Word: opticality
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...certainly not the last. Tired of waiting for cable and telephone companies to build their fiber-optic interactive-TV networks--a multibillion-dollar effort that could take a decade or more to complete--computer enthusiasts are making do with what they have today: a computer network that runs largely over telephone lines. Using jerry-built software tools and whatever shows they have at hand, they are busily reinventing the old media on the new medium, offering up music, pictures, video clips and now a comedy series. Much of the new material is drawn from the golden days of radio...
...others, at least have the rainbow in sight. During the past year, U.S. companies have been streaming into the multimedia business, and the optimists among them expect to see gold glittering soon. By one U.S. estimate, business on the information highway--from providing video-on-demand to building fiber-optic trunk lines--will in 10 to 15 years generate $300 billion annually for software and computer makers, cable-TV and telephone companies, publishers and catalog houses. ``The Japanese want to get in on it, but they are a bit confused,'' says Roger Mathus, executive director of the U.S. Semiconductor Association...
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...
...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...
Chief among the combatants are the telephone and cable giants that are building rival versions of the information highway. One of these is Bell Atlantic, which plans to spend $11 billion on fiber-optic cable and other equipment to bring two-way TV to 8 million homes by the year 2000. Another is Time Warner, which is neck and neck with TeleCommunications Inc. in the race to be the nation's largest cable company. Time Warner is teaming with U S West to test its notion of a state-of-the-art system in Orlando, Florida, as part...