|
|
IMMEDIATE
How Business Structures, Economies, Societies are Affected New York, June 2, 1999 ...From Haiti to China to Kenya to Thailand to India -- and beyond in the developing world -- the evolution of new Internet infrastructures means change. For national economies, political structures, regulatory authority, and telecom technology. The latest issue of Communications of the ACM delivers authoritative voices from around the world for a probing look at the effects of the Internet in countries that may seem unlikely environments for online communications, Web browsing, and e-commerce. According to guest editor, Milton Mueller, School of Information Studies, Syracuse University, "The rise of the Internet is sparking profound and interesting changes in the global telecommunications infrastructure. Computer internetworking was originally grafted onto the periphery of the public telephone network, just as the telephone was, in its earliest days, thrust into a world dominated by the telegraph. It was an environment dominated not only by a different technological paradigm (analog, circuit-switched networks vs. digital terminals and packet-oriented communications), but also by a different politico-economic regime." Especially for countries with historically monopolistic telecom markets, like those in the developing world, the Internet means big economic and political questions -- and tens of millions of potential users -- that won't wait. These articles suggest how profoundly and quickly the world of telecommunications and information access and dissemination is changing:
Communications of the ACM is the flagship publication of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) and was established in 1957. This monthly, internationally distributed magazine covers emerging technologies and issues affecting computer practitioners everywhere in every discipline and industry. Communications' 88,000 readers---developers, programmers, software engineers, and technical managers from Fortune 2000 companies, government, and universities ---represent the decision-makers steering the future of information technologies. Next month's Communications (June '99) will explore and detail emerging Internet infrastructures worldwide, especially those in developing countries, followed by information warfare (July '99), and coming trends in computer graphics (August '99). Future Communications will explore information warfare (July '99) and making computer graphics indistinguishable from reality (August '99).
About the ACM
|
