THE U.S.: FROM INTERNET TO INFOBAHN

One of the great ironies of the Information Age is how often Washington inadvertently steered straight on the road to the future. The foundation of the Information Superhighway, for instance, was laid not by high-tech visionaries but by cold warriors 30 years ago. Worried that a nuclear war would, among other things, paralyze communications, they concocted a computer network capable of reaching far-flung terminals even when many connections were severed. When the Pentagon built such a network in 1969, the surprise was how quickly it was subverted to another use: electronic mail. After that, Uncle Sam ruled lightly--and let the system grow. The result is today's Internet, a mass of interconnected networks. ``It's a perfect example of where government did it right,'' says computer networking pioneer David J. Farber of the University of Pennsylvania.

Now, Washington faces a far sterner test. The Clinton Administration and a wary alliance of computer, software, cable, and phone companies plan to create the ``national information infrastructure'' (NII), the network of tomorrow. Using phone lines, cable systems, and high-speed data networks, it would link CEOs and couch potatoes alike to one another and to vast amounts of services, entertainment, and information. Vice-President Al Gore, Clinton's techno-guru, has even proclaimed the Apollo project-like goal of wiring up all libraries, hospitals, and schools by decade's end--enabling, say, a kid in Detroit to browse through the Library of Congress or a rural doctor to consult faraway specialists. The crucial question: Can Uncle Sam pull this one off, too?

The pitfalls are immense. ``No one knows what the NII really means,'' says Columbia University telecommunications expert Eli M. Noam. The uncertainties range from the nitty-gritty technological underpinnings and shape of the superhighway to the services it will provide. If past is prologue, the predominant uses will differ considerably from those being hyped today--the 500 channels of entertainment, ``virtual vacations,'' and electronic newspapers. Who would have thought, for instance, that ``the most successful application of France's Minitel [videotex] system would be dating services?'' asks Eric A. Benhamou, CEO of 3Com Corp.

There will also be thorny public-policy decisions, such as ensuring that everyone has access to the networks and balancing the conflicting demands of privacy and law enforcement (table). In fact, Washington is struggling just to keep up with industry, which is forging and undoing mergers at a breathtaking pace. In five years, predicts Bell Atlantic Corp. President James G. Cullen, industry distinctions will blur and ``we'll just have a series of companies using a variety of technologies.''

If the feds fumble this unprecedented transition, the long-term consequences could be dire. Because a speedy Info Superhighway should boost productivity, create new markets, and be a model for the rest of the world, ``the country that can get this set up first will have a significant advantage in the international marketplace,'' says Suzanne Tichenor, vice-president of the industry-backed Council on Competitiveness.

So far, ``from my perspective, the government is doing a terrific job,'' says Stewart D. Personick, assistant vice-president for information networking research at Bell Communications Research Inc., an arm of the Baby Bells. The Administration gets high marks for making the NII a top priority. Meanwhile, the normally tortoiselike Congress is racing like a March hare to pass sweeping legislation by summer's end. ``This will be the biggest year in telecommunications in decades,'' predicts Representative Rick Boucher (D-Va.).

Making this progress possible is widespread agreement that the nation's 50-year-old telecommunications laws need revision--plus a fragile consensus on how to do it. The basic idea, spelled out in pending bills, is for Uncle Sam to break down many regulatory barriers that hamstring the industry. Thus, cable companies could compete in the phone business, while regional Bells might sell now-prohibited services, such as entertainment. But regulators won't disappear entirely. To ensure that digital highways don't bypass America's rural and poor byways, the bills say that all citizens must have access to ``essential'' services.

Underlying these general principles is a morass of contention, however. Take essential services. Does this mean fancy phone services and dozens of entertainment channels in every home? Or simply high-speed links for sending and receiving gobs of information? The pending legislation skirts the question, leaving it to regulators for later action. ``We have to figure out what `universal access' means,'' concedes Michael Nelson, senior adviser at the White House Office of Science & Technology Policy. ``I don't think it means 24 hours of access to 500 channels of mud wrestling.'' What's more, the government will have to tax providers to subsidize services for the poor. That prospect already worries executives such as Silicon Graphics Inc. CEO Edward R. McCracken: ``The open access issue is one tough nut,'' he concludes.

And that's just one pothole. Another set of questions is technological. Experts such as Michael Dertouzos, director of the computer science lab at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, worry that companies will build hub-and-spoke networks, delivering entertainment and services from a central point. That's a shadow of what he calls a ``true information infrastructure,'' an Internet-like system where anyone can send and receive information to and from anywhere.

The creation of such a complex beast will test Washington's leadership. It will require government and industry working together to develop technology and standards so that messages and services can flow seamlessly among hundreds of proprietary networks. Otherwise, says Erik Grimmelmann, marketing director for new business services at AT&T, ``there will be so many islands of disparate technology, people will stop investing and stop buying.''

Industry also wants Washington to blaze trails that the market alone wouldn't explore--such as hooking up medical specialists with rural clinics, or convening electronic classrooms. In fact, the Administration has ambitious plans to fund demonstration networks in fields such as education and health care. Washington had better stop talking and start doling out money soon, says Larry L. Smarr, director of the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois. The test beds will help answer crucial technological questions about how to package and route multimedia information, he explains. If the NII is built before the answers are in, huge chunks might rapidly become obsolete. ``The private sector is gearing up so fast that without help from the government, it could make some expensive mistakes,'' Smarr adds.

Imagine that the nation avoids all these mistakes, and that all back roads lead to the Info Superhighway. Digital nirvana? Not yet. Inevitably, experts say, sleaze and crime--pornography, gambling, scams--will flow down the gutters of the Infobahn. The potential for abuse will be enormously magnified by the amounts of data in the system. ``Everything we read, spend money on, or do will literally be a database,'' says Fred W. Weingarten, executive director of the Computer Research Assn. He adds: ``Many people believe that privacy will be the nightmare issue of the NII.''

In fact, the controversy has already begun. The Administration favors two initiatives that horrify privacy advocates. One tries to coax industry to use an encryption technology, the so-called Clipper chip, that lets government listen in on otherwise secure communications. The other is proposed legislation that would give federal agents and cops unprecedented authority to watch every move people make on-line. Not only are these schemes worrisome, they could prevent companies from putting on the superhighway new services that can't be engineered to permit access by law enforcers--things as seemingly innocent as personal phone numbers or call forwarding. This in turn ``could really hamstring the advancement of technology,'' says Stephen T. Walker, president of Trusted Information Systems Inc., a Glenwood (Md.) maker of computer security software.

The good news is that on all these issues, the White House is still listening. There are Administration task forces on everything from R&D policy and intellectual property to privacy and universal service. And for the first time in years, industry believes that government takes its views seriously. If the Clintonites can keep it up, maybe Uncle Sam will manage to do the right thing--on purpose this time.

JOHN CAREY

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