Evaluating New Telecommunications Services

788 Pages·1978·19.118 MB·English

by  Michael Tyler (auth.), Martin C. J. Elton, William A. Lucas, David W. Conrath (eds.)

EVAlUATING NEW
TElECOMMUNICATIONS
SERVICES
NATO CONFERENCE SERIES
I Ecology
11 Systems Science
111 Human Factors
IV Marine Sciences
V Air-Sea Interactions
VI Materials Science
11 SYSTEMS SCIENCE
Va/ume 1 Transportation Planning for a Better Environment
Edited by Peter Stringer and H. Wenzel
Va/ume 2 Arctic Systems
Edited by P. J. Amaria, A. A. Bruneau, and P. A. Lapp
Vo/ume 3 Environmental Assessment of Socioeconomic Systems
Edited by Dietrich F. Burkhardt and William H. Ittelson
Va/ume 4 Earth Observation Systems for Resource Management and Environmental Control
Edited by Donald J. Clough and Lawrence W. Morlev
Va/ume 5 Applied General Systems Research: Recent Developments
and Trends
Edited by George J. Klir
Va/ume 6 Evaluating New Telecommunications Services
Edited by Martin C.J. Elton, William A. Lucas,and
David W. Conrath
Va/ume 7 Manpower Planning and Organization Design
Edited by Donald T. Bryant and Richard J. Niehaus
EVAlUATING NEW
TElECOMMUNICATIONS
SERVICES
Edited by
Martin C. J. Elton
New York Universityand
Communications Studies and Planning
London, England
William A. lucas
Rand Corporation
Washington, D.C.
and
David W. Conrath
University of Water/oo
Ontario, Canada and
Institut d'Administration des Enterprises
Aix-en-Provence, France
Published in coordination with NATO Scientific Affairs Division
PLENUM PRESS· NEW YORK AND LONDON
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
NATO Telecommunications Symposium, University of Bergamo, 1977.
Evaluating new telecommunications services.
(NATO conference series: 11, Systems science; v. 6)
"Proceedings of the NATO Telecommunications Symposium held at the
University of Bergamo, Italy, September 1977, sponsored by the NATO
Special Program Panel on Systems Science."
Includes index.
1. Telecommunication-Social aspects-Congresses. I. Elton, M. C. J. 11. Lucas,
William A. 111. Conrath, D. W. IV. Nato Special Program Panel on Systems
Science. V. Title. VI. Series.
HE7631.N21977 384 78-4684
ISBN 978-1-4757-0177-7 ISBN 978-1-4757-0175-3 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-4757-0175-3
Proceedings of the NATO Telecommunications Symposium held at the University of
Bergamo, Italy, September 5-8, 1977, sponsored by the NATO Special Program
Panel on Systems Science
© 1978 Plenum Press, New York
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1 st edition 1978
A Division of Plenum Publishing Corporation
227 West 17th Street, New York, N. Y. 10011
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted,
in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming,
recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the Publisher
Preface
This book contains the proceedings of the first international
symposium devoted to research on the evaluation and planning of new
person-to-person telecommunication systems. It was sponsored by
NATO's Special Programme Panel on Systems Science and took place,
in September 1977, at the University of Bergamo in the north of
Italy.
Telecommunication systems which provide for communication be
tween people, rather than computers or other instruments, are of
two kinds. There are mass communication systems (broadcast radio
and television) and interpersonal systems (for example, the telephone
and Telex) which join together individuals or small groups. Here we
have included in the interpersonal category certain systems for re
trieving information from computers, essentially those systems in
which the role of the computer 1s primarily to act as a store and
to identify that information which best fits a user's request.
(This excludes management information systems in which the computer
performs important transformation functions.)
Distinctions between interpersonal and mass communication sys
tems, and between these two and da ta communication systems, are
increasingly breaking down for those who provide the services. (In
the U.K. broadcasters are piloting information retrieval services and
the British Post Office is competing with a more sophisticated sys
tem which could also be used for the exchange of messages. Elsewhere
computer da ta networks are increasingly employed for the exchange of
personal messages. And in the United States there are various ex
periments in the use of cable television systems for interpersonal
communication.) Nevertheless, the distinctions remain meaningful in
terms of the different uses to which the systems are put. And it is
a common characteristic of all current research in our field that it
is explicitly concerned with use.
In the laboratory and in the field there are a variety of new
telecommunication services. They range from simple extensions to
the basic capability of the telephone - allowing it to serve more
v
vi PREFACE
than two locations and more than one person per location - to picture
telephones and two-way color television systems using satellites or
lasers to connect health-care establishments.
They are seen as making possible new solutions to problems of
major social concern. Applications of the technology, which are
addressed in this volume, include: reducing the burden of business
travel; dispersal of office work from city centers to the suburbs,
smaller towns, rural areas, and "neighborhood work centers"; provi
sion of health care, personal social services, and educational op
portunities to those who are relatively underserved by reason of
physical handicap or geographical location; public participation in
local government; and improved coordination between the parts of
large organizations.
While promising help in alleviating some problems, the new
technology threatens to exacerbate others. There is, for example,
concern about the dangers of dehumanization, invasion of privacy,
and information overload. There is the risk of unintended side
effects: maybe the reinforcement of undesirable trends in the
balance between centralization and decentralization, or the possibi
lity of increasing energy consumption by encouraging more dispersed
working and living patterns. Then there are the perplexing problems
of regulation and the development of policy at national and inter
national levels. These grow ever more complicated as the computer
industry increasingly penetrates the telecommunications industry,
and as these two penetrate the economically fragile postal services.
Nor is it easy to predict whether, in a particular context,
people will actually use some new telecommunication service.
Confravision, a European public studio videoconferencing service,
has fallen far short of its market targets; picture telephones have
not lived up to their early expectations; and many early uses of
telecommunications for the delivery of health care have been disap
pointing.
Considering all this it is scarcely surpr1s1ng that, once start
ed, research on the use and usefulness of new interpersonal tele
communications systems has grown rapidly. It is, however, somewhat
surprising that (outside the military arena) it came into being only
about seven years ago. One might have expected that at an earlier
stage it would have provided a modest complement to the enormous
efforts of technological development which have made the new systems
possible.
Today's worldwide telephone system is a remarkable triumph of
systems engineering. The systems science research which new tele
communication services require is not, however, a simple extension
of that which guided the development of the telephone system. Un
certainties regarding individual and organizational users are far
PREFACE
vii
harder to treat. No longer can one consider only service time char
acteristics (how long calls last), or the ergonomic design of the
telephone instrument, or the necessary acoustical standards, accord
ing to the problem at hand. And the concept of marketing has become
relevant, as it used not to be, for the provision of telephone
service by statutorily protected monopolies.
There are the communication problems one would expect of a young
and fast growing area of interdisciplinary endeavor. How best can
new entrants, especially from countries not previously involved,
make connections to past research and to practitioners with like
concerns? What are the methods for weeding out the false starts
encouraged by demands for "quick fixes"? Where are the forums for
the exchange of ideas and the challenge of one's peers? Are research
conclusions reaching and being understood by those they are intended
to influence? Do the latter consider researchers to be in touch
with reality?
The symposium was designed to address such problems: to enable
researchers, together with some business managers and administrators,
to learn from one another. To judge from a questionnaire survey
of participants it certainly succeeded.
In soliciting and selecting papers we encouraged authors to
present research on which comment would still be useful to them; many
of the papers describe work in progress. We also encouraged contri
butions which would be helpful to newcomers to the field; several
of the papers contain useful reviews. We did not restrict ourselves
to papers which portrayed systems scientists' wares, but included
thoughtful discussions of aspects of the environments in which they
must operate. We emphasized the need for papers to communicate suc
cessfully across cultural and disciplinary frontiers; most of the
authors met this challenge without, we believe, trivializing their
work.
Certainly we were demanding in our relations with the authors:
with few exceptions, the editors insisted that papers be produced
for circulation before the meeting, rigidly enforced limitations
on their length, and in some cases required them twice to be totally
rewritten. We are most grateful for the long suffering goodwill
shown by the authors. Two, it may be noted, swallowing their own
medicine, presented and discussed papers from their offices in North
America, using a decidedly ad hoc audioconferencing system.
For presentation here papers are grouped into eight sections.
The first of these provides some introductory overviews. Next come
two sections which deal with the delivery of health care, education
and community services. The fourth section comprises contributions
from the field of scientific and technical information (STI). This
is followed by a group of papers concerned with teleconferencing and
viii PREFACE
computer conferencing services; some report upon trials of new
services and others look more deeply into communication processes
at the level of individuals and of organizations.
While almost all the papers deal with new services, four ap
proach particular services in such a way that they do not fall
naturally into any of the preceding sections. They provide the
sixth section, entitled New Services. Three of the papers in the
seventh section view developments in the field of telecommunications
from different perspectives regarding society's use of information
technology. The fourth paper in this section considers developments
in the field of electronic funds transfer (EFT). Finally comes a
group of papers concerned with aspects of planning and design. The
last of these is concerned with planning one aspect of a field trial;
the others address much more wide-ranging concerns.
To guide the reader through the book each section is intro
duced by a short summary of the papers it contains. Some changes
have been made in the way papers were ordered and grouped at the
symposium so as to make for easier reading here. The changes have
been made in such a way that it remains meaningful to conclude the
sections below with a summary of points raised in the corresponding
discussion sessions at the symposium. For the final session of the
symposium four participants were invited to relate points raised
during the meeting to the twin themes of policy development and
methodology which ran through all the sessions. The book concludes
with edited transcripts of their observations.
An international conference in an emerging field is at best a
complex undertaking, and contributions are made in a variety of
forms. Without the generous support of NATO's Special Programme
Panel on Systems Science these proceedings would not exist. And
without the further support of the U.S. National Science Foundation
there would have been a substantially less weighty contribution
from the U.S.A. In addition to the editors, the organizing commit
tee for the symposium included Michael Tyler and Dieter Kimbel.
Others assisted the committee in the review of papers.
The book represents the work of around sixty authors, as weIl
as the efforts of the discussion leaders and of the two rapporteurs,
Barbara Lucas and Hilary Thomas. We have also made use of cartoon
drawings of some of the participants by P.G. Holmlöv.
It is a pleasure to acknowledge all these contributors.
Contents
SECTION 1
Overview of Research Issues • • • 1
User Research and Demand Research: What's the Use? 3
Michael Tyler
Technology and Structures - Man and Machine • • • • • • • •• 25
Robert J. Chapuis
The Role of Telecommunications Policy Analysis
in Service Planning • 43
Lawrence H. Day
Communications Policy - The Need for Research • • • • • • •• 61
J. B. Cowie
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Discussion 73
SECTION 2
Public Services: The Delivery of Health Care 77
The "Patient Trajectory": A Modeling Tool for
Planning and Eva1uating Rural Te1emedicine Systems 79
Maxine L. Rockoff and Arthur M. Bennett
Telehealth Care in Canada • 107
Anna Casey-Stahmer
A Methodo1ogy for Design of Advanced Techno1ogy-based
HealthHCare Systems in Developing Countries • • • • • • • •• 125
Unver Cinar
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Discussion 139
ix
x CONTENTS
SECTION 3
Pub1ic Services: Education and Community 141
Educationa1 Experiments with the Communications
Techno10gy Sate11ite: A Memo from Eva1uators
to P1anners • • • • • • 143
J. S. Danie1, M. L. Cote, and M. Richmond
Evaluations of Interactive Te1e-education in the
Pub1ic Service Commission • • • • • • • • 159
Nicole Mendenha1l and Rene Lortie
Open Choice - New Communication Systems and
App1ications at the British Open University 173
Peter Zorkoczy
Serial Experimentation for the Management
and Evaluation of Communications Systems ••••••• • •• 181
Wi11iam A. Lucas and Suzanne S. Quick
The Development of Two-way Cab1e Television:
App1ications for the Community • • • • • • • 199
Mitchell L. Moss
Beyond Statistics 215
Red Burns
Discussion 227
SECTION 4
Information Services • 229
The Impact of Telecommunications Technologies on
Informal Communication in Science and Engineering -
Research Needs and Opportunities 231
C. Ganz and J. D. Goldhar
Scientific Communication and Know1edge Representation 249
Gerhard Rahmstorf and David Penniman
Communications Aspects of Euronet 269
Car1 O. Vernimb and Garth W. P. Davies
Problems in Forecasting the Price and Demand for
On-Line Information Services 285
A. D. J. Flowerdew, J. J. Thomas and
C. M. E. Whitehead