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20  Innovation Throws Us
    The Washington Post, Sunday, December 4, 1966

     Communications engineering is the most sophisticated of the
domains where scientific knowledge is translated into human benefit.
The mass-produced home television receiver is as complex as the most
abstruse laboratory instrument.  No physical phenomenon has been
overlooked in laboratory experimentation for the development of
improved techniques of message transmission.  The discrepancies
between promise and reality evoke the most impatience precisely
because the fundamental opportunities are so immense.

     Compare, for example, the ever-improving elegance, comfort
and economy of jet aircraft with the expense and personal discomfort
of long distance audio communication.

     To be sure, making a long distance phone call with only the
shortest delay is still so impressive that this criticism may seem
ungracious.  However, the inadequacies of existing voice transmission,
and absence of private video, so strain intricate communication
(who has not been impelled to shout while using the phone?) that
people prefer the indignities of shipping their bodies for thousands
of miles to transact business of any real complexity.

     In mitigation, no industry is more liable to premature
technological obsolescence, so it must move cautiously.  Capital
investments in long lines of copper wire are hard to amortize in
the face of competition from communication satellites, and these
in turn stand considerable risk of being left high and dry with
the perfection of laser techniques.

     The entanglements are bound to spread into many subsidiary lines
of decision on social policy.  With great pain, we may learn how to
cope with single innovations, but we are surely a long way from
dealing effectively with the cumulative process of innovation and
displacement.  

     In communications, where capital investment in a national system
looms so large, we are therefore bound to see a much less flexible
response than in aircraft, where operating expenses dominate.  It
might be possible, however, to disengage some elements of the
communications industry, such as bulk transmission for large users,
which might be most responsive to progress through competition, just
as aircraft outdo the ground part of the air transport system.

     This issue underlies the current debate about the authorization
of domestic satellite facilities, either as part of COMSAT's franchise
or as a separate system.  Public interest in these issues has been
sharpened by imaginative proposals from McGeorge Bundy of the Ford
Foundation for a Broadcasters' Non-Profit Satellite (BNS) system.

     Briefly, BNS would gain a monopoly to service commercial network
TV.  Its earnings would support educational TV over additional
channels of the same system.  Commercial broadcasters might bid to set
up their own homeowned system at rates based on costs.  The Federally
authorized monopoly would amount to a tax equivalent of the difference
between BNS costs and its rates, which would be left at current land-
line standards.

     Bundy argues, and the networks acquiesce, that the subsidy is
only a small return on the previous national investment in satellite
development.  Recognizing the political appeal of such a tax, COMSAT
has rebutted with a tentative proposal that it retain the rights to
all domestic service, but levy a contribution for educational purposes
from all users of advanced systems.

     Many academics might be gleeful at the idea of a special tax on
TV entertainment, which, based on mass advertising, tends to reduce
information to the lowest common denominator.  But is earmarking
fundamentally a sound principle for the rational dispensation of
priorities?

     My delight might be short lived were I able to arrange to
support research in genetics with a tax on horse racing.  Still,
direct channels of support might be a good idea if BNS were thereby
insulated from political pressure, but would it be so long as its
lifeblood was a Federal monopoly?

     Support for education might better be tied to the technical
rather than the fiscal side of satellite transmissions.  Basic
research and education could be given the benefit of a differential
rate structure, on any system.

     The rates should be calculated to meet the incremental costs
of these special services, rather than being prorated over the
existing structure.  Wherever such rate arrangements on new
technology tended to facilitate more research and education,
industry should be sympathetic.  For example, enlightened computer
manufacturers voluntarily offer educational discounts on their
equipment, and might be inhibited as much by anti-trust problems
as by conflicts of their commercial philanthropic motivations.

     The whole concept of educational TV also needs a critical
examination that should go deeper than the immediate enthusiasms.
The Ford Foundation's proposal remarks that "The greatest assets of
television are liveness and immediacy.  Much of the vitality has
been drained out of television with the increasing use of tape".

     This may be true for the coverage of news events.  But as
an educator, I would be alarmed at the condemnation of libraries
on the same principle.  More attention should be paid to complementary
technologies of videotape storage and easier dissemination, playback
and critical review.

     Immediacy is not that important and may even be detrimental for
more serious educational communication.  To this, there are special
exceptions, unfortunately not even mentioned in the Ford Foundation
proposal, such as wide band-width transmissions for technical
conversation, library interchanges and especially the
intercommunication of computers.

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