Ipseom

Archive for the ‘Business’ Category

Some I-Way applications will change the world. Others won’t. For example, staff at the University of Cambridge Physics Department were wasting time walking down the hail to see if the coffee was ready. The solution? They put the coffee pot on the Net with a video camera. Their collaborators at Butler University in Indianapolis occasionally take a break to check on the status of Cambridge’s coffee.
And will we be couch potatoes watching more TV? Chances are we’ll be doing less watching and more interacting. The TV is converging with the home computer and telephone to create the information appliance that is intelligent, interactive, and multimedia. This appliance will look a lot more like a computer than a TV The number of houses with PCs is growing phenomenally every year. In 1993, 21 million households had PCs; in 1994 the number reached 30 million, a 43 per cent increase; by the end of 1995 the number reached 45 million. Networking has grown even faster. In 1994 the number of home PCs with a modem was about 5 per cent. By the end of 1995 this had doubled to 10 per cent. We can expect that the number will continue to double until 1998 when most will be connected.
Rather than enabling more MW cartoon characters like Beavis and Butthead, there is a growing consensus in business, government, community and social interest groups that the I-Way can be the key to economic and social success. Evidence is mounting that it will provide a new basis t everything from wealth creation, national competitiveness, the reinventi of the corporation, the renewal of the business of government, and the taming of social development, all the way to the saving of lives, prot of the environment, improvement of democratic processes, and building. This may sound like hyperbole. It is not. It is a conclusion on the extension of the current experience with the new technolo cinuiging the way we do business, work, learn, and live.