Looking Ahead to the Information Age in 1985: AT&T Archives

what is happening now is a more fundamental profound change that mankind has ever experienced today looks nothing like our yesterday Oh we open our eyes in the 1980s and we see a world that's totally new the most common everyday things in our lives are changing at it incredibly rapid pace watches aren't just watching the calendars plus our radio music is video televisions aren't just for entertainment therefore thank you or getting a degree telephones aren't just watched calling home anymore they're forced accessing databanks containing every conceivable kind of information for sending copies of letters and drawings across the globe in seconds telephones are in our cars as well as our homes and offices our homes and offices are coming together more and more with computers people are able to work at home or telecommute Mike still wakes us in the morning as it always have but now laser light perform surgery without a scalpel traits cancerous cells predicts earthquakes or shoots underground through hair thin fibers of glass carrying thousands of messages at lightning speed welcome to the Information Age I'm Robert Trumbull and I'm here to take you on a journey through mankind's history to the threshold of a world of new opportunities a world of wonders matched only by agreements in the agricultural a life was based on the lessons men learned from his past when a plant when to harvest a man created tools a wheel the plow to aid in his survival in the industrial age man labored in factories life was based on the present produce the goods ship them out a man created new tools machines assembly lines the industrial age peaked several decades ago with most of the American workforce employed in manufacturing and heavy industry then things began to change people moved into jobs as office workers librarians managers by 1956 over 1/2 the workforce was involved in the creating processing and distributing of information in 1957 the Russians launched Sputnik and a new era began suddenly a much smaller world could communicate by satellite in the Information Age our new tools computers and communication technologies have extended both our physical and our intellectual capabilities as we begin to think create and communicate globally our gaze shifts to the future with the tools of the Information Age we look forward to a richer longer more interesting life scientists believe that the technologies of this new age may even allow us to extend ourselves perceptually to move to seniors and even manipulate parts of the environment at long distance and where I see as the ultimate result of fiber optics lasers and the new developments in holography which are just very rudimentary just just far beyond fiber optics but coming along is a time when you can do just what those fellows do in Star Trek you can beam up and down you can create yourself electronically somewhere else or deal with someone electronically here bye-bye holography three-dimensional living moving television and you may say that's a that's a you know a pie in the sky but if you look at the trends that's something that will become a reality if not at the end of this century certainly sometime in the next century the tools of the information a computers and communications were separate technologies for years today they are rapidly coming together to create systems that will offer the capabilities and economies of the future the first large-scale computer opinion was produced by Sperry Rand in 1946 it was the size of a room it had 18,000 vacuum tombs and one of them blew every six minutes the changes that occurred after the development of the ENIAC with its vacuum tubes involved the use of the transistor which was invented shortly thereafter the transistor is different from the vacuum tube in many ways it is more reliable it does not break as easily it uses far less power and it is its lifetime is enormous compared to that as a vacuum tube it's the development of the transistor and its successors the integrated circuits which have reduced the size of the computer from that of a room down to something the size of a fingernail today this tiny reliable micro computer performs thousands of times more tasks Lenina for a fraction of the cost if automobiles had advanced in the same ways as computed as a car today would cost two dollars and 50 cents would get 1.5 million miles per gallon it would weigh about half a pound communications the other technological tool of the information age had slower beginnings and computers delivery of messages took days weeks sometimes even year then messages were sent by mail telegram telephone undersea cables and satellite technology made it possible for nations to communicate in a matter of seconds now the science of light communications has turned the highways of yesterday into the super highways of the Information Age where our ideas travel on light beam path a tiny laser the size of a pinhead sends an intense beam of light with further glance or optical fiber the light beam pulses at an amazing 19 million times per second it would take yesterday's copper telephone lines twenty-one hours to transmit the same amount of information that an optical fiber sends in one second already hundreds of thousands of miles of fiber optics networks crisscross the country and the world the 1984 Summer Olympic Games were telecast via a digital television light wave system linking 23 Olympic event sites each time the laser switches off and on in a fiber optics Network a bit of information moves through the glass thread the light beam is talking digital the language of computers computers are learning another language ours will be very smart with all the develops that are going on at present we hope that in their not to far distant future it will be possible to carry out this conversion from the spoken word to the computer and be able to tell a computer directly by mouth what it is you wanted to do this will save an enormous amount of father and effort converting your ideas to written form typing them and sending them out in that way this will make the computer more friendly and much more usable device computers and communication merging to form the systems of the Information Age in the past manufacturers provided just one part of the information business computers or communications equipment customers are now looking to buy systems from one source so companies worldwide are broadening their products and services by investing or merging this integration of technology will link many of the operations of a factory or business into a single centralized system with global access to information so sometime perhaps in the not-too-distant future the following scenario could take place a scientist in Italy makes a major discovery he added it into a world databank a researcher at a US company sees the data and pulls the engineering department the engineer designs the product and signs the plans to the corner people programs the plans into his computer which automatically read gears the assembly line and orders the parts from inventory the advertising department develops the new product introduction and the sales team is trained via teleconferencing all of these functions are performed and coordinated by one system with the integration of technologies we'll be able to pool the expertise of grapevines worldwide will have instantaneous access to information that will solve problems prevent crimes save lives imagine a child's life is saved because the knowledge of doctors nationwide is pooled and immediately accessible to a small-town physician who is quickly able to diagnose and treat the problem an elusive mineral vital to the economy of a region is located hundreds of times more quickly at a fraction of the cost because the expertise of nationwide geologists is pooled and focused on a search Dooley's sound like scenarios of the distant future they're not these are technological applications that have already been implemented and the technologies are almost in place to turn these and many other information age benefits into affordable widely available realities almost need to go a step further the United States must develop an information infrastructure the final stage in the merging of communications and computer technologies in the Industrial Age a region's economic growth and vitality depended on the efficient planning of transportation water sewer and electrical systems in the Information Age the growth industries will be attracted to the regions that develop strong information infrastructures an information infrastructure is a grid a fiber-optic cable microwave towers satellites connecting telephones to computers to buildings to cities to nations those towns cities states and countries that develop the strongest infrastructures will get the largest share of a global communications market that will be worth over 1 trillion dollars by 1990 how can we be sure that the United States will have a strong share of that mark we have foreign competitors who are ready and able to penetrate our markets here in the USA Japan's go for exactly is to gain a 30 percent share of the world computer market and an 18 percent share of the American market by 1990 Japan has announced that they're going to build a fifth-generation computer which is really a computer that goes beyond what anything we have today it deals with building what is now called artificial intelligence or expert systems there are inference engines where they learn from themselves and they provide knowledge to you and you don't deal with them just by processing transactions you give it data and it gives you back information you give it more information and it learns from itself and it continues to build its knowledge and this fifth generation computer is gonna if it's successful I could put your pain miles ahead of the rest of the world other countries are also advancing rapidly in information age technology the French postal and Communications Authority plans to equip each of its 30 million telephone subscribers with a video data terminal by 1992 the same systems are operational in the at Kingdom Canada West Germany and Japan the United States is making similar advances in Information Age technologies and infrastructures but our lead is slim and getting slimmer the communications equipment business is a good example it's a 40 billion dollar mark that expected to grow to 19 billion dollars in the next five years but for the first time in 1983 the United States imported more communications equipment than an export our world market shares and switching equipment fiber optics manufacturing and micro processing are being channelled we've seen our major industries lose world market positions in the past between 1959 and 1979 many of our leading companies in the chemical electronic appliance automotive and manufacturing industries lost positions as world market leaders with information technology approaching a one trillion dollar market and with high-tech industries creating jobs 30 percent faster than any other industry there is too much at stake to let the same thing happen to our information age industries because after all we are in a competitive environment and the one who can produce the lowest cost quality service is going to win the business and I think the people who do the best job of producing technology driven products that are quality low cost products are gonna be the winner see American minds have brought the greatest technologies of all time to the world because if there's one thing Americans have always valued it's a good idea but if the United States is to remain the leader in the information a good ideas will have to come at a faster pace than ever before businesses and government policymakers will need to have a farsighted unified vision of the future and plans that allow for the development of a strong nationwide infrastructure as critical to economic development in the information a as good highways word economic development in the industrial age plans that free American information age companies to use their resources to introduce the technologies of the future as economically as possible and with widespread availability to the public because the public has the right to the best performance that the most advanced technologies can offer now not later we open our eyes in the 1980s and we see a world that requires a greater more far-seeing vision than ever before some people say that the United States has lost the ability to have a greater vision of the future that business people and policymakers are only concerned with short-term catches catch can problem solving I disagree we're world leaders because our vision has always encompassed the past present and future some people say the entrepreneurs and dreamers are no longer with us just when we need them the most but since information and the good ideas that follow are our most precious commodities in this new age we're way ahead ever since there was an America we have valued the ingenuity of the human mind our greatest minds and business politics and technology we'll continue to work together to anticipate and meet the challenges of our tomorrow's you you

Channel: AT&T Tech Channel

Views: 66,092

Keywords: AT&T, Tech, Channel, Archives, History, Computing, Invention, Innovation, Information, Superhighway, Internet, Networks, Communication, 1980s, Robert, Jastrow, NASA, George, Stibitz, Bell, Labs, William, Synnott

Id: qWsC9KE-PHY

Length: 18min 32sec (1112 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 21 2012