality of life.
McHale, J. The Changing Information Environment. Boulder,
Colorado: Uestview Press, 1976.
This book focuses on the impacts on the structure of society
from large-scale development of electronics and computer
technology. It describes the evolution and convergence of
computers and communication technologies and the potential
changes in social values and institutions as information and
knowledge become important resources. The book probes the
impacts on individual capabilities, business, education,
management, and the political process. Global impacts and
policy issues are also discussed.
Moss, M. L. Telecommunications and Productivity. Reading,
Massachusetts: Addison-Uesley Publishing Company, Inc., 1981.
This book explores the effects of new teiematic systems on
productivity in business and government. It examines the role
of the public and private sector in telematics policy-making
and analyzes emerging trends in the use of teiematic systems
with specific case studies drawn from private industry and
public agencies. The book provides an excellent summary of
the latest happenings in telematics.
Moushowitz, A. The Conquest of Will: Information Processing in
Human Affairs. Menlo Park, California: Addison-V'esley
Publishing Company, 1976.
This book probes the diverse impacts of information processing
systems on society. It looks at the forces underlying the
growth of computers, their impact on industry, corporate
149
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decisionmaking, work and education, and their future role in
politics and social control. The consequences for individual
attitudes, values, and perceptions are discussed. The book is
concerned primarily with the impact of telematics on the
distribution of power in society.
Nilles, J. M. A Technology Assessment of Personal Computers (3 vols.),
Los Angeles, California} Office of Interdisciplinary Programs,
University of Southern California, 1980.
This technology assessment explores the future grovrth of personal
computers and related industries, the potential impacts and
consequences of that growth and the public policy issues that
could result. The assessment describes the many possible
applications of the new computers, the alternatives to personal
computers, and some of the socioeconomic trends that could
Influence their growth and application. Public policy
implications in the areas of education, employment and
international trade are comprehensively described. Many
< references are included.
Office of Technology Assessment. A Program in Telecommunications,
Computers, and Information Policies": A Tentative Agenda for
the Office of Technology Assessment. Washington, B.C.:
Author, 1977.
This document proposes an agenda for OTA for a program in
telecommunications, computer, and information policies that
focuses on an initial set of projects. These projects include
studies of: the U.S. Postal Service and electronic message
service; the problems of privacy and security; the future of
mobile radio; and alternative futures for television broad-
casting. Appendix A discusses at length significant issues
raised by the report including: communication and information
policy formation and coordination; the economics of communication
and information services; regulation and competition, monopoly
and restraint of trade; and innovation and standardisation.
Appendix B probes conflicts in telecommunications among
telephone carriers, suppliers, and specialized common carriers.
Osborne, A. Running Wild: The Next Industrial Revolution. Berkeley,
California: McGraw-Hill, Inc., 1979.
This book, written for the layperson, describes the development
of microelectronics and the likely impacts.on society of future
advancements and applications. The book focuses on the
development of computers and robots and their implications for
manufacturing, office work, and home life. It provides the
reader with a bssic understanding of how the technologies work
and their potential vulnerabilities to crime and misuse.
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Robinson, G.*0.,ea. Communications for Tomorrow: Policy Perspectives
for the 1980s. New York: Praeger Publishers, 1970.
This book examines in a comprehensive manner the social, economic,
ana legal implications of new telematics technologies and the
policy options which they present. It. explores general social,
economic, and technological trends in communication services and
«£ 63? key isaue3 of industry structure and regulation
affected by those trends; and the capabilities of government and
institutions to address emerging policy issues. The book also
looks at new social service applications and their impacts on
present communication systems. The book provides a well-written
and thorough discussion of telematics..
II. TECEHOIOGIES
Bejczy, A. K. Sensors, Controls and Man-Machine Interface for
Advanced Teleoperation, Science, I960, 208 (M50), 1327-35.
This article summarizes the state of the art in teleoperation—
mechanical manipulation under remote control. It provides a
brief outline of problems in teleoperation development and
presents the results of research at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
The article includes in its discussion the development of
dexterous articulated mechanisms, smart sencors, flexible
computer controls, intelligent man-machire interfaces, and
innovative system designs for advanced teleoperation.
Carl, C,, R. S. Cowdery, and R. K. Granit. Public Service
'Communications Study. Pasadena, California: Jet Propulsion
Laboratory, 1975.
This report presents JPL's forecast of the future of industry
and government telecommunications technology and services over
the next ten years. The trends and forecasts as well an the
current status of several technologies including broadband
cable systems, data-processing, land mobile communications,
satellite, wire telephony, and optical communications are
described. The report, which is technically oriented, also
provides information on current user patterns.
Convey, H.D. and H. H. KcAlister. Computer Consciousness: Surviving
the Automated 80s. Reading, Massachusetts: Addison-Uesley
Publishing Company, 1980.
This book provides a layperson's overvieif of the technical
development of computers and an introductory presentation of
computer machinery and programming. The book attempts to help
the user gain a general understanding of the way in which
computers function and how they can be used for maximizing
results. The book focuses on business applications of computers.
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Credit Cards. Get a lot Smarter, Business Week, February 23, 1981,
107-114.
This article describes the latest developments in credit card
technology; specifically the development of cards which contain
an imbedded integrated circuit. The debate over new "cards
with a memory" is discussed in terms of increased capabilities
for keeping track of transactions, the potential for increased
security, and the enormous installed investment in magnetic
stripe cards. The French and Italians are leading the way in
testing the new cards, although various U;S. companies are
developing- both new technologies and improvsments in magnetic
tape for use in credit cards and other applications, such as
door keys.
Crombie, D. D., ed. lowering Barriers to Telecommunications Growth.
Washington, D.C.: Science and Technology Telecommunications
Task Force, U.S. Department of Commerce, 1976.
This report examines in detail the current status of four major
telecommunications technologies: direct satellite communications,
land mobile radio, broadband communications networks, and fiber
optic communications, and the issues and barriers affecting
their growth. The discussion of each technology considers its
needs and market, the systems development and performance,
^policy and regulation, and spectrum management. The report
proposes a series of policy actions.
Dolotta, T. A., et al. Data Processing in 1980-1985: A Study of
Potential limitations to Progress. New York: John Wiley and
Sons, 1976.
This book attempts to predict the environment and status of
the data processing industry in the years 1980 to 1985* with
emphasis on large, general-purpose, business-oriented data
processing- systems. It discusses user expectations over this
period and how and why they differ from the way the industry
is likely to develop. The book deals extensively with trends
and isoues in hardware and softvrare, applications, and the
management of data processing systems. Several recommendations
are offered for improving productivity, usability and management
of data processing systems.
Eikonix Corporation. Technology Assessment: The Impact of Robots.
Burlington, Hassachusetts: Author, 1979*
This technology assessment forecasts the development of robotic
technology. It studies robotics, potential applications and
impacts in households, the nuclear industry, and manufacturing,
and evaluates the policy alternatives which could influence
these impacts. Tho assessment includes interviews with
manufacturers, researchers, and users of robotics and an
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assessment of robotics in Japan. Policy options are evaluated
in terms of basic research funding, income redistribution,
energy use, employment dislocation, and productivity.
Martin, J. Future Developments in Telecbmnunications. Second ed.
•Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1977.
This book provides a comprehensive technical description of
the evolution and future trends in telecommunication technologies
for the lay reader (Parts I & II), and for the technical reader
(Part III). The book takes the reader step by step through the
development of the various technologies and discusses the
implications of telecommunications for the home, national
politics, law, and international relations. The book is
appropriate for those wanting an in-depth understanding of how
the technologies work.
National Research Council. Science and Technology: A Pive-Year
Outlook. San Franciscoj W. H. Freeman and Company, published
in collaboration with the National Academy of Sci3nces, 1979.
This document, which is a report to Congress on emerging
scientific and technical developments, looks at future trends
in computers, and communications. Its discussion includes a
description of. current communication technologies and systems,
a discussion of software problems and techniques, and a
projection of future capabilities and trends. Questions of
efficiency and cost are examined with each technology.
Technologies and .trends are described in satellite communications,
optical fibers, robotics, home computers, electronic funds
transfer, and other systems. Besides providing an excellent,
condensed overview of telematics, the book has valuable
information on U.S. demography, health and emerging developments
in biology, materials, and toxic substance research.
Turn, R. Computers in the 1980s. Hew York: Columbia University
Press, 197U.
This book explores the technical advancements in computers
vrhich are likely to occur in the coming decade. Among the
hardware dev9lopments projected are the use of lasers in
computer memory, and technical advancements in: processing
speeds, computer architecture, storage capacity, terminal
equipment, and times of random access. The first section
outlines the techniques of technology forecasting; the second
projects computer technology advancements; and the third
develops a methodology to enable the reader to update projects.
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Vine, K. D.. K. Chen, and R. E. Yokely. Microcomputers: A Technology
forecast and Assessment to the Tear 2000. Bew York: John
and Sons, I960.
This book forecasts the future of microcomputer technology and
its impacts on society for the period 1976-2000. The book focuses
•Largely on technical trends in microcomputer development and
on some of the socio-economic forces affecting these trends.
A aetailed description of the impacts of microcomputers on
aviation is presented. This book is appropriate for people
interested In technology forecasting and the more technical
aspects of microcomputer technology.
m. IMPACTS
A. General
Abshire, G. M., ed. The Impact of Computers on Society and Ethics t
A Bibliography. Morris town, New Jersey: Creative Computing
Press, 1980.
This bibliography contains 1,920 entries describing magazine
articles, news items, books and scholarly papers deal ing with
computers and society. Nost of them are chert articles
describing the development and application of computer
technologies in business, government and social Institutions.
It is arranged in one sequence by author and covers the period
19U8 to 1979. No information concerning the scope or
selection process is provided.
Bowers, R.f A. K. Lee, and C. Berohey, eds. Communications for a
Mobile Society: An Assessment of a Hew Technology. Beverly
Hills, California: Sage Publications, 1978.
See annotation on page 3-
Mayo, L. H., et al. An Exploratory Technology Assessment of Computer
.Assisted Makeup and Loading Systems (CAIHS). Washington. B.C.:
Program of Policy Studies in Science and Technology, George
Washington University, 1980.
This report assesses the potential impacts and public policy
issues from the development of CAMIS technologies. CANIS
technologies include word processors and office printers, fully
automated printing processes, intelligent copiers, computer
printers and plotters, facsimile terminals, image scanners, and
optical character recognition devices. Among the many impacts
examined are the effects on media, copyright and privacy,
government Information and printing, industry concentration and
competition, employment, potential information overload, and
anticipatory versus remedial government action.
154
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B. Economy
Porat, M. v. The Information Economy. An Invited article submitted
to the Scientific American. Institute for Communication
Hesearch, Stanford Hniversity, 1976.
*. documents tne transition to an information economy
the O.o. and analyses the relationship between the
information sector and the rest of the economy using input-
cutput technioues. It deals quantifatively with trends in
information occupations and work force, tbe relationship
between information activity and CHIP, and the distinctions
between primary and secondary information industries. The
article suggests ways in which national accounting concepts
could include an "information sector."
C. Electronic Funds Transfer
Humes, Kathryn H. The Checkless/Cashless Society? Don't Bet On It!
The Futurist, October 1978, 301-306.
In this article a senior staff member of the National Commission
on Electronic Funds Transfers discusses why fully electronic
banking has not yet happened, and why it seems unlikely in the
future. While the capabilities for a "checkless/cashless"
society exist, consumer skepticism and resistance remain as
large barriers to fully automated banking:. Electronic funds
transfer systems, automatic teller machines and automated
clearinghouses for credit checks have, however, already
increased the efficient use of paper. The article is useful
for anyone wishing to know the hardware currently used in the
industry and its possible implications.
National Commission on Electronic Funds Transfers. EFT in the United
States: Policy Recommendations and the Public Interest.
Washington, B.C.: Author, October 1977.
This report extensively examines a variety of public policy
issues caused by the development of electronic funds transfer
technology. Consumer related EFT issues include questions of
privacy, financial control, consumer rights, and liabilities,
Business issues include impacts on the nation's banking system,
"the competitive relationship among financial institutions, and
the future for small institutions. The report also examines the
security and credit implications of EFT and the role of the
federal government in EFT development and monetary policy.
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Health
iJ^A study °r federal Microwave Standards. McLean, Virginia:
PRO Energy Analyola Company, 1980.
This report assesses the role of the regulatory process in
Betting standards for permissible levels of microwave radiation
exposure. The report summarizeg current scientific knowledge
of the health effects of microwave radiation and offers several
explanations as to why standards differ in the U.S. and East""*'
Europe. The implications for the Solar Power Satellite are
presented. It examines the need for studies which assess the
effects of long-term, low-level microwave exposure.
Michaelson, S. M. Human Exposure to Hon-ionizing Radiant Energy-
Potential Hazardo and Safety Standards, Proceedings of the IEEE,
1972, 60 (U), 389-1*21. (Institute of Electrical and Electronics
Engineers)
This article reviews the biomedlcal impacts of exposure to
ultraviolet, Infrared, laser, microwaves, radio-frequency
radiation, and the protection guides which have been established.
The article explores the difficulty of standard setting,
monitoring latent effects, and sorting testing variables. While
somewhat dated, it provides detailed information on health
risks from specific telecommunications technologies.
Michaelson, S. M. Microwave Biological Effects: An Overview,
Proceedings of the IEEE, I960, 68 (l), UO-U9. (institute of
Electrical and Electronics Engineers)
This article provides a scientifically comprehensive assessment
of the studies to date on the effects of microwave energy on
the neural and inmunologic function in man and animals. It
evaluates the methodology and findings of previous studies and
Identifies areas of uncertainties for future research.
National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, Division of
Biomedieal and Behavioral Science. Select Kesearch and Reports
on Health Issues in Video Display Terminal Operations. .U S.
Department of Health and Human Services, Public Health Seivice,
Center for Disease Control, HIOSH, Division of Biomedical and
Behavioral Science, Cincinnati, Ohio 1^226 , April 1901.
Th.ls report is important because it is one of the first major
projects on the health impacts of video display terminals
(VDT's) to be done in the U.S. The three reports contained
in this document are preliminary actions of a final report
which will be available in the fall of 1981. Research was
initiated at the request of a consortium of unions in the San
Francisco area "which sought an evaluation of the impact of
____ video display work on employee health". The first paper
156
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investigates worker stress and physical health complaints.
The second paper focuses on design factors of the workplace—
illumination, glare from the TOT screen, noise levels, and
so on. The third paper covers radiation levels and chemical
agents in the work area. Overall the reports found stress
complaints were the result of job pressures interacting with
the use of VDT's, particularly in the case of clerical
operators. Design problems in both workplace and ttnchine were
round, and recommendations made. Radiation and chemical agent
levels were found to be below safety-standard levels.
Sheridan, T. B. Computer Control and Human Alienation, Technology
Review, October 1980, 61-73.
This article describes the psychological and human impacts of
the spread and development of computers in society. The article
discusses seven factors leading to alienation from computer use.
They include mystification, increasing remoteness from actual
production, reduction of skill level, concern over job
obsolescence, and the threat of superior intelligence. The
author argues that uniquely human capabilities of adaptivertess,
creativity, and knowledge of subtleties should be used to
complement the increased memory and calculation powers of the
computer,
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Research Outlook I960.
Washington, D.C.: Author, 1980.
This report—EPA1 s five-year research plan—contains a well-
written concise description of current information on the
biological, health, and environmental impacts of non-ionizing
radiation. It also provides detailed information on regulatory
trends governing exposure levels and on research currently in
progress. The report identifies some of the important
unanswered questions concerning non-ionizing radiation exposure.
Veizeribavm, J. Once More—a Computer Revolution, The Bulletin of
Atomic Scientists, September 19?8, 12-19.
This article examines some of the weaknesses of computers when
used to aid and replace human thinking and decisionmaking.
The article focuses on the implications of the inability of
computers to replicate personal kinds of knowledge, human
reflections, and an individual's Weltanschauung. The article
discusses the problems of placing too much authority and
confidence in computer models and their results. Several
computer goofs are. described.
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E. Legal " "' '" ~" -
Freed, R. H. Computers and Law, a Reference Work. Boston,
Massachusetts: Roy N. Freed, o/o Powers & Hall, 1976.
This multi-part reference tool^-a compilation of more than 100
papers—covers almost all aspects of computers and the law
through case studies aud essays. Topics include liability,
problems of evidence and proof, protection of data bases and
proprietary programs, antitrust laws, and reflations, it also
examines the use of computers in the judicial, legislative, and
administrative processes.
Nycum, S. H. and D. B. Parker. Six Papers on Legal Issues and the
Computer. Menlo Park, California: Stanford Research Institute,
1975 and 1976.
six papers examine in detail legal issues raised by
ers. Parker looks at the common characteristics,
occupations, and modus operand! of computer criminals aswll
as the different vulnerabilities of computer systems and" user
organizations to computer theft* He develops a typology of the
problem in order to assess the nature and growth of white-collar
crime, llycum's papers examine the relative criminal sanctions
of various laws—State penal laws, the Federal Criminal Code and
the Privacy Act of 197U—to criminal abuse. She also looks at
the question of legal protection of proprietary rights- in
software.
F. Labor
Communication V'orkers of America. Technology—Its Impact on CWA
Today and Tomorrow. The 1979 Conference: A Final Report.
Washington, B.C.: Communication Workers of America, 1979.
This report summarizes the discussions of the CV/A on the trends
in telecommunications development and their impact on jobs,
industry structure, manageuent, and working conditions. The
bulk of the report summarizes • participant response to the
direction and effect of industry, growth. This is preceded by
a general overview discussion of the importance to workers of
anticipating technological change and monitoring impacts.
Kendall, P.F.H., et al. Chip Technology and the Labor Market.
London: Metra Consulting Group, I960.
This report assesses the international job and skill impacts of
microcomputers. By reviewing the literature and by interviewing
experts from around the world, the authors summarize existing
information on impacts in certain areas of employment and
skills.' Areas covered and qualitatively ranked according to
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level of iapact include manufacturing, office automation,
telecommunications, and data processing. Areas identified
as less important include banking and insurance, printing and
publishing, education, hotels, retailing/point of sale, and
transport operationo. The report identifier, information gaps
covering quantified data on impacts and macro-analysis of the
effect of computers on overall level of employment.
Horuan, C. Microelectronics at Works Productivity and Jobs in the
World Economy. WorldWatch Paper 39. Washington, B.C.:
Vorldwatch Institute, 1980.
This paper warns of the potential mass job reduction from the
proliferation of the microchip. It covers several aspects of
microprocessor technology including a layperson's description
of the technology, its development, and refinement over the
last several decades, and its widespread application in
Industries, offices, and homes. The paper examines international
competition among microelectronic industries and the consequences
of microchip hegemony for North/South relations and Third World
development. Also, the need for advanced policy planning to
deal with future worker upheavals is discussed.
Gehring, P. L., E. P. Ifarphy, and A. J. McGill. The Office as an
Information System, Forbes, March 30, 1981."
This article presents the viewpoints of three corporate
executives on the office of the future as an information system.
Gehring, from Sperry Univac, examines the impact of computers
on corporate management and organization. He discusses the
importance of selecting the appropriate computer for the task
and describes the possible improvements in manufacturing from
the use of computers. Hurphy, from RCA, discusses the need
for organizing and integrating information among domestic and
international systems and the general problems of system and
equipment compatibility. McGill examines the role of telematics
in improving management productivity and reducing communication
barriers in the office.
H. Postal Service
Anthony, R. W., et el. Strategy for Decisions: A?WU and the
Electronic Information Revolution. Washington, D.C.: Program
of Policy Studies in Science and Technology, George Washington
University, 1980.
This report, prepared for the American Postal Workers Union,
explores the implications of electronic technology for the U.S.
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Postal Service and the nation. The report describes the
differing waye.in which the private sector and the USPS view
electronic, mail; the potential conflicts of interest between
telecommunications carriers and electronic message carriers;
and the benefits and drawbacks of the development of EMS in
the competitive marketplace.
Commission on Postal Service. Report of the Commission on Postal
Service. Washington, D.C.: Author, April 1977.
This report briefly sumaarizes the impacts of electronic
communications on the Postal Service. The report draws heavily
from two studies by Arthur D. Little and the George Washington
University's Program on Policy Studies din Science and Technology
to forecast relevant technology developments and to estimate
future rates of mail diversion. The Commission's .short-term
and lonft-term recommendations are.included.
I. Transportation
Crosby, Robert \f» Transportation, Communication and Societal
Structure. U.S. Department of Transportation, Research and
Special Programs Administration, 1980.
This paper illustrates the complexities involved in the question
of a transportation/communications substitution. It approaches
transportation and communications interactions in terms of
effects on societal structures. Crosby describes social
structures as single-level or multi-level, the difference being
that single-level structures arise from "the interaction of
otherwise independent elements", and are thus not hierarchical.
de Sola Fool, I. Communications Technology and Land. Use, The Annals
of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 1980,
1-13.
This article provides a broad overview of the historical
relationship between transportation and migration patterns
into and out of the city and telecommunications technologies.
It describes the centripetal effect of telecommunications at
•the turn of the 20th century and its centrifugal effect in the
middle of the century. The article also looks at some general
Implications of the energy shortage and recent telecommunication
Innovations on urban migration patterns.
Friedman, K. M. Telecommunications and Transpprtation Energy Demand:
Opportunities and Caveats, Energy Communications, 1977. 3 (6),
555-600.
This paper analyzes in more technical detail existing theories
and research, findings on the transportation/telecommunications
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tradeoff for personal and business air and auto travel between
and in cities. Estimates of the potential substitution and
energy savings are made. Several caveats, constraints, and
incentives for substitution are discussed.
Friedman, K. M. and R. H. Obennan. Transportation and Telecommunica-
tions; the Energy Implications, Annaul Review of Energy, 1979,
k,
This paper provides a concice yet thorough analysis of the
implications of telecommunications for transportation and
energy demand. The paper summarizes studies assessing the
impacts of telecommunications on intercity air travel, inter-
city automobile trips, urban passenger travel, and work
decentralization. The paper also describes the telecommunica-
tions industry and the incentives and impediments for
institutional use of telecommunications.
Harkness, R. C. Technology Assessment of Telecommunications/
Transportation Interactions. Henlo Park, California: Stanford
Research Institute, 1976.
This technology assessment examines the impacts from present
and future interactions between inner and intercity business
travel. A number of scenarios describing the possible inter-
actions and their costs and benefits are postulated- Their
results are examined in a series of impact papers which look at
the effects of telecommunications on urban land use, public
services and human/social conditions. Public policy
implications are presented.
Miles, J. T P. R. Carlson, Jr., P. Gray, and G. JVHanneman. The
Telecommunications- Transportation Tradeoff: Options for
Tomorrow. Hew York: John Wiley and Sons, 1976.
This book explores the possibilities and implications for
substituting telecommunications for urban and intercity
business travel. Case studies examine the costs and benefits
of business decentralization, such as telecommunications
capital costs aind business moving expenses, and describes the
steps a business would take in decentralizing. Energy '
comparisons are made between private auto commuting, mass
transit commuting and telecommuting. Implications for the
national energy demand are described. The book also explores
the perceptions and attitudes which would influence substitution.
Obermann, R., M. Zobrak, D. Kutnick, and M. Dartch. The Impact of
Telecommunications on Transportation Demand Through the Year
2000. McLean, Virginia: KITRE Corporation, 1978.
This report focuses on the future impacts of telecommunications
on urban and intercity passenger travel. It examines 'n depth
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the development of four major telecommunication services—voice,
video, data, and interactive cable T.V.—and the decree to which
they can substitute for travel. Background information on the
present and future telecommunication technologies, market, and
institutional environment is provided. Several policy
implications are discussed. There Is an extensive bibliography
included.
Overby, C. M. New Patterns of Work Organization in an Information
and Computer-Telecommunications Era. Athens, Ohio: Industrial
an* Systems Engineering Department, Ohio University, 197U.
This paper summarizes the many potential uses of videophones and
cable television services arid comments on their potential
impacts on intercity and urban transportation, work organization
and location, energy demand, and urban development. The paper
highlights the'findings of several researchers in the field
including Reid, Harkneas, Dickson and Bowers, Sheridan, lope
and Goldmark, and Crane.
Reid, A. What Telecommunication Implies, New Society, December 1971f
128U-6.
Using historical trends, this article examines the impacts of
telecommunications on office location and business travel in
Britain. The article describes the trend toward reducing
business travel through substitution and thr "trend to increasing
business travel through business stimulation. The article
identifies several areas for future research.
Webber, M. M. Social Contexts of Transportation and Communication.
Berkeley, California: Institute of Urban and Regional
Development, 1978.
By using the example of the automobile and telephone, this
article explores what it calls the profound interactive
relationship between communications, transportation, and the
general structures and functions of society. Of particular
concern- is the impact of communications and transportation on
deprived social groups. The. article calls for communication
and transportation policies to be directed toward the
development goals of regions and nations.
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APPLICATIONS
Computerized Conferencin
»?S R* Coantunicatlons and Group Decision-making: Experimental
* !£CVn the Potential Impact of Computer Conferencing.
Newark, Hew Jersey: Hew Jersey Institute of Technology,
September 1975.
This study reviews experiments which examine the relationship
of communication proceases involved in computer conferencing
to group decisionmaking and problem solving. The report attempts
to identify research conclusions on the oocial effects of
computer conferencing and the strengths and weaknesses of
computer conferencing in facilitating group decisionmaking. The
report also describes sof tware information necessary for a non-
programmer social scientist to conduct similar experiments. The
study focuses on research methodology.
Hiltz, 3. H. and M. Turoff. The Network Nation: Human Communication
Via Computer. Reading, Massachusetts: Addison-Wesley
Publishing Company, 1978.
The bcok provides an intriguing, comprehensive, and non-technical
view of the emergence of computerized conferencing. While the
book discusses in detail, the development of "computerized
conferencing, its forte is in its exploration of the social and
human implications of the technology. The book examines
psychological impacts oi computerised conferencing as well as
the impacts on privacy, public participation, and the gap
between the Information rich and the information poor.
Johansen, R., J. Vallee, and K. Spangler. Electronic Meetings:
Technical Alternatives and Social Choices. Menlo Park,
California: Addison-V7esley Publishing Company, 1979.
This book takes a critical look at the potential advantages and
disadvantages of audio, video, and computer-based teleconfer-
encing. The book identifies future technological possibilities
and uses a series of eight imaginative story-like scenarios to
illustrate these possibilities. Each scenario probes the way
in which each medium can be usf.d effectively and ineffectively,
and helps the reader draw conclusions about future uses of
telecomnunications. Two hundred references are included.
Vallee, J. , et al. Group Communication Through Computers. 3 «>ls.
Henlo Park, California: Institute for the Future, 1975-
This document describes the design and evaluates the capabilities
of a group communication system called FORUM. It describes a
social assessment methodology to evaluate the cost effectiveness
and efficiency of computer conferencing in general, and its
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KVRTTM* °n the user* Volume III analyzes the pattern of use of
*WUM among scientists and engineers. Five styles of computer
conferencing are evaluated and several future scenarios are
anJ ? to exPlore Potential impacts on government, public
ana private organization, business, and scientific disciplines.
B. Office Mid TTrmm
Bunnel1'?' PerBonal Computing: A Beginner's .Guide. New York':
Hawthorn Books, Inc., 1978.
This consumer's guide to personal computers focuses on the
applications of computers for home and business use. The book
describes in easy to understand terms how computers work and
the many tasks they can accomplish, including time and money
Budgeting, storing business records and recipes, analyzing
stocks, controlling utilities, balancing checkbooks, and
educational and recreational games. The book compares the
advantages and disadvantages of different computer systems and
models for different purposes.
Cecil, P. B. Word Processing in the Modern Office. 2nd ed. Menlo
Park, California: Benjamin/Curamings Publishing Company, 1980.
This book provides the computer buyer with an understanding of
how world/information processing systems can be used in the
of rice setting. The book describes the development of several
different office technologies and how the most current,
sophisticated technologies work. The technologies discussed
include word processing keyboard ecuipment, copying systems,
electronic data processing, and the latest office communication
networks. It also provides information on selecting appropriate
office equipment.
Preiberger, S. and P. Chew, Jr. A Consumer's Guide to Personal
Computing Microcomputers. 2nd ed. Rochelle Park, New Jersey:
Hayden Book Company, Inc., 1978.
This consumer's guide provides an introduction for the layperson
to microcomputer systems for use. in business, education,
recreation, and the home. The book includes a product guide, a
discussion of the advantagoa and disadvantages of specific
systems, and best-buy tips for different microcomputer products.
Sumner, C. and W. A. Leavy, eds. Microcomputers for Business.
New York: AMACOM, 1979.
This book, written for the businessperson, describes the
versatility and capabilities of microcomputers by using several
different case studies of small businesses using computers.
For example, it looks at the uoe of computers in a small real eptate
164
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firm, an auto parts store, a mortgage company, a clothing • "
company, a farming cooperative, and an air freight company.
.The various applications discussed cover inventory, accounting,
order entry, and payroll systems. In comparing systems, the
book lonks at initial and on-line expenses, hardware and soft-
ware issues, and the different applications of multiprogrammable
systems.
c« Social Services Delivery
Anthony, R. and J. P. Coates. Telecommunications and the Cuality
of Life in Rural America. V.'aehington, B.C.: Office of
Technology Assessment, 1976.
This unpublished report examines in-depth public policy is^aes
concerning the effective application of telecommunications to
: the needs and opportunities of rural America. The report
i includes a primer on telecommunication technologies, a
: • description of their services and functions, and an analysis
of. inter-industry competition and government regulation. The
report assesses the potential of telematics for several aspects
of community life in rural America, including health, education,
aging, employment, mobility, migration, and• community
organization.
Appalachian Regional Commission. Appalachian Education Satellite
Project Operation Plan.- Washington, B.C.: .Author, 1976.
This report describes tne AESP Experiment to determine the
feasibility of delivering educational courses via satellite
(ATS-6 HET Communications Network) to sparsely populated areas
in Appalacnia. The report looks at the cost-effectiveness of
the project in strengthening local education programs and
describes the network design, operation, and programming of the
project for 1980 and beyond. Included in the appendix are
comments on the technical and economic issues concerning the
continued use of the ATS-6 HET Communications Network.
Cowlan, B. and D. Poote. A Case Study of the AT3-6 Health, Education,
and Telecommunications Projects. Washington, B.C.: Office of
Education and Human Resources, Agency for International
Development, 1975«
This paper reports on a series of experiments in the U.S. in
197U-75 on the delivery of educational and social services via
satellite. It describes the space and terrestrial technology
involved and the activities of each experiment, and examines
a number of issues that came up during the experiments,
including hardware, management, and software problems. Some
of the experiments described include Rocky Mountain Education
Satellite Project, Alaska Education Project, and the Alaska
Indian Health Service Project.
165
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£' f?d_!" Gerendary. Social Services and Cable T.7. .
Washington, D.O.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1976.
This report ^.ddreeees the question of how cable television
can be used vo improve the delivery of social services. The
report sumnaxizes the results of seven studies usinj interactive
caoie televi -ion for social service delivery. It reviews the
fcitjriifleant literature in the field and presents an overview
of tne social and administrative uses now being made of cable
television. .The book may be useful to those who want to know
how cable television or a particular cable systea can be used.
An expensive bibliography is included.
Korman, P. Innovations in Telecommunications Technology: Implications
for Education. Austin, Texas: Center for Communication
research, University of. Texas, 1971.
This report provides a somewhat dated but comprehensive look at
trends in telecommunications technology and their implications
for education. Telecommunication systems and technologies such
as pubjlic broadcasting, closed-circuit .T.V., video tape
recording/ cassettes, satellite, cable T.V., and radio are
described with an analysis of their future trends and
implications for education.
Mills, V., G. Kolsrud, and L. Turnbull. The Feasibility and Value
of Broadband Communications in Rural Areas.* A Preliminary
Evaluation. Washington, D.C.: Office of Technology Assessment,
1976.
This report explores the feasibility and value of employing
broadband communications to deliver public arid commercial
services to rural areas. The report identifies the constraints
and impacts of widespread implementation of broaci/and
communication technologies in rural areas and discusses the
ways in which broadband technologies could help rural
development. The evaluation includes a systems approach to
.Assessing.the role of broadband technologies and a discussion
of policy alternatives.
National Research .Council. Telecommunications for Metropolitan Areas:
Near-Term Needs and Opportunities. HTIS Report # NHC/TELECOM/
77-1. Washington, D.C.: National Academy of Sciences, 1977.
This report ecaluates evolving telecommunications technologies
in relation to metropolitan needs. The report describes
several urban teleconmunication technologies and networks, and
examines the costs and benefits 6f using telecommunications in
business, city government, administration, health, education
and welfare services, citizen safety and emergency, and mobile
services.
166
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Park, B. An Introduction to Telemedicine. Hew York: Alternative
Media Center, New York nhiversity, 197!;.
Thi - report describes in detail the history of the UPC of
interactive television in health care delivery. It examines
the physical, psychological, and cultural aspects of human
communication via interactive T.V., and the current and
pending 'elemedicine projects throughout the country. The
report includes studies of the acceptance and 'capabilities of
telemedicine In various fields of medicine.
Practical Concepts, Incorporated. Telecommunications: A Mechanism
for Improving the Cost-Effectiveness of Social Service Delivery.
Washington, D.C»: Author, 1975.
This brief report develops sevefal service delivery models to
evaluate the cost-effectiveness and efficiency of telecommunica-
tions-mediated social services. The report looks at health,
education, and agricultural delivery models.
Tate, C., ed. Cable Television .in the .Cities: Community Control,
Public Access and Minority Ownership.' Washington, D.C.: The
Urban Institute, 1971*
This book serves as an information and reference guide to
increase the access and opportunities of minority groups in
cable television. The book describes the importance and
potential 'of cable for minorities, cable television eouipment
and facilities, and the obstacles' for minority groups to gaining
access and control. It examines the municipal regulations
governing cable television and lists the federal, public, and
private organisations involved in developing public policies
to regulate cable television.
D. General
Coates, J. P. The Future of Telecommunications, DM, January 1978,
pp. 86-93.
This paper focuses on two questions: Thy is the future of
telecommunications in public policy of importance, and secondly
what are the issues and approaches that might be usefully
brought to bear on this problem?
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•*•• Austral!?
Telecom Australia. Telecom 2000: An Exploration of the Long-Tera
Development of Telecommunications in Australia. Melbourne,
. Australia! Australian Governnent Printing Ohit, 1975.
This report to the Australian Telecommunications Conmission
examines the future of telecommunications in Australia over
the next twenty-five years. The report looks at the future
of various communications technologies in Australia, including
R.P. spectrua and mobile services, cable T.V., computers and
communication, and visual telecommunications, and mokes specific
recommendations to the Commission for research and operational
management. The report also studies the impacts of social,
economic, and technical trends on telecommunications and
speculates on the future role of the Telecommunications
Authority. The report is issued as a guide to possible
directions In Australia's social, economic, and technical
futures to the year 2000.
Telecom Australia. Outcomes from the Telecom 2000 Report. Melbourne,
Australia: Victoria Printing, 1978.
This report represents a further stage in the work of the
National Telecommunications Planning Branch in looking at the
future of telecommunications in Australia. This report
incorporates cements from the Telecom 2000 report and raises
several new Issues covering economics, businacs, and tele-
commmlcations technology. The report provides a summary of
the recommendations of the Telecom 2000 report accepted and
rejected by the Commission and examines the social bases and
framework of the Telecom 2000 report.
Telecom Australia. Seminar on Social Research and Telecommunications
Planning; Background Papers and Proceedings. Melbourne,
Australia: Victoria Printing, 1979.
The tvo volumes contain the papers arid proceedings of Telecom's
first seminar on policy research* corporate planning, and
policy coordination. Several of the papers examine the
responsibilities and social impacts of Telecom while other
papers provide a more general analysis of the impact of
teleccemunications on the economy, employment, education, user
attitudes, and social order. The proceedings elaborate on the
issues presented in the papers with specific recommendations
for further research.
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.Telecom, Auotralla. Seminar on Social Research and Telecommunications
Planning: Background Papers and Proceedings.- 2 volumes.
Melbourne, Australia: Victoria Printing, 1980.
The background papers and proceedings of Telecom's second
seminar examine the relationship of Australia's Telecom policies
to other public institutions in Australia. • The papers explore
how social trends and cocmunity concerns affect Telecom
development and further explore the impacts of Telecoz on
Australian society. Specific topics include the effects of
telecommunications -in Australia on development, community, and
environmental public policy making, energy demands, social and
welfare services, and Australian industry. The proceedings
contain the recommendations of the seminar which include
increased coordination with the Australian government, further
study of the social and energy impacts of Telecom, and
encouragement of greater open market activity.
B. Canada
Bedford, M. T. A Technology Assessment of Future Residence
Coamunication Services. 2 volumes. Canada: Bsll Canada, 197&«
The report studies the impact of future residence communication
services on the attitudes and behavior of Canadian householders.
Using a derivative of the Delphi technicue (SPRITE) for
questioning experts, the report provides segments of expert
views on the impacts of remote shopping, banking, work centers,
medical diagnosis, political participation, and electronic
home surveillance. Impacts analyzed include time allocations,
Interpersonal relations, privacy, and dependence oa the
technology.
C. France
Bora, S. and A, Mine. The Computerisation of Society. Cambridge,
Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1980.
The authors scribe the challenge to French society of -the
social and technical innovations resulting from the development
of telematics. Written as a report to the President of France,
the authors propose a national policy for telematics to deal
with the many anticipated changes. The report examines the
possibility of the restructuring of French politics and the
decentralization of French society as a result of large-scale
telematics.
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;Vhite, C. E. Progress in French Telecommunications Services,
Telecommunications, March I960, 61-77.
This article reports on the present status of French telecommun-
ications and its plans for the period 1980-8$. It describes
how telecommunications developed in France, the most recent
technical advances, and the projected developments for the
next five years. The article describes several new services
including TRANSPAC—a nationc.1 data transmission service,
mobile telephones, telefax, and its new satellite teleeoirnuni-
cations service, Telecom 1, which will be in operation in 1983.
The article ends with a brief survey of leading French telecom
manufacturers.
D. Great Britain
Barren, I. and B. Curnow. The Future with Microelectronics:
Forecasting the Effects of Information Technology New Yorks
Nichols Publishing Company, 1979.
This report, prepared for the British Government's Department
of Industry, assesses future developments in computing, its
impacts on society, and the policy implications. It describes
the general trend in society toward the information economy,
future developments in telematic technologies, and the structure
of the international computing industry with particular attention
to Britain's role. The wide number of uses of information
technologies are described and their impacts on employment and
economic growth are analyzed. Several policy recommendations
are made to the British government on investment, monitoring,
regulation, and oversight.
Harsh, P. Communications for the Information Age, New Scientist,
October 23, 1980, 235-238.
This article provides a general overview of the development and
Installation of Britain's new telecommunications network, System
X. Included in the article is information concerning costs,
capacity increases, and the conptraints on converting Britain's
existing network. Adjunct articles provide more specific
information on how the technology works.
Williamson, J. Crossed Lines for Telephone Exporters, Kew Scientist,
. October 23, 1980, 238-2UO.
This article describes Britain's race to gain a share of the
world's "open" market for telephone equipment. The author
describes BTS's (British Telecommunications Systems) efforts to
sell System X overseas, and its competitors from other
countries. Comparisons of market appoal and technical merit
axe Bade among the systems.
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iK. Japan
Maeuda, Y. The Information Society as Post-Industrial Society.
Tokyo, Japan: Institute for the Information Society, 1980.
This book describes Japan's 365 billion computer-usage development
plan scheduled for completion in 1985. The book projects the
emergence of the new information society in Japan and the
Western World and discusses the likely human behavior, social,
and global changes in response to the information society. The
author projects the evolution of voluntary cosmunities, a new
time value, and the potential of a computer utopia.
P. Third World
Polishuk, P. and H. A. O'Bryant, eds. Exposition-Proceedings Volume
1 and 2: Telecommunications and Economic Development. Dedham,
Massachusettsi Horizon House International, 1977.
The two volumes are a compilation of 200 papers presented at
the first International Telecommunication Exposition in
Atlanta, Georgia, on October 9-l5» 1977. Written from the
perspective «pd experience of Third World countries, the
authors cover a vide range of telecommunications issues,
Including telecommunication needs in developing countries,
recent advances in satellites, fiber optics, mobile and data
communication systems, and more general discussions on the
economics and social impacts of telecommunications and
telecommunications policy.
G. West Germany
Vhite, C. E. German Telecommunications—a Matter of Pride,
Telecommunications, October 1980, 35-53.
The article examines the present telecommunications industry in
Vest Germany and its prospects for the decade ahead. The
article covers the specific needs of Germany and the constraints
on telecommunications development within Germany. The
Bundespost's views on the development of digital technologies,
broadband networks, and direct broadcasting are provided along
with brief descriptions of Germany's B & D program in
telecommunications.
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,'TO. RESEARCH AMD POLICY ISSUES
Bu-Jhkln, A. A. and J. H. Yurow. The Foundations of United States
Information Policy: A United States Government Submission to
the High-Level Conference on Information, Computer and
Communications Policy, Organization for Economic Cooperation
and Development. NTIA—SP-80-8, U.S. Department of Commerce,
June 1980.
This 17-page booklet is important for those interested in
analyzing the basic premises and issues underlying U.S. policy
in the field of communications. The paper discusses information's
properties (resource, commodity, mediator, force for preservation
or change) and the ways in which these properties influence the
formulation of policy. Since there is no one policy in the
United States for information, the report divides existing
policy into two categories: "(l) the legal foundations of
information dissemination and access; and (2) the economics and
management of Information", (p. lj) These categories aro then
broken down into sub-categories as the discussion highlights the
tradeoffs inherent in policy formulation: First Amendment
rights versus the need for subsidising some citizens' access to
information services. Information management as a component of
information policy is briefly discussed.
Coates, J. F. Aspects of Innovation: Public Policy Issues in
Telecommunications Development, Telecommunications Policy,
June 1977, pp. 196-202.
The article considers the potential for innovation in various
telecommunication technologies. After discussing possible
futures, Coates analyzes the implications of a general model of
change associated with the introduction of a major technology,
and concludes by stressing the urgent need for research aimed
at anticipating desirable and undesirable impacts.
Daly, P.. F. and D. L. Nielsen. A Review of National Security-
Emergency Preparedness Telecommunications Policy. Henlo Park,
California: Stanford Research Institute* February 198l.
This report, prepared for the National Communication System,
is designed to review domestic telecommunications policy, the
structures and institutions involved in a national security/
emergency preparedness (NS/EP) telecommunications policy, and
to propose policy options which might be developed to bring
capabilities in line vith objectives.
The report analyzes such issues as the tension between policies
promoting deregulation and competition and the need for industry
firms to cooperate in certain areas if NS/EP goals are to be
met. Also studied is the fragmented nature of responsibility
for telecommunications policy development. The common
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denominator in the problem areas is that government has chosen
to use the common carriers as the basis for its communications,
raising many ouestions: vulnerability, changes in the
technologies, changes in the industry, and so on.
Panel on Telecommunications Research Committee on Telecommunications
National Academy of Engineering. Telecommunications Research
in the United States and Selected Foreign Countries. 2 vols.
Washington, B.C., 1973.
This document reports on the status and trends in telecommunica-
tions research in the U.S. and in other industrialized countries
as of 1973* Volume 1 cantains the summary conclusions of the
research statements in Volume 2 and is broken down into
categories on human factors; terminal sensors and displays;
transmission, modulation and coding; switching and routing;
processing and storage. The report also includes a brief
discussion of research on social impacts of telecommunications
and the impacts on foreign trade in telecommunications.
Pelton, J. 'N. -Global Communications Satellite Policy: INTELSAT,
Politics and Functionalism. Mt. Airy, Maryland: London Books,
197U.
This very theoretical book examines the establishment and
operation of INTELSAT—the International Telecommunications
Satellite Organization. It analyzes the operation of INTELSAT
from a functionalist perspective of international affairs and
it discusses the use of INTELSAT as a model of international
scientific cooperation. It also discusses INTELSAT'S
relationship to multinational enterprises and organisations.
Smith, E. L. The Wired Nation: Cable T.V.: The Electronic
Conmunications Highway. New York: Harper and Row, Publishers,
1972.
First written in 1970, this book is 906 of the earliest attempts
to address the many public policies issues surrounding the
future of cable television. Written for the layperson, it
examines the gro\rth of the cable industry, the need for
government regulations, and questions of eaual access to cable.
It describes the cable technology, and identifies the important
industry and government stakeholders in the coming power
struggles over cable T.V.
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APPENDIX B
METHODOLOGY USED IN THE STUDY
INTRODUCTION
Identifying the future impacts of a still developing technology is an
exercise in pattern recognition. It is much easier to look backward and see
the clues that were given than to separate them from the ground beforehand.
Although this is a difficult task, and as much an art as a science, efforts
to identify the long-range impacts of a technology should be thorough,
systematic, and public in order to rise above the level of mere speculation.
In telematics we are dealing with a set of related technologies rather
than one technology. This is a help and a hindrance. In assessing the long-
range effects of a cluster of technologies we must work at a certain level of
generality. Yet, aggregation helps focus on functions and capabilities-
important drivers of the effects of telematics (see Section 1). Aggregation
also allows for give-and-take among specific technologies within the set. The
impact analysis, although less technology specific, is thus more robust.
The development of a technology is influenced in many important ways by
other trends and events in society. Conversely, technologies can affect many
aspects of society. Some technologies have broader societal connections than
others. Telematic technologies are central to our society; a major change in
telematics affects every aspect of our lives. Thus, in searching for the
environmental effects of telematics we must cast the net widely.
STRATEGIES
Our strategies for identifying the effects of telematics emphasize
patterns of societal change, technological systems, and adoption of
technology's development from initiation and implementation through closedown
and obsolescence. Each phase places different demands on resources; capital,
labor, land, energy, materials, environment, skills, and institutions.
Exhibit B-l is a matrix showing the phases of technology's development against
the resources required. This matrix can guide the search for impacts of a
technology's development. One can modify this search focusing on groups of
people who may be affected by technological development and identifying
possible impacts on them.
How a technology is adopted affects its consequences for society. Our
second strategy for identifying impacts focuses on the stages of adoption.
As Section 1 illustrated, a technology's impacts occur in three phases:
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EXHIBIT B-l: PHASED DEMAND MATRIX FOR THE IDENTIFICATION OF POTENTIAL IMPACTS
X
CD
in
PHASE/DEVELOPMENT
Initiation
Objectives, policy,
priorities
R&D: basic, applied
Innovation: technical,
legal., etc.
Planning, design
Pilot plants
Demonstration projects
Implementation
Copital investment
Siting
Procurement
Construction
Operation
Inputs
Processing
Products
By-products
Emissions
Transportation
Utilization
Dissemination, use
Misuse, abuse
Closedown, Obsolescence
DEMANDS CN:
Capital
Labor
Land
Energy
Materials
Environ -nent
Skills
Institutions
oo
i
m
o
•a
l—(
x
o
70
o
-o
o
Prepared by Vary Taylor Coates, Ph.D. at The George Washington University
-o
3»
O
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1) substitution for another technology, 2) adaptation within systems to make
better use of the new technology, and 3) new capabilities inherent in the
technology are developed which may go far beyond the original substitution.
Some methods for identifying impacts, such as relevance and impact trees, are
useful for detecting possible first, second, third, and higher order impacts
of the adoption of a technology.
The development and adoption of a technology depends on societal trends
or events in society which influence attitudes toward the technology, focus
attention on the technology, or change the social value of its development.
These external trends and events shape the development and adoption of a
technology and thereby affect its impacts. Thus, a third strategy for
identifying impacts enumerates societal trends and their combinations and
analyzes how they may affect the development of the technology. Matrices,
checklists, cross impact analysis, and similar techniques are quite useful in
employing this strategy.
To recap, the three primary strategies used in this study for identifying
the probable future impacts of telematics are: adoption phases, development
cycle, and external trends. We also use a secondary strategy of systematically
collecting opinions and research regarding impacts through methods such as
literature reviews, brainstorming, and workshops.
METHODS USED IN THIS STUDY
Exhibit B-2 lists a number of methods for identifying impacts and
indicates which of them are used in this assessment. Those not used either
require data which is more quantitative than is available for the effects of
telematics or involve procedures more elaborate than warranted by a mini
assessment. The following describes the methods that were used in the
assessment.
Compilation of prior work. A comprehensive review was done of the
literature in five areas: the state-of-the-art of specific telematic
technologies; social, economic, political, and technological trends which will
influence the context of the development of telematics; treatments of the
issues and affected parties in national information policy formulation; the
criteria for use in foi-mulating a research agenda; and related research in
progress. The literature of telematics is quite extensive. The literature
is not evenly distributed. The treatment of some topics, such as the
technologies and their immediate applications, are represented by thousands
of items. Yet there is .little on other important questions such as policy
issues, long-range impacts, and stakeholders. Over a thousand items were
examined, and many more references were reviewed. A carefully selected and
annotated bibliography of about a hundred items is included as Appendix A.
This review was supplemented by a customized search of research in
progress by the Smithsonian Institution's Scientific Information Exchange.
The Exchange's files cover all the research in progress in the United States
which is not classified. The search yielded about 1000 projects. These
projects form the basis of the findings in Section 5 regarding important
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EXHIBIT B-2: METHODS USED FOR IDENTIFICATION OF IMPACTS
Methods Used In This Study*
• Compilation of prior work
• Scenarios
t Checklists
• Relevance Trees
• Trend extrapolation and analysis
• Signed digraph
• Brainstorming
t Historical analogy
• Workshops
Methods Not Used In This Study
0 Historical surveys
• Systems Analysis
• Simulation
• Modeling
• Hearings
• Field Investigations
• Physical Models
• Delphi
0 Cross Impact Analysis
0 KSIM
0 Dynamic Modeling
0 Fault Tree Analysis
0 Moot Courts
0 Syncons
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research which is and is not already being pursued.
In addition to the searches of literature and research in progress,
questions on related research were put to over 80 experts. Their responses
were helpful in guiding us to additional information and confirming our
conclusions about existing research.
Scenarios. To aid in forming a holistic concept of life in a
telematics-rich future, four scenarios were prepared. Each focused on a
segment of life in the U.S. in about 2005. In one, the theme of physical
decentralization of the population is played out. Another explores the
impact of intensive application of telematics to agriculture and rural life.
A third illustrates a day in the life of an average worker, and brings in
detail on the organization of work in the office or factory of the future.
The final one, contrary to the other three, focuses on the unsettling aspects
of telematics. It projects a future when a telematics-intense society starts
to break down, and more telematics is mobilized to maintain social control.
The scenarios were one basis for the team's first workshop in which the
group identified the possible impacts of telematics and conjectured about.
their interactive effects. The scenarios are available from the authors.
Checklists. Several checklists were used to generate possible impacts
of telematics. They were a useful stimulus both for project staff and for
the workshop participants. There were several types: checklists of
traditional, new, and imaginary telematic devices; possible impact areas for
telematics; social, economic, and political trends; and methods for
identifying impacts.
Relevance tree. A form of relevance tree called a future wheel was
used to help structure the search for higher order impacts. Using the future
wheel one starts with a technology or set of technologies and proceeds to
identify ways it might substitute for other technologies. Additional rounds
elicited impacts. The interrelated structure of the future wheel allows
impacts resulting from the interactions of other effects to emerge.
Trend analysis. A wide-ranging, thorough search to identify as many
social, economic, political, and technological trends as possible was carried
out. They were analyzed separately and in combinations to project their
impact upon one another and upon the development and application of telematics
technologies.
Signed digraph. Signed digraphs show the inhibiting and enhancing
effects of variables on one another. They are most useful in initial scoping
analysis and analysis of non-quantifiable impacts and trends. A signed
digraph procedure. contributed to the trend analysis described above.
%
Brains torming. Brains torming is a structured means for generating lists
Freewheeling thinking is encouraged, criticism is discouraged.
nroiect the staff speculated, individually or in groups,
'
nnnhnMtthe nroiect te sa s,
I out'po en /effects of te ma tics. These speculations led to further
analyses and to decisions on the significance of the purported effects.
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'Brainstorming was particularly useful in the project workshops for identifying
impacts, and proposing selection, criteria, or policy recommendations.
Historical analogy. A retrospective technology assessment of submarine
telegraph proved helpful in its analysis of political, military, and
diplomatic impacts of another form of telecommunications.
WORKSHOPS: A KEY PROJECT TECHNIQUE
Grasping the likely interaction of future trends with one another and
with developing technologies is not easy. People are able to hold in mind and
manipulate only a few concepts at a time. Computers can enhance the ability
to work with multiple trends, variables, or concepts. However, the methods
still rely on human judgment. Hence, we encounter the classical difficulties
in reasoning:
: • to identify one's assumptions correctly,
t to resist focusing only on the more visible or tractable elements,
• to make appropriate analogies and generalizations,
• to distinguish important from trivial elements,
• to resist overquantification,
• to grapple with the unquantifiable.
Given the reliance on human judgment, the overriding difficulty in
identifying impacts, is projecting beyond the assumptions and boundaries that
.structure our understanding of the present while holding firmly to the
principles of sound thinking. Staying within present frameworks makes it
difficult to see farther than the effects of the substitution phase of a
technology to the higher order impacts. Even in the best circumstances, few
people are likely to overcome these difficulties in more than a few areas.
Therefore it is important to involve as many, diverse thinkers as possible in
the identification of impacts. This is especially true when dealing with
complex social technologies apt to have pervasive impacts on society. For
this reason a major focus of the project was workshops.
After the initial analysis of the state-of-the-art of telematics
technologies two day-long workshops were convened. Each one included about
20 subject experts representing a wide range of disciplines and organizations.
Exhibit B-3 lists the participants. These groups addressed the impacts of
telematics and criteria for assessing their importance. Each group began by
responding to a workshop paper containing descriptions of present and future
telematic systems, and the four scenarios which were described above. During
the day they also worked in small groups using a variety of techniques,
including future wheels to identify impacts of telematics. The workshops
also elicited valuable information and guidance on criteria for sorting among
the impacts in terms of their importance to EPA and the government in ge.ieral.
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EXHIBIT B-3: PARTICIPANTS IN THE MID-PROJECT WORKSHOPS
Jessie Bernard, sociologist
Clem Bezold, Antioch Law School
Gail Crotts, National Public Radio
„ Marie Cummings, National Association of Counties
Anne Cyr, U.S. Department of Labor '
Michael Dymmel^ Communications Workers of America
John P. Eberhard, architect
.Don Dement, NASA
Steven Doyle, (formerly) Office of Technology Assessment
Bernard Finn, National Museum of American History
Kenneth Friedman, U.S. Department of Energy
, Mary Margaret Jenior, U.S. Department of Energy
Thomas Joyce, U.S.- Department of Labor
Jerry Kidd, University of Maryland
Gregory Kearsley, HUMRRO
Gloria Kemenske, National Institute of Child Health & Human Development
Morris Levin, EPA/OSASS
Mary Jo Manning, (formerly) Senate Commerce Committee Subcommittee on
Communications
William F. Mason, The Mitre Corporation
Fran!; Meeker, Attorney
Arthur Melmecl, National Institute of Education
Andrew Molnar, National Science Foundation
Jonathan Moreno, Department of Philosophy. George Washington University
•
Jay Muzychenko, International City Management Association
Larry Oppenheimer, Congressional Budget Office
Chuck Portaluppi, Motorola
Lawrence Regens, EPA/OSASS
John Richardson^ National Research Council, National Academy of Sciences
Alan Siegel, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development
Nathaniel Spiller. Solicitor's Office, U.S. Department of Labor
Charlotte Travieso, U.S. Department of Agriculture
Eldon Weeks. U.S. Department of Agriculture
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- The workshops yielded valuable information on:
• the description of the technologies,
• the usefulness of the scenarios,
- • impacts,
• criteria for sorting impacts,
• the analysis of the stakeholders and policy process.
A workshop to review the final report was also held. There was some
overlap with the two earlier workshops. The attendees are noted in Exhibit
B-4.
HOW THE METHODS RELATE TO THE REPORT
*•' Following the mid-project workshops, the trend analysis was performed as
described above. This trend analysis ar.d the revised description of the
technologies were used in concert to produce the impact analysis which forms
Section 5. The impacts were systematically drawn out using all of the
methodologies described above. They were cross-checked by crossing the list
of new capabilities which appear at the end of the technologies chapter
(Section 3) with the list of key trends which are developed in the trend
analysis (Section 4).
The impadts were then used to identify and analyze the stakeholders and
issues (Section 6). In this process, conclusions began to emerge. The
analysis continued to build through the consideration of kinds of criteria
which EPA/OSASS might use to inform their decision about appropriate research
in this area, to the eventual conclusions and recommendations which form the
final two chapters (Sections 7 and 3).
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EXHIBIT B-4: PARTICIPANTS IN REVIEW WORKSHOP
Robert Cleveland, FCC
Dennis Dobbin, NIOSH
Sam Fordyce, NASA
G. Patrick Johnson, National Science Foundation
Christopher Jones, Institute for Alternative Futures
Morris Levin, EPA/OSASS
Randy Lumb, IBM
Basil H. Manns, EPA/OSASS
Richard Marston, National Research Council
William F. Mason, The Mitre Corporation
Elliot C. McEntee, Federal Reserve Board
Roman Krozinski, National Research Council
Larry Oppenheimer, Congressional Budget Office
James L. Regens, EPA/OSASS
John Richardson, National Research Council
Alan Siegel, HUD
John Urban, International City Management Association
El don Weeks, USDA
Fred Weingarten, Office of Technology Assessment
On completion of the draft final report in September 1981, it was
submitted to 20 reviewers soliciting written or other comments. Useful
reviews were received from:
Don R. Justesen, Veterans Administration
Robert Cleveland, FCC
' G. Patrick Johnson, NSF
Alan Siegel, HUD
Michael Dymmel, Communications Workers of America
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