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Revisiting Negroponte

Being Digital

By Nicholas Negroponte

Publishers: Coronet Books

Price: Rs 235.

I KNOW that the book under review, Nicholas Negroponte's Being Digital, was published in 1995 and that, in the context of the blinding rapidity with which developments take place at the cutting edge of information technology, it might as well have been p ublished in the Stone Age.

But I thought this would be a good time for some of us in India to look at some of the projections that Negroponte had made in this much celebrated book for a variety of reasons, some of them distinctly sensible and the others faintly risible.

For one, judging by the recent trends on our bourses, a good many of us seem to be in a blue funk about the future of information technology. We are terrified much for the same reasons that we were delirious about it just a short while ago : Because we d on't have the foggiest about what is really going on in this sector of contemporary technology.

For another, there's nothing quite so amusing as going back to a book several years after it came out because, with time, the author's more clangorous clangers stand out in stark relief. In other words, we get to judge whether the publishers (in this cas e, Cornet Books) were right in classifying it as non-fiction/current affairs.

And then again, I'm sick and tired of people who've done a course in elementary programming - very, very elementary programming, I might add - sounding off about information technology and the direction in which it is heading. Finally, I'm pretty much s ure that most lay people in India who would like to know what information technology is going to do for them still haven't read the book ... and if this review nudges them into picking it up, it would have served its purpose.

At the outset, let me state that Negroponte's book survives the test of time. Which is not very surprising, considering that the man is the director of the Media Laboratory of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), a founder of and writer for W ired magazine and a multimedia guru with a vast, global following. You don't get to be all that on the basis of a piece of paper issued by some hole-in-the-wall enterprise which insists that you know Java.

Being Digital is divided by the author into three parts. Let's take them in the sequence that they're written.

In the first part, tagged `Bits are Bits,' Negroponte literally blows the atom to, well, bits. He writes: ``The best way to appreciate the merits and consequences of being digital is to reflect on the differences between bits and atoms. While we are un doubtedly in an information age, most information is delivered to us in the form of atoms: newspapers, magazines, and books. Our economy may be moving toward an information economy, but we measure trade and we write our balance sheets with atoms in mind. GATT is about atoms.''

I'd like to make a point here. Most writers on information technology lead one to believe (although they may not say so explicitly) that, in a few years, bits as against atoms will dominate our lives. I personally don't think so. I mean, I'd hate to eat a chicken tandoori made out of bits. Nothing, I say, like a few atoms to make chicken tandoori taste good. And then again, much as I would like to see Pamela Andersen dressed exclusively in bits, I don't think that's going to happen. I think she'll have a few atoms on, at least when she appears in public.

Negroponte, I'm happy to note, doesn't make this mistake. He's very clear about one thing: ``The core business(es) won't change and your product(s) won't have bits standing in for atoms.''

I think the reader should pay attention to the chapter titled `Debunking Bandwidth.' After defining bandwidth as the capacity to move information down a given channel, he points out that most people think of it by likening it to the diameter of a pipe or to the number of lanes on a highway.

``These similes omit some of the more subtle and important differences among transmission media (copper, fiber, air waves).'' Negroponte then moves into an explanation of the `Negroponte Switch' which is worth quoting at some length: ``As soon as we use the ether for higher-power telecommunications and broadcast, however, we have to be very careful that signals do not interfere with each other. We must be willing to live in predetermined parts of the spectrum, and we cannot use the ether piggishly. We must use it as efficiently as possible. Unlike fiber, we cannot manufacture any more of it. Nature did that once.''

``There are many ways to be efficient, like reusing parts of the spectrum by making a grid of transmission cells that allows people to use the same frequencies a few quadrants over or like moving into parts of the spectrum that were previously avoided (i f only because those frequencies can fry innocent birds). But even with all the tricks and efficiencies, the bandwidth available in the ether is scarce by comparison with that provided by fiber and our endless ability to manufacture and lay more and more of it. For this reason, I proposed a trading of places between the wired and wireless information of today.''

``When Senator Bob Kerrey of Nebraska was campaigning for president, he spent a couple of hours at the Media Lab. When I met him, the first thing he said was, `The Negroponte Switch.' The idea, which I first discussed and illustrated in a Northern Teleco m meeting at which George Gilder and I were speakers, simply says that the information currently coming through the ground (read, wires) will come in the future through the ether, and the reverse. Namely, what is in the air will go into the ground and what is in the ground will go into the air. I called it `trading place.' Gilder called it the Negroponte Switch. The name stuck.''

I hope the above gives you some sort of an insight into the future of wireless applications and the devices that they'll run.

Talking of insights, Negroponte offers them by the tonne: Into differential pricing of bits, network architecture, the packaging of bits, bitcasting, the television as a computer and so on. And he offers them in easily comprehensible packets, what else? Very, very compressed - but you don't need to go on and on if you know what you're talking about.

The technophobes among you who just aren't interested in bits and bytes and what have you would do well to move on to the section titled `Interface' as soon as possible. This section tells you why, at present, it's so hard being digital: ``The burden of interaction (between a human being and a computer) has been placed totally on the shoulders of the human party. Something as banal as printing a computer file can be a debilitating exercise that resembles voodoo more than respectable human behaviour. As a result, many adults are turned off and claim to be hopelessly computer illiterate. This will change.''

According to Negroponte, a good interface should exhibit intelligence to such a degree that the physical interface will go away. ``Therein lies the secret to interface design: make it go away. When you meet somebody for the first time, you may be very c onscious of their looks, speech, and gestures. But quickly the content of your communication dominates, even if it is largely expressed through tone of voice or the language of facial expression. A good computer interface should behave similarly. The pr oblem is less like designing a dashboard and more like designing a human.''

``Most interface designers, on the other hand, have been stubbornly trying to make dumb machines easier to use by smart people. They have taken their lead from the field called `human factors' in the United States and `ergonomics' in Europe, which is abo ut how the human body uses its sensors and effectors to work with tools in its immediate surroundings.''

``A telephone handset is probably the most redesigned and overdesigned appliance on earth, yet remains utterly unsatisfactory. Cellular telephones make VCRs pale with their unusable interface. A Bang & Olufsen telephone is sculpture, not telephony, hardi er not easier to use than an old black rotary telephone."

``Worse, telephone designs have been `featured' to death. Number storing, redialing, credit card management, call waiting, call forwarding, autoanswering, number screening, and on and on are constantly being squeezed onto the real estate of a thin appl iance that fits in the palm of your hand, making it virtually impossible to use.''

Not only do I not want all those features, I don't want to dial the telephone at all. Why can't telephone designers understand that none of us want to dial a telephone? We want to reach people on the telephone!''

All in all, bad news for people who revel in the black art involved in getting a microprocessor-based device to do whatever it is you want it to do. Like make your breakfast toast for you.

In third section of his book, titled `Digital Life,' Negroponte moves on from his premise that we've been so preoccupied in observing and analysing our transition from an industrial age to a post-industrial or information age that we've not noticed the o n-set of the post-information age to explore concepts like place without space, being asynchronous and anything-anytime-anywhere TV -- concepts that may have been blue sky in 1995 but have been transformed into reality since then.

The book ends on an up-beat: ``But more than anything, my optimism comes from the empowering nature of being digital. The access, the mobility, and the ability to effect change are what will make the future so different from the present.''

Buy this book. Read it. Understand what Negroponte is trying to say. And stop sneering knowingly at your fellow creatures who've taken a bath in the market each time a talking head on TV says that the capital market index has shed a few more points beca use of a melt-down in tech stocks.

The future is much more than the sum of your wretched portfolio.

Pratap Ravindran