Word: fiber
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...Japanese call it ``maruchimedia'' -- multimedia -- and they plan to connect it to nearly every Japanese home by the year 2010. Their carrier: a nationwide supersophisticated fiber-optic system being encouraged by the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications. In Hong Kong 600 of the city's skyscrapers are already wired with fiber optics and rate as ``intelligent buildings.'' The colony's 6 million residents are so interconnected that the better restaurants forbid patrons to talk on their cellular telephones while eating...
Instead the Japanese bureaucracy is marshaling its forces for a ``multimedia war'' -- with all the implications of official encouragement that the phrase suggests. The Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications' (M.P.T.) gargantuan plan to run fiber-optic cable into almost every home by 2010 will cost between $330 billion and $500 billion. Critics warn that it is not only an expensive but probably also an unnecessary weapon, since there are no services -- current or expected soon -- that would actually employ fiber to the home. A hybrid system of coaxial cable and fiber-optic cable does the job just as well...
...This new jurisprudential battleground is littered with double-edged swords. While it is clearly important that the laws of this new realm be explicit and enforceable, it is even more vital that the legal system have enough perspective and flexibility to deal with a world that is changing at fiber-optic speeds...
Since many Republicans oppose hiking the minimum with near religious zeal (``I'll fight it with every fiber of my being,'' says House majority leader Dick Armey), the President's plan seems dead--which may explain why some Clinton aides say the proposal won't be actively pushed...
...particularly with the people around him." Gilder admits he does not have the close friendship with the new Speaker that the Tofflers enjoy. "But," he adds, "my ideology is more akin to Gingrich's." He also claims he knows more than the Tofflers do about such new technologies as fiber optics and semiconductors. "That's my business. Gingrich is interested in it. He's consulted me from time to time...