[tt] John Nicolay reviews Cairncross: The Death of Distance

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John Nicolay reviews Cairncross: The Death of Distance

Book review essay: Information technology
Nicolay, John A. Journal of Policy Analysis and Management. Hoboken: 
Winter 1999.Vol.18, Iss. 1;  pg. 156, 13 pgs

Abstract (Document Summary)

Nicolay reviews "The Death of Distance: How the Communications Revolution 
Will Change Our Lives" by Frances Cairncross, "Waves of Power: The 
Dynamics of Global Leadership, 1964-2010" by David Moschella, "The Digital 
Economy: Promise and Peril in the Age of Networked Intelligence" by Donald 
Tapscott, and others.

The Death of Distance: How the Communications Revolution Will Change 
Our Lives, by Frances Cairncross. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Business 
School, 1997, 303 pp., $24.95 cloth.

Waves of Power: The Dynamics of Global Leadership, 1964-2010, by David 
Moschella. New York: American Management Association, 1997, 290 pp., 
$29.95 cloth.

The Digital Economy: Promise and Peril in the Age of Networked 
Intelligence, by Donald Tapscott. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1997, 228 pp, 
$14.95 paper.

Blueprint to the Digital Economy: Wealth Creation in the Era of 
E-Business, edited by Donald Tapscott, Alex Lowy, and David Ticoll. 
New York: McGraw-Hill, 1998, 384 pp., $24.95 cloth.

Leveraging the New Infrastructure: How Market Leaders Capitalize on 
Information Technology, by Peter Weill and Marianne Broadbent. 
Cambridge, MA: Harvard Business School Press, 1998, 336 pp., $29.95 
cloth.

Within this review, five recent texts on the impacts of information 
technologies on society and organization are examined. Each of these 
texts teaches us something different about the emerging 
technology-management context; each provides fertile ground for public 
managers to ask the difficult policy questions regarding their 
investments into information technologies. Without a map to the 
future, strategic investments in technology may well be squandered. 
The texts reviewed here take the reader from an appreciation of the 
lessons learned in information technology investments toward a 
discussion of how information technology will continue to invent the 
organization and the people it serves.

We would fully expect no single text to supply a complete 
understanding of the more particularistic concerns we might have as 
public managers. Lessons derive from multiple texts. The vast majority 
of these texts focus on private sector information technology 
investments. Clearly, the authors whose books are discussed here have 
the private sector/societal audience in mind. Consequently, as 
managers with a public management orientation, we might ask of these 
books questions they are not especially prepared to answer. Even so, 
their presentations do anticipate our questions. Thus:

1. How can we as public managers determine the relationship between 
costs and benefits with information technology investments?

2. What should be the orientation of organization to stakeholders when 
designing the information technology infrastructure?

3. How have telecommunications hardware/software innovations shifted 
the emphasis of service to clientele groups?

4. What can public managers anticipate as the next information 
management models emerge? Does good planning circumvent future 
miscalculations in investment and strategy?

5. Is there an information management orientation distinct from 
traditional management approaches?

6. Can public management play a policy role in shaping the information 
revolution?

To truly appreciate the revolutionary nature of information technology 
management, there is wisdom in understanding the context of 
information management. Without this understanding, public managers 
might well be held captive to the lure of the technology itself, with 
all the glowing promises technologists offer.

Although the fundamental practices of administration and management 
remain largely locked into traditional patterns of decisionmaking, the 
nearly blind allocation of vast resources into information 
technologies has created an economy driven by these investments. There 
appears to be little understanding of how these technologies will 
fundamentally alter the manner in which the agencies purchasing them 
will benefit, or to use the parlance, receive a return on their 
investments. At the federal level, roughly 60 billion dollars were 
spent in fiscal year 1997, half of those dollars within the Department 
of Defense in weapons systems. The expectations of the Government 
Performance and Results Act (1993), the Federal Workforce 
Restructuring Act (1994) [see GAO, 1995], and the Information 
Technology Management Reform Act (1997) promised that investments in 
technology would pay tremendous dividends in agency response to 
citizens, require fewer man-hours to produce them, and link all 
government activities to outcomes-based performance measures [GAO, 
1977b]

Realities often fall considerably short of ideals [GAO, 1997a]. But 
returns on investment always tend to be slippery withing the public 
realm, where so much of the work of one department or agency is in 
service to another department or agency, and where old management 
habits are hard to break ["Best IT Practices," 1997].

The question of whether information technologies are in and of 
themselves a benefit to society generally, and to procuring agencies 
in particular, cannot be easily answered. One learns quickly from 
reading texts in this subject that much of determining value depends 
on the point of view of the respondent and of the examiner. 
Unfortunately, decisions to advance systems management with 
investments generally have little to do with either a benefit to 
society or to the agency. It is a catch-as-catch-can philosophy, 
driven by the presence of a technology in the marketplace rather than 
a specific need within the agency that a search for technology 
resolves. Writers take both sides of the value question. Gene Rochlin 
[1997] warns us that technologies can have unintended consequences, 
among which are the reduction of the work life to a mechanistic 
Tayloresque experience. Sherry Turkle [1995] speaks of the social 
isolation through which individuals lose the checks society places on 
human behavior. David Shenk [1997] questions how we can possibly 
manage the deluge of information besetting our organizations. Other 
writers have questioned the payback on technology investments such 
that the imperative of owning technology far outweighs the pragmatism 
dictated by sound management and practices [Landauer, 1996; Sichel, 
1997.]

Bearing in mind the bipolar nature of these debates, the following 
texts frame the questioned posed earlier.

Leveraging the New Infrastructure

The operational and financial analysis detailed by the authors of the 
exceptional book Leveraging the New Infrastructure provides solid 
groundwork upon which both public and private organizations may take a 
hard look at their own approach to information technology procurement 
and management. Weill and Broadbent premise their research upon the 
principle that successful investments in information technologies must 
return to those organizations enhanced products, services, and 
strategic positioning within respective markets. Avoiding these 
caveats, the investment will fail to achieve for the organization some 
definition of success.

The organization that underappreciates the cost relationship for 
information technology initiatives tied to specific organizational 
processes and outcomes sets the course for economic disaster. Weill 
and Broadbent argue for "the new infrastructure" such that external 
and internal information technology environments serve to define for 
the organization information architecture. The external information 
technology is called the public infrastructure, by virtue of its use 
in a wide variety of settings. The internal information technology is 
called the firm's information technology infrastructure. The internal 
infrastructure is centrally controlled and serves all divisions of the 
organization. Clearly, strategic planning holds the key to successful 
architectural design. This architecture represents the organization's 
dynamic policies and standards for the use of all information 
technologies through partnerships, for instance, hardware and software 
vendors.

The design of the organization's information is too critical to be 
either outsourced or left to the devices of technology specialists. A 
common failing among senior executives results from the abdication or 
delegation of the design and investment decisions. In their book, 
Weill and Broadbent focus instead on a survey of private sector 
companies whose information investments constitute a value-added 
strategy for competitive advantage. They focus on 54 such companies 
whose information portfolios-that sum of all aspects of the 
information technology investment, including personnel-proved 
successful. Case study illustrations punctuate the book.

The information technology portfolio addresses these objectives: 
informational, strategic, transactional, and infrastructure. The 
infrastructure reduces operational costs through standardization to 
industry requirements. The transactional objective addresses the 
routine process work of the industry. Strategic objectives of an 
information portfolio allow decisionmakers to use the system for 
tracking performance and projecting new avenues of growth. 
Informational objectives provide for operational support. All four 
aspects of the portfolio may be called into crafting an executive 
decision. Hence, the balanced scorecard approach to a portfolio. The 
balanced scorecard values each part of the information portfolio such 
that each part is weighed to its contribution in the whole. An 
alignment between the various contributions to this portfolio 
constitutes a successful information technology investment.

The authors observed large organizations with many business units, 
each serving a different function in the overall corporate design. 
Each unit has different computing needs but operates from a single 
system. The overall design of the system proves the critical element 
in the first choice to invest. The most easily measured cost factor is 
the repetitive, process-oriented operations. This transactional 
investment represented "8 percent of centrally coordinated information 
technology and 20 percent of business-unit investment, accounting for 
12 percent of the [average] firm's total information technology 
portfolio over five years" (p. 53). This investment in transactional 
information technologies associates with a lower return on investment, 
for the technology merely addresses the work already done, not the 
strategic growth of the organization. The exception to this 
observation is coupling information technology investments with 
streamlining the organization. All the same we have this startling 
observation: Downsizing does not impact revenue.

Informational technology investments are geared toward managing and 
controlling the organization, such as with budget systems. On this 
investment, the authors note, "Over the five years studied, 
informational investment represented 14 percent of centrally 
coordinated information technology investment and 18 percent of 
business-unit investment, accounting for 16 percent of the average 
firm's total information technology portfolio . . ." (p. 54). Such 
investments appear attractive, given the emphasis on the accumulation 
of information and the rapid response to database inquiries that an 
abundance of information provides. But in and of itself, information 
has no value. Value is derivative. In this study, the authors found no 
relationship between the investment in informational technologies and 
revenue returns. To add value, management must be able to react 
quickly and decisively through that information.

Strategic investments in information technology are designed to serve 
a competitive advantage. Such investments are not without risks. The 
authors found that "strategic investment represented 8 percent of 
centrally coordinated information technology investment and 24 percent 
of business-unit investment, accounting for 14 percent of the total 
portfolio" (p. 56). Of all the strategic investments studied, 50 
percent of them failed. On the balance, successful strategic 
investments have a short shelf life, less than three years. The major 
contributing factor to these dismal returns was the lack of a firmwide 
infrastructure, that is, strategic investments in technology tended to 
be isolated from the firm's overall information system design. A 
successful information technology investment requires an 
enterprisewide approach to the design and implementation of the 
technologies [Cook, 1996].

Technology infrastructure captures the most expensive information 
technology investment. Much like a system of highways, technology 
infrastructure demands standardization of computer applications, 
hardware, and a networked design. The expense of these infrastructures 
represents "70 percent of centrally coordinated information technology 
investment and 38 percent of business-unit investment, accounting for 
58 percent of the average firm's total portfolio" (p. 58). Because a 
firmwide commitment to increasing infrastructure is complex, generally 
requiring its own subunits of management and service, and expensive, 
these firms demonstrate a higher rate of productivity and service, but 
lower returns on investments. In other words, the cost associated with 
a highly integrated, complex information technology easily outweigh 
returns in the short run, but can dramatically increase profits in the 
long run. This observation mirrors the economic analysis of computer 
investments by Sichel [1997]. He calculated that technology capital 
investments produced returns lower than traditional fund management 
strategies.

One solution to risks and investment costs is outsourcing information 
technology. Another text under review here picks up on this theme. 
Laying aside the political economy value issues, for organizations in 
which product turnaround time and product innovation were not issues, 
outsourcing proved a significant plus. This clearly fits most public 
organizations. The firm's capability in managing its information 
technology investments or "conversion effectiveness" hinges on five 
characteristics (top management commitment to information technology; 
"less political turbulence"; more satisfied users; better planning; 
and experience with information technologies), and these constitute a 
major lesson of this text (p. 66).

Paradoxically, predicting information needs comes with little 
experience within organizations whose success is predicated on 
customer demands for information. Such demands often appear without 
warning. For most agencies, shared resources present the most 
promising alternative to constantly upgrading systems to meet these 
demands. The paradox is thus: to be poised to meet customer demands 
without a heavy investment in technologies for which there will be no 
demand. The authors rehearse a model proposed by Peter Keen called 
Reach and Range (p. 213). Reach refers to the networked capabilities 
of an information infrastructure-such as a communication system. Range 
refers to the ability of the infrastructure to provide all services to 
all members within the system reach. This model creates a synergy 
within the system that maximizes the use of that system across 
clients. The process begins by identifying the needs of all system 
users and identifying overlaps. The system operates with central 
control.

Weill and Broadbent largely discount the value of business process 
restructuring, such as that proposed by Hammer and Champy [1993]. 
Instead, successful companies benchmark their performance standards 
against similar organizations, making changes incrementally based on 
the organization's strategic posture and service reach. With direct 
application to the public settings, the final lessons of the text 
suggest that managers use the portfolio approach while evaluating the 
risks of investment; integrate the portfolio with a clear 
understanding of the maxims dictating organizational processes or 
missions; outsource aspects of the process that are not an integral 
part of the services performed by the organization; establish 
indicators of success and assign responsibilities for achieving them; 
manage the information infrastructure separately from other functions, 
appraising and justifying its expense; manage system conversions such 
that upgrading the system creates the least disruption and costs; 
analyze the benefits of the system and learn from this experience; 
manage the information politics, which means understanding why 
information is important, how it is used, and the motivations of 
people within the organization; create a transparent management system 
such that all clients clearly see the governance process; and begin 
with small investments, learning from that experience.

Management of information technologies cannot be apportioned and 
discarded. The authors' "Management by Maxim" understands that each 
member of the organization plays a part in the overall success of that 
organization. Now and into the future, "the quality of executive 
leadership for the new infrastructure [is] a source of competitive 
differentiation" (p. 254).

This book represents important field research in an arena with so 
little to offer in balance. The authors conducted extensive 
examinations for returns on investment within their sample, isolating 
those variables that appear to have contributed to overall corporate 
financial success. This sample should be construed as neither random 
nor representative of corporate attitudes toward technology 
investments. A recent survey by A. T. Kearney found that 70 percent of 
the businesses it surveyed did not consider information technology 
(IT) and data management as critical to their success [Caldwell, 
McGee, and Wilder, 1998].

To frame success the authors are on the right track. An earlier work 
by Mellissa Cook [1996] demonstrates the power of the enterprise model 
of information systems. Cooks' book explores the pioneering 
theoretical work of John Zachman. The Zachman model argues-as have 
these authors-that an information system affects the entire 
organization. Smart design involves all sectors of the organization. 
Each contributes to the overall design through the lens of experience. 
Hence, system analysts bring into the design the global and strategic 
perspective of the top management, as well as the operational 
perspective of those who use the system on a daily basis, and 
ultimately the consumers. Programmers and system engineers design the 
architecture and eventually write the code, but their work is 
secondary to the system design produced through the internal 
understanding of the organization's information needs. Readers of the 
Weill and Broadbent analysis will appreciate a foundation in 
enterprise design prior to an application of their principles. Public 
managers can learn much through the identification of critical success 
elements and the role of outsourcing with information technologies.

The Digital Economy

With several titles to his credit-most recently the edited Blueprint 
to the Digital Economy [Tapscott, Lowy, and Ticoll, 1998]-technology 
managers regard Don Tapscott as a leading conversant in the emerging 
literatures of information technology management and economics. To 
date, his best received book has been Paradigm Shift [Tapscott and 
Caston, 1992]. In Digital Economy Tapscott supplies his readers with a 
sequence of lists (to which even this analyst succumbs) through which 
he details the emergence of a new world economy anchored to 
information technologies and what the emergence portends for 
individuals and for organizations.

Every aspect of the postindustrial, information-based economies has 
effects on individuals and consequently the choices these individuals 
make. Acknowledging a theme woven through all the review texts 
Tapscott is clearest: Only those individuals and organizations posed 
to take advantage of technologies in defining skills and processes 
will succeed. The emerging economies are highly integrated, driven by 
the micro encapsulation of the integrated circuit, which makes the new 
technologies easily portable and easily produced. Every learned 
individual can generate computer applications tailored to the needs of 
the organization.

Learning and working are no longer separate exercises [see Reich, 
1992]. The information age requires that workers continually be 
learners, and there is an integration of these once two distinct 
activities. Once individuals acquired knowledge to work. Now, in order 
to work, individuals commit to a life-long learning experience. Just 
as information technologies transform education, digitization causes 
the computing, communications, and content industries to collide. 
Recent complaints regarding the dominance of Microsoft in setting 
software standards speaks to the reduction of contenders in these 
three industries. Concurrently, we have seen representatives from 
these three industries create partnerships to provide new services, 
for instance Microsoft and Boeing's partnership to establish a global 
communication satellite network.

Hierarchical leadership dissolves into a learning leadership that 
advances partnerships for learning both intra- and interorganization 
[see Senge, 1994]. Tapscott views these partnerships as collective or 
internetworked leaders. Partnership leaders can be digital. The role 
of the executive finds itself diminished.

Finally, information technologies increase quality of life through 
opportunities for more enriching work, both physically and 
financially. The drudgeries associated with blue-collar labor have 
nearly dissipated in America with over 60 percent of the workforce now 
engaged in information-based jobs. Individuals leaving college today 
can well expect a commitment to a lifetime of learning and divergent 
professional responsibilities.

Anyone familiar with the "urgency" literature of information 
management will likely regard Tapscott as yet another voice in the 
throng. Perhaps Tapscott's reputation as a keynote speaker precedes 
the essays, for the essays take on that tone. The target reading 
population for this book is clearly the academic market, but 
novitiates into information technology management, or generalists 
looking for a management inspiration, will much enjoy this book.

Tapscott's most recent publication foray is the Blueprint to the 
Digital Economy: Creating Wealth in the Era of E-Business (1998). This 
collection of 20 exoteric essays touches on a range of issues, from 
banking to cyberspace. Each essay is written by a representative-often 
industry leaders-of a major player in the electronic forums. Public 
managers will find the four essays on governance the most productive, 
especially as they think through the necessity of a presence in the 
networked world of the Internet. Having read these treatments, readers 
should regard with some caution how they approach their Internet 
content, and again, wonder whether citizens are best served in all 
instances with the Internet alternative to public discourse and 
commerce. As currently configured, the Internet dispenses with the 
messiness of irate citizens and allows agencies to put forward their 
best foot to the dance.

Educators will find Carol Twigg and Michael Miloff's essay "The Global 
Learning Infrastructure: The Future of Higher Education" a concise and 
well-reasoned argument for distance learning. Although no one can 
rationally expect the campus to disappear in the near term, the hunger 
for "knowledge on demand" and the intellectual resource management 
power of the Internet-say with up-to-date publishing-has in fact 
changed the nature of secondary education in America, a system nearly 
everyone agrees faces a monumental crisis.

This book provides excellent summaries of how information technologies 
affect the pedestrian lives of individuals and industries. Readers 
unsatiated in their desire to learn more about the transformations 
taking place in the pedestrian worlds through which we travel-banking 
and entertainment, for example-will find this collection rewarding and 
insightful.

Given Tapscott's reputation as an expert in information technologies, 
his essays warrant scrutiny by policy managers. Especially engaging is 
the discussion on networked management, and how electronic information 
has altered the nature of hierarchical power schemes.

Waves of Power

As a senior vice president of research at the trade journal 
Computerworld, David Moschella finds himself in the enviable position 
of having matured as a commentator on the information revolution. He 
writes of a coming convergence of the 4Cs- computers, communications, 
consumer electronics, and content. Each of these Cs represents a wave, 
engulfing all previously held assumptions about commerce. This 
prophetic book comes the closest to acknowledging the urgency of 
making information technology a focus of managerial studies and 
practice. Failing to define for ourselves the role that information 
technologies will play in how we construct our agencies surrenders 
that role to forces beyond our agencies. This lesson alone makes this 
book an important read for public managers.

Moschella creates a four-epoch schematic to frame the IT industry 
evolution: systems-centric, 1964-1981; PC-centric, 1981-1994; 
network-centric, 1994-2005; and content-centric, 2005-2015. All but 
the last have emerged as a result of shifts in information 
hardware/software technology. For each of the first three epochs, 
Moschella provides a concise historical overview, underscoring the 
role that key industries have played in shaping that period of the 
information technology evolution. The key to understanding the last 
epoch is global economics and the exhaustion of dramatic technology 
innovations. Each of these waves builds slowly in general application 
of the technology, enjoys frenetic ascent to plateau, then declines as 
newer forms of technology emerge and gain acceptance in the workplace. 
Except for the main frame era, which is still with us although to be 
largely resolved with the 2000 crisis, these epochs enjoy but a 
decennial shelf life.

Most information management readers are comfortable with the history 
and players of the systems-centric, PC-centric, and network-centric 
epochs. Of the first, clearly IBM played the central role, a role 
which it surrendered through a monumental miscalculation of the 
emerging personal computer paradigm, that is a shift from corporate 
computing to individual computing. Two innovations made this possible: 
the integrated circuit and the software for the operating system. 
Among the software vendors, the battle was for standards. Moschella 
writes "the real change was the move away from a world where standards 
were set by vertically integrated systems vendors toward one where 
they were set by vendors who concentrated on particular parts of the 
industry value chain" (p. 17).

The vertically integrated systems vendors-such as Apple Computers-were 
in fact done in by the demand for standards. Software vendors such as 
Microsoft wielded the ax. The theoretical work of Michael Porter 
[1990] set the stage for global competition by recognizing that 
competition requires a unique approach to product development, skills, 
integrated industrial support, consumer demand setting high 
expectations, and rivalry among similarly posed companies. No less can 
be said for the public sector, including higher education.

The Microsoft story often bears repeating, but Moschella avoids the 
common temptation of the great man characterizations in the successful 
emergence of the information technologies. Instead, the emphasis 
throughout the book is to regard these emergences as the natural and 
logical sequence through which these stories must be told. The 
technological "waves" are borne on forces greater than personality. It 
is the story of standards. Through standards-horizontal 
integration-new commodities emerged. The dominant players in the 
second epoch are Microsoft (software), Intel (hardware), and Novell 
(networks). The wedding of Microsoft to Intel, generally referred to 
as Wintel, proved as short-lived as many marriages, and the marital 
battle in the network era became Novell-operating through a Unix 
environment and Windows NT.

To focus on the Goliaths misses the true innovation and revolution in 
service support: consulting, design, implementation, training and 
ancillary support services, system maintenance, organization 
operations, and outsourcing (p. 73). Each of the preceding generations 
of information technologies surrounds itself with a cadre of 
specializations geared entirely toward keeping that system functional. 
To bring forth the metaphor of the wave, no previous wave completely 
disintegrates before the next wave begins. It is this process of 
disintegration that has proven a financial windfall for a great many 
support services. Just as Microsoft and Intel enjoy a phenomenal 
market success, Moschella argues that they are but crescendos of the 
wave, gathering force, then dissipating as the new momentum engulfs 
it.

By 1994, the third wave emerged: a network-centric world. Obviously, 
the most common application of network-centric must be the role played 
by the Internet in providing communication passages for desktop PCs to 
the global community of shared information resources. A number of 
principles guide this epoch: a dramatic reduction in return of 
investment over cost of development; communications bandwidth, freed 
by changing Federal Communication Commission (FCC) control over the 
allocation of bandwidth to consumers; virtual communities; electronic 
commerce; and a convergence of industrial value chains across economic 
sectors (p. 100). If the desktop computer offered consumers only a 
neater way to type letters, it would have fallen quickly into the 
realm of appliance. It was the creation of local area networks and 
wide area networks that transformed this box into a powerhouse of 
connectivity, making possible the instantaneous freedom of electronic 
mail, shared computing between agencies and individuals, and the 
garnering of information from any location in the world.

The economics of computing have changed. Software and hardware costs, 
once the barrier to general access, have fallen so dramatically that 
the network's marginal value has likewise increased in value. The 
federal government's Advanced Research Projects Administration 
invested heavily in the design of network standards [Norberg and 
O'Neill, 1996]. By the 1980s, the public investment and government 
leadership had largely dissipated. The private sector produces the 
innovations, testing them through the whim of the market, driven by 
the voracious, and unpredicted, appetite of people and organizations 
for connectivity.

The network-centric wave consists of four major industries: computers, 
communications, consumer electronics, and content using graphics. Of 
the four, only communications continues to be heavily regulated in 
this country. Moschella argues that freeing it from regulation will in 
turn free the four to converge. Industry giants such as Microsoft will 
form alliances that contain all elements of these industries. When 
Microsoft joined forces with NBC, it was the convergence of computer 
hardware, television communication, the television itself, and the 
content of NBC. Web television through cable companies such as TCI 
with the software of Internet providers mixes dynamic and eclectic 
information resources with a specific broadcast content. The hurdle of 
bandwidth will diminish and along with it the separate market 
identifications. As the bandwidth problems resolve, so too will the 
role played by hardware/software vendors. The real winner in the 
network-centric wave will be the telecommunication companies. The real 
advances in networks will be in how we are connected. Proprietary 
ownership of a specific application or a specific central processor 
succumbs to the value of the network-centric environment. It is an 
environment in which content, and how that content presents itself to 
consumers, will dictate the fourth wave.

Moschella avoids the trap that many futurists face: having to witness 
firsthand the hubris of prognostication. He devotes a short discussion 
to the fourth wave. Moschella limits this discussion to the obvious. 
The world will continue to hardwire itself, and advances will surely 
be made in quality of content and speed of transmission. The bigger 
questions, and again Moschella avoids lengthy discussion of these 
difficult, seemingly intractable issues, are political. He reminds us 
of the role a government plays in defining content, regulating 
information use, and creating access to it. We run the risk of 
bifurcating our societies further in "have technology" and "have-not 
technology." After a short review of the largely exaggerated claims of 
Vice President Gore and Speaker Gingrich on the reformation besetting 
Americans for democratic and intellectual commerce, Moschella reminds 
us-as stolen for the introduction to this review-that the policy 
questions are the most difficult, and these questions frame the very 
existence of a content-centric fourth wave.

Moschella's account of the emergence and growth of the information 
technologies as a series of waves, or paradigms-a term he uses 
sparingly-serves two useful purposes: a concise review of the markets 
and industrial players defining each wave; and a cautionary tale on 
the limits of public policy to meaningfully address the concerns of a 
people undergoing radical social transformation. Clearly, the polemics 
of reinvention fall short of the long-term implications of a society 
socially fragmented, economically stratified, and divested of historic 
avenues for participating in the changes confronting it. The book is 
well written, well documented, and soundly argued from the perspective 
of technology innovations. The major shortcoming for public managers 
will be the brief treatment of government's role in managing the final 
transformation discussed. Believing that the world's cultures and 
economies will converge in the fourth wave seems simplistic at best, 
and naive. Indeed, one can fully expect that the hardest questions 
regarding content management have yet to be tested.

As public managers, clearly we should be alarmed. But we are not.

The Death of Distance

Recently, the third largest telephone company in America, Sprint, 
announced a bold initiative to link all communication media beneath 
the penumbra of a single networked system. Named Integrated On-Demand 
Network, this startling news seemed to fulfill much of what this book 
is about: the harnessing of all technologies into a seamless 
integrated network [Kujubu, 1998].

Of the authors reviewed here, Cairncross strays much deeper into the 
forecast of how information technologies, most notably communication 
technologies of which she considers the former a subset in the broader 
perspective, will evolve over the next few years. On the surface, the 
arguments compel us to consider, in the words of AT&T chairman Robert 
Allen, that "something startling, intriguing, and profound is afoot" 
(as quoted, p. 2). So it is, but, as with Moschella, we lack in these 
assessments the harder question of how the cultures and economies of 
the world will converge into a dynamic community of mutuality. 
Suffering then the polemic, readers should approach this book with the 
hopeful anticipation of a child on Christmas morn. You do not always 
get what you ask for.

The case begins with a review of the history of the television and the 
telephone, and the adoption rates for these technologies followed by 
their impact on macro economics, notably the dramatic decrease in the 
cost of use and the increase in services provided. In the future, 
Cairncross expects to see revenue structures for phone companies to 
mimic the subscription fee schedules such as those used for Internet 
access. Deregulation of the telephone companies, she suggests, will 
diminish the influence of the big companies and create investment 
opportunities for smaller service providers in a global market. 
Innovation will continue, especially for wireless communication, the 
fastest growing telephonic market segment, and the use of 
communication satellites to track commerce. The pressure placed on 
telephone providers to increase capacity has lead to an upsurge in the 
installation of second lines. Alternatively, had Cairncross known of 
it, Sprint's On-Demand system promises to solve the bandwidth problems 
associated with the Internet, especially with video transmissions, by 
rewiring America with fiber-optic lines. AT&T's pending merger with 
TCI provides a second alternative through coaxial cables and market 
dominance.

Cairncross correctly notes that the cost of installing fiber-optic 
lines to every home in America remains daunting. Fiber optics are wed 
to the Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN). The ISDN will 
continue to be the choice of the near future. The alternative copper 
wire technology of Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Lines, which can 
carry up to 100 times the volume of ISDN, is still too expensive to 
justify its use. With ISDN technology, developing countries have the 
advantage. Having no major telecommunications infrastructure, they can 
install fiber optics. Solving the connectivity problem, however, does 
not solve the content problem.

The challenge for television broadcasters will be to continue to 
develop content that people will watch, then to find ways of 
extracting revenue from viewers. For most of the world, programming is 
a U.S. export, a situation likely to change. Innovations in 
broadcasting services, such as Web Tv-allowing viewers to plug into 
the Internet as they watch-have received tremendous advance reviews, 
but the industry remains uncertain about how to capitalize on this 
feature given the subscription fee access that Americans now enjoy 
with unlimited usage. Cairncross expects us to remain passive viewers 
with little interest in a television that requires of us some form of 
interaction other than surfing channels.

The forecasts for Internet use exhibit the wild success of this 
information technology with an expectation that the growth will shift 
from astronomical to astounding (p.89). As noted by Tapscott, the 
attendant growth in support technologies will continue. Cairncross 
also believes that the basic "public property" premise of the Internet 
and its cross-computing platforms standards sets it apart from other 
forms of telecommunication. Open standards, a necessity of networked 
communications arising from the early days of Department of Defense 
research support, still vexes Internet content developers, especially 
in the area of video. The Internet costs less because of the 
subscription fee schedules Internet Server Providers (ISPs) charge 
consumers, and the fees charged to ISPs by telephone companies.

The Internet offers commercial services bound to grow: online banking, 
shopping, contracting for services, and investment. These are nicely 
discussed in the recent Tapscott collection. But there are problems. 
International communities will likely strongly react to the strong 
America flavor of Internet content. Further, if only roughly 20 
percent of the American population have easy access to Internet 
services, the vast majority of Americans will continue to rely on 
conventional routes for information gathering and consumption. Nor 
does this bode well for democratic discourse, despite the 
high-spirited political comment. The big winners now, and into the 
near future, will be commercial applications between business and 
governments, and those homogenous industrial countries with near 
100-percent connectivity.

The cultural aspects of a public information source challenge Congress 
and most international communities, where restrictions vary widely on 
access to content. In Sweden, for example, ownership of child 
pornography is sanctioned. In Israel, Orthodox Jews have their own 
Internet system that excludes materials considered to undermine the 
faith. In many Arab countries, a woman seen in a bikini violates 
custom and law. The failed effort in the United States to curb access 
to materials considered unsuitable for minors can only mimic efforts 
to control information around the world as the Internet is presently 
configured. How these public debates will embrace world differences is 
not approached in this text.

In the main, this is an excellent, well-researched, and well-written 
treatment of the communication industries for general readers. These 
readers will appreciate the analysis and straightforward language of 
the text. Readers attuned to the fluid nature of corporate 
communication alliances-the proposed merger of AT&T and TCI diffuses 
one argument in this text-will find the discussion largely 
superficial. The book lacks depth of appreciation for the dynamic 
nature of technological innovation and fails to anticipate major 
shifts in market strategy, most notably, the Sprint On-Demand Network 
which, if it materializes, will revolutionize telecommunications. In 
fact, rather than increased global competition, we can well expect to 
se fewer players on the significant fields. Nor will public managers 
find themselves better positioned to deal with the difficult questions 
of content, anticipating technology, or if concerned, furthering 
opportunities to deliver services to citizens and bringing citizens 
into the democratic fold.

Conclusion

This review examined five solutions to paring the impressive reading 
list of this field through five treatments of information technology 
that share much-namely, a common structure from which to diverge-while 
presenting a refined interpretation of that broad topic. Weill, 
Broadbent, and Tapscott argue for a management perspective that takes 
advantage of information technologies in a strategic environment. 
Their perspective argues for a total enterprise immersion into the 
benefits and shortcomings of these technologies, and a caution. 
Investment succeeds where the potential is understood and the 
workforce educated to its use. These texts offer generalists 
compelling managerial frames and set forth the rhetorical questions 
each organization must ask itself prior to the grand leap of faith 
into the promised land.

Moschella and Cairncross tell a different story. At first, we have a 
well-rehearsed tale of the emergence of information technologies, the 
former from the perspective of information technology industrial 
leaders and their convergences as the market narrows around them, and 
the latter from the perspective of global communications and how 
leadership in this arena spells a new kind of victory of western 
technological innovation. The more powerful subtext, and one which 
every organization must face, is this: Where will we be in the next 10 
years, and how will we define for ourselves the role that these 
technologies will play in shaping our historic missions and purposes? 
For public managers, no argument is more urgent.

The lack of depth in examining political and administrative issues 
undermines each of these texts, hence short-shifting the federal 
agencies engaged in developing communication standards-a work into 
which the Advanced Research Projects Administration (ARPA) still 
invests billions. Also missing in the balance are the struggles of the 
FCC: a fee-based structure through which the telephone companies can 
garner additional revenues from Internet users: citizen privacy; 
encryption; and a myriad of other pressing titles.

This review began with an identification of six issues worthy of 
public management consideration. To proceed from the general to the 
specific, public managers can benefit tremendously from a careful 
review and study of the wonderful resources available through our 
federal agencies, notably the General Accounting Office 
(http://www.gao.gov), the General Services Administration 
(http://www.gsa.gov), and the homepages of the Chief Information 
Officers Council (http://cio.gov). The references to this review 
identify a few of the more useful resources available.
[Reference]
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JOHN A. NICOLAY is Professor of Public Administration at Troy State 
University, Florida.