*********************************************************************
*
*    Speedbumps and Roadkill on the Information Superhighway
*
*    Presented at SHARE-83, Boston, 11 August 1994 
*
*    by Rich Olcott, Schering-Plough Corp [74150,1620@compuserve.com]
*
*********************************************************************

[Introductory material, relating to the organization and why the talk 
was prepared, deleted to save of space.  Also, the transparency texts
have been translated to straight ASCII bracketed by asterisks.

This project benefitted from discussions in several CompuServe fora.  
The following people contributed ideas, and I thank them:

  CONSULT Forum: Lance Rose

  MENSA Forum:  Michael Auborn, Mike Steiner, Johnny Ulin, Russel 
Cawthorne, Barbara Ploegstra

  OS2USER Forum: Juanita Moshier

  PRSIG Forum:  Tim Hurson, Gordon Housworth, Bill Lutholz, George 
Berman, Peter Lloyd, Greg Fraley, John Baker]

When I was assigned to do this talk on the Information Superhighway, my 
first thought was of Dick Cavett's remark that the Infoway "sounds like 
something that's long, boring, and kills 50,000 people a year."  But 
I've been doing Net things for a few years now, and I've found it can be 
fun as well as profitable.  Furthermore, I write comedy in addition to 
all that technical material, and doing this pitch would give me a chance 
to use some pieces that just wouldn't work before most audiences.  On 
the other hand, comedy club performers usually have the benefit of the 
audience's two-drink minimum.

I'll start with a quotation:

*********************************************************************
*
*         History does not repeat itself, but it rhymes.  - Mark Twain
*
*********************************************************************

A lot of people, for instance, have been claiming that there's a "rhyme" 
between mainframe computers and the now-departed dinosaurs.  They 
suggest that mainframes will soon be extinct, because the dinosaurs are.  
However, these people miss a lesson to be learned from dinosaur anatomy.

If you or a related small child are into dinosaurs, you're already aware 
that saurian nervous systems were significantly different from ours.  We 
work with a single bulge in the spinal cord, in the head, holding just 
over a quart of nervous tissue.  Dinosaurs had not one but three bulges 
in the spinal column, each about the size of a walnut.  One bulge was in 
the head, another between the shoulders, and a third over the hips.  
Presumably, the "extra" two were responsible for controlling the 
movement of legs and tail.  My point, of course, is that it was the 
*dinosaurs* that used distributed processing.

Back to the Infoway.  Years ago, Al Gore (then Senator from my state of 
Tennessee) recognized that transportation of information had some 
parallels with transportation of people and goods.

*********************************************************************
*
*                             Highway Rhymery
*
*         People and Goods                              Information
*
*         Footpower                                    Voice
*         Horse                                        Writing
*         Wagon                                        Printing press
*         Train                                        Personal computer
*         Truck                                        The Net
*
*********************************************************************

In prehistoric times, people were limited to going only where they could 
go on foot, moving only what they could carry, and learning only what 
they could experience by direct communication.  When the horse was 
domesticated a few thousand years ago, it changed humanity's world.  
Pre-horse, most people never traveled more than 15 miles from where they 
were born.  Post-horse, hordes from the steppes of central Asia could 
make war all the way to the plains of Poland and beyond.  The invention 
of writing also changed humanity's world.  A physical representation of 
a message makes it possible to communicate directly with someone 
hundreds of miles or years away: we still read the thoughts of Plato and 
Confucius 2.5 millennia after they lived..

Hitching a wagon behind a beast of burden multiplied what one person 
could carry, and that innovation made it possible for a skilled 
craftsman to work where the raw materials were while another person 
carried her finished goods to a market far away.  You can trace the 
factory system back to the invention of the wagon.  We've all heard 
about the impact of the printing press, which gave rise to the 
advertising industry.  

Trains are enhanced wagons, except that they are limited to transport by 
fixed routes.  If you want your goods to ship by rail, you must build 
your factory next to a rail line.  A PC is an enhanced printing press 
for data, except you're limited to data transport by way of a physical 
medium.  If you want to pass a file or report to someone else, you have 
to put it on something like a piece of paper or a diskette.

The Interstate highway system was built in the late '50's and '60's to 
replace a network of two-lane highways with 4-, 6- and 8-lane limited 
access superhighways.  It's no accident that a single time period saw 
both the decline of the railroad and the rise of the trucking industry.  
What the new road system did was remove the old fixed routing 
constraint.  You can plunk your factory down anywhere, because a truck 
can get to you by using the entire paved hierarchy of streets, roads, 
and superhighways.  Same thing with the Net: it removes the requirement 
that you transfer information by way of a physical medium.  You can 
assemble a document from pieces originating in Prague, Pittsburgh, and 
Pomona without ever leaving your office in Peoria.

Gore's vision started with the rise of digital processing and the 
positive impact of the interstate system on the US economy.  The 
potential synergy prompted him to advocate a Federally-supported 
research effort find out how to do for information what the interstates 
did for people and goods.  But of course, the metaphor needn't stop with 
the structures....

The physical highway system also serves hitchhikers.  Remember the Beat 
Generation, Jack Kerouac and his "Dharma Bum" romantic view of the open 
road?  It's no coincidence that he wrote in the '60's when construction 
of the interstate system was opening up our view of just how liberating 
travel could be.  What do we have on the Infoway?  William Gibson's 
"cyberpunk" mythos. 

Submitted for your inspection a character somewhere between James Dean, 
Billy Idol, and Erkel.  While you're at it, imagine that I'm tall and 
craggy-faced with great hair (what the hell).  Running down my left ear 
is a series of rings and studs that spell, in binary, the mystic number 
42.  Around my forehead is a hachimaki, a white cloth band with black 
markings surrounding a red circle.  Look closer: those markings aren't 
kanji -- they're barcodes.  That red circle isn't on the cloth -- it's a 
data socket embedded in my skull...

     Say your disk's gone flat?
     Well, how 'bout that.
     Now, babies, don't you panic.
     By the light of the screen
     You'll be in a different scene
     When I've made me your data mechanic!

     You think you got secrets?  You ain't met me yet.
     I'm on a roll. You've lost control 
     And there ain't no RESET.
     Ethics ain't my style; nasty makes me smile:
     You're in a jam 'cause I've got a plan
     For your personal keyset.
     Might as well resign, dear,
     Your system's mine, that's clear,
     My attack does not hold back
     It'll feel like a cardiac hack, Jack,

     'Cause I'm a Cracker!
     Ain't no mush-mouthed, lily-livered hacker.
     I can mess your metal mind an' that's a fact, son!
     Check this action:

     When I feel a rejection
     I go into dejection,
     So I take a selection
     From my collection,
     Make a connection
     And zap!  You've got a digital infection
     That defies detection
     Or correction.
     Virus inspection
     Ain't no protection
     And your objection
     Will give direction
     To my --- satisfection
     
     'Cause I'm a Cracker!
     I got lots of tricks in my pack here.
     Ain't no food in the freezer?
     No problem, man - I can download pizza.
     Can't touch this, eithah - cause it's a virtual pizza!
     
     You run System-7?
     You're dead and you ain't near Heaven!
     You run DOS?  You're lost, hoss!
     You run Windows?  You'll hear the wind blow!
     You run NT?  Your future's empty!
     You run OS/2?  There'll be no rescue!
     OS/400?  Your days are numbered!
     You run Mac?  Jump back, Jack!
     You run Pick?  You gonna be sick, quick.
     You run VAXen? You'll pay my taxen.
     You run Unix?  You and a bunch of lunatics!
     You run Mumps?  You're a chump, lump.
     You run VM?  You ain't even gonna see 'im.
     You run MVS? ---      Hey, I'm a Cracker!
     
***********************************************************************
*
*                             Vehicle Rhymery
*
*         People and Goods                              Information
*
*         Ignition switch, key                          Logon, password
*         Steering wheel                                Mouse
*         Brakes                                        <break>
*         Autopilot                                     trn, WinCIM, GCP
*         Rich Corinthian leather                       Multi-media
*         Turn signals                                  Standards???
*
***********************************************************************

Let's look at some "rhymes" between the vehicles  that carry you on 
asphalt and the ones that get you on the Net.  You get in your car and 
start it with the ignition switch, which you can't turn unless you have 
the right key.  You connect to the Net with a logon procedure, which you 
can't complete properly unless you have the right password.  Your car 
has a steering wheel so you can tell it what to do next; your PC has a 
mouse (or trackball, which my wife calls a "trackrat" because it's 
mouselike but has a fatter tail than the mouse does.)  I wonder if 
there's a special meaning behind the fact that "brake" and "<break>" 
show up together on this list.

Some vehicles have an auto-pilot which robotizes the navigation process. 
("Tell me what to accomplish, not how to do it.")  On the net, we have 
robotized communications software like Unix newsreaders (trn) and 
Compuserve navigator packages (WinCIM for Windoze, GCP for OS/2).  Some 
people like luxury items in their cars; some people add luxury items to 
their PCs (although what constitutes a luxury changes with the economics 
of the industry.  The people at my shop who drove BMWs are the ones with 
multimedia now, but there's rumor of MM-equipped PC systems at less than 
$1000 this fall.  Stay tuned...)  

The phrase "turn signals" represents all the techniques we have for 
cooperating with other drivers to keep things moving along.  We're 
supposed to tell them what we're about to do so they can avoid colliding 
with us, and of course there are all those traffic control devices like 
stoplights and lane markers.  The Infoway has sort of a parallel.  It's 
called "Standards."  The Net must love standards: it has so many of 
them.  However, all the Net's standards are like stoplights - they're 
about how the driver relates to the street, not to other drivers. 

Is that a problem?  Look ahead, maybe a year or so, to people using 
hypertext-driven software to pull down multiple full-motion video/sound 
items while the rest of us are try to get a byte in edgewise.  I could 
be blocking a thousand users and neither know nor care, nor could any of 
them find out who I am or do anything to avoid me.  Will we want passing 
lanes and a way to flick our lights at oncoming users?  You bet, when it 
becomes possible to download an audio file like this:

Welcome to CyberTheatre, a project of the MIT Artificial 
Intelligence Laboratory.  We use AI techniques to explore what 
happens when you really mix media.  Last week, we did "Barney Meets 
Willie Loman on The Planet of the Apes."  Awesome chaos, truly.  
This week, our experiment places Shakespear's  Hamlet in front of a 
suburban bathroom mirror.  The time is early morning.  Hamlet 
speaks:  

     "To shave or not to shave, that is the question.  Whether 'tis 
     easier to suffer the itch and prickle of ten thousand thistles, or 
     take arms against a sea of troubles and, by severance, end them.  
     To cut, to stroke no more, but by that cut we put an end to the 
     thousand shocks that hair gives to flesh.  'Tis a condemnation 
     devoutly to be wished.
     
     "To shave, to scrape. To scrape, perchance to scream.  Ay, there's 
     the rub, for from that scrape what screams may come e're we have 
     scissored off these mortal curls.
     
     But hold.  If "shave" it is, then may it be, "be shaved"?  No, who 
     could barbers bear: to grunt and sweat 'neath that barb'rous hand.  
     And agonize o'er what may go - a slice, perhaps, off one's fav'rite 
     ear.  Nay, rather would I wear the honest beard than fly to barbers 
     I know not of.
     
     "Thus doth ... discretion ... make gorillas of us all.  And thus 
     will the native softness of my cheek stay cover'd o'er with this 
     rough thatch I leak.  Ah, fair Ophelia, on thy velvet skin be all 
     my chins remember'd.
     
Cyberspace is a different universe, and I didn't understand how 
different until I started thinking about the next topic.  I can give you 
examples of universes that are just a little bit different.  Suppose you 
were at a crime scene and one of the detectives said,

     We're not sure, Lieutenant.  It's either a poor lemon pudding or a 
     very bad Hollandaise.  I've sent a sample to forensics for a 
     determination.

Suppose your radio alarm came on in the morning and you heard:

     Now here's the gravity report for Boston and the Bay area.  Gravity 
     will be intense this morning, easing off later in the day.  
     There'll be scattered patches of heaviness mid-afternoon, so watch 
     your step.
     
You might blink a couple of times on hearing that.  Now think about 
Infoway traffic control:

***********************************************************************
*
*                             Traffic Control Rhymery
*
*         People and Goods                              Information
*
*         Rush hour                                     Peak hour
*         Traffic reports                               ----
*         Traffic cops                                  ----
*         Speed limits                                  ----
*         Speed                                         ----
*         Distance                                      ----
*
***********************************************************************

OK, rush hour is early in the morning whereas peak hour is mid-morning, 
but there the parallel stops.  (And why do they call it "rush hour" when 
you spend much of it going very slowly?)  Nobody gives you traffic 
reports on the Net - you just get timed out.  Nobody but Cliff Stoll 
chases down law breakers - which is OK because the Net's an anarchy so 
there aren't any laws to break.  But there's a much deeper reason there 
are no speed limits in cyberspace.  There's no such thing as speed, 
because "speed" is "distance per time" and "distance" is not a defined 
concept in cyberspace.

***********************************************************************
*
*                             Distance in CyberSpace
*
*         How many miles between you and a particular node?
*         How many hops between you and a particular node?
*         How many miles did the message travel?
*         How far away is a message that was assembled from distributed
*                   sources?
*         How hard is it to find the node you want?
*
***********************************************************************

In asphalt space, we often use "distance" to get a feel for how long it 
takes to get somewhere.  Cairo, Egypt is further away than Cairo, 
Illinois, and it's more time and more hassle to get to Egypt than to 
Illinois.  That's not how it works in cyberspace.  It'd probably take 
longer to pass a message over a short hop on a 2400 baud line than on an 
intercontinental hop on a T3 or satellite link.  Would you be willing to 
use a distance metric that depended on how many people were sharing the 
bandwidth with you?  If you're using a packet-switched network, part of 
a single message might take a different route from the rest of it.  If 
you're using one of the advanced hypertext services, part of the message 
you're looking at might have come from Athens, Greece and the rest from 
Athens, Ohio and Athens, Georgia.  In cyberspace, "distance" is a 
stochastic variable, not a geodetic constant.

***********************************************************************
*
*                             Scenery Rhymery
*
*         People and Goods                              Information
*
*         Potholes                                      Lightning
*         Trees and hills                               ----
*         Ragweed                                       ----
*         Rest stops                                    ----
*         Speed                                         ----
*         Billboards                                    Prodigy?
*
***********************************************************************

Gertrude Stein once described a particular patch of suburbia by saying, 
"There's no *there* there."  Cyberspace is just the reverse: there's a 
*here* (where you are) and a *there* (where you're connecting to), but 
there's no *in-between*.  You might notice if a power hit takes out an 
intermediate link, but you can't voluntarily stop on the way to take a 
picture from a scenic lookout.  No rest stops, no place or need to buy 
souvenirs or tacky postcards, no Golden Arches.  Also no billboards, 
unless you count the way Prodigy uses a third of your screen for 
advertisements.  That's also a parallel with the physical superhighway, 
because roadside ads used to be more common before we started driving 
too fast to read them.  Anyone remember Burma Shave signs?  They were 
America's answer to haiku: a series of five red signs with white 
lettering, forming a little rhyme boosting the sponsor's shaving creme.  
My favorite was this one:

***********************************************************************
*
*                             Burma Shave in Asphalt Space
*
*                   Free, free
*                        A trip to Mars
*                             For five million
*                                  Empty jars of
*                                       Burma Shave
*
***********************************************************************

I asked folks in the Jokes section of Compuserve's Mensa Forum to come 
up with some Burma Shave signs for the infoway.  Here's the pick of the 
lot.  The first is for when you're unhappy about your system:

***********************************************************************
*
*                             Burma Shave in CyberSpace - 1
*
*                   System locked?
*                        Please don't fret
*                             Just reach out
*                                  And hit "RESET"
*                                     Burma Shave
*
****************************************  Michael Auborn  *************

The next is if you're unhappy about someone else's system:

***********************************************************************
*
*                             Burma Shave in CyberSpace - 2
*
*                   Computer widow?
*                        Life incomplete?
*                             Reach out and press
*                                  <Ctrl><Alt><Delete>
*                                      Burma Shave
*
****************************************  Mike Steiner  ***************

And finally, if you don't like Bill Gates' system:

***********************************************************************
*
*                             Burma Shave in CyberSpace - 2
*
*                   Windows dragging?
*                        DOS too slow?
*                             Get OS/2
*                                  And go-Go-GO!
*                                     Burma Shave
*
****************************************  Barbara Ploegstra  **********

The story you are about to hear is true.  Only the narrative style has 
been changed for comic effect.

***********************************************************************
*
*                             Detours in CyberSpace
*
*                                     454-6861
*                   1-800-554-4079                       454-8251
*                   1-800-848-8199                    1-703-391-0800
*                      No joy                         1-703-787-0800 
*                                                     1-800-848-8980
*                                                            2
*                                                     1-800-848-8990
*                                                          Joy? 
*
***********************************************************************

Sunday, 8:15 PM.  I was working the wires but couldn't get through to 
Compuserve.  I had dialed the local 9600-baud service number, 454-6851.  
The modem made a sound I hadn't heard since I stepped on a pair of 
mating alley cats, but that's another narrative style.  I checked the 
local phone book. Compuserve had  an 800 number and a local voice line.  
I figured I'd need the 800 number on a Sunday night.  I dialed 
1-800-554-4079, expecting to speak to a human.  What I heard was:
     
     The number you have dialed, 1-800-554-4079, has been changed.  The 
     new number is 1-800-848-8199.
     
I tried the new 800 number. No answer.  I fell back to the local number, 
454-8251.
     
     The number you have dialed, 1-703-391-0800, has been changed.  The 
     new number is 1-703-787-0800.
     
I tried it.
     
     Oh, God, another one.  You're the seventh this evening.
     
     Yes, ma'am.  Just trying to get Tech Support, ma'am.
     
     I'm not in that department.  I'm not even in the same city they're 
     in.  What a crazy company.
     
     Yes, ma'am.  What's Tech Support's number?
     
     Try 1-800-848-8980.  That worked the last time I tried it.  You 
     know what really gets me?
     
     No, ma'am.
     
     We do communications for a living.
     
I hung up and dialed 1-800-848-8980.
     
     Welcome to Compuserve Customer Support.  To obtain a local access 
     number, press '1'.  To speak to Technical Support, press '2'.
     
Fortunately, I was using the touch-tone line.  I pushed the '2' button 
and heard
     
     The number for Technical Support has been changed.  The new number 
     is 1-800-848-8990.

That line was busy, which probably meant it was connected to a human.  
The scary thing is that the problem cleared up soon afterwards, even 
though I'd never got a chance to tell anyone what it was.

***********************************************************************
*
*                             Navigation Rhymery
*
*         People and Goods                              Information
*
*         N, E, W, and S                                ----
*         Street signs                                  ----
*         Marquee, billboard                            FAQ files
*         Helpful natives                               Helpful natives
*         AAA                                           Veronica, Mosaic
*         Road map                                      The Yellow Pages
*
***********************************************************************

Navigating in cyberspace is really different from navigating on asphalt.  
Leave that compass in your backpack (its magnetic field would play hob 
with your diskettes, anyway) because there is no North or South on the 
Net.  As one of the folks in my office put it, "Imagine you're set down 
in the middle of metropolitan Boston, where the streets wobble around 
every which way and cross at odd angles.  You're hungry and have a date 
at a particular restaurant, but they've taken down all the street signs 
and you're not even sure you're in the right township.  The only way you 
can find the place you're looking for is to go into every store you 
find.  If you're lucky it's a restaurant, but you still have to check 
the menu to see if they've got the right kind of food."

Fortunately, one parallel I've found holds true is that, in both 
universes, if you look friendly and ask politely, the locals are 
generally willing to help you find your way.  Sometimes they're so 
enthusiastic you wind up learning more than you wanted to know.

There are institutional navigation aids in both universes.  AAA and the 
other automobile clubs do a good job of telling you how to get to where 
you want to go on asphalt, and they'll even offer you a choice of 
Quickest versus Scenic routes.  The Infoway equivalent is still under 
construction.  Veronica is supposed to be an index into every database 
in the galaxy, but you have to realize that she only knows about what 
people have explicitly given her to index.  For instance, one day we 
wanted some information about bonobos, an animal we first met at the 
Milwaukee zoo.  You may have read about them in Discover magazine or 
Jared Diamond's book, "The Third Chimpanzee."  They used to be called 
the "pygmy chimpanzee" but now they're considered a separate species.  
They're also the world's  most sex-oriented primate...  Anyhow, a few 
months ago we asked Veronica to do a keyword search on "bonobo".  
Nothing.  Then we asked about "Pan" (the Latin name for the chimpanzee 
is "Pan troglodytes").  Veronica knew about 454 items relating to "Pan":

***********************************************************************
*
*                             Desparately Seeking Bonobos
*
*         PAN symptoms in tomato foliage
*         Coordinated Pan and Zoom
*         Selling Pan Am's Pacific Division
*         Frying Pan/Fire Tactician
*         Italian Pan Bread
*         High Modulus Polyacrylonitrile (PAN) Fiber
*         Directory: Barrie: Peter Pan
*         etc., etc., etc., ....
*
***********************************************************************

The difference between asphalt space and cyberspace is best summarized 
by one comparison: asphalt space uses road maps, but the Net uses the 
Yellow Pages.

There are some subtle differences between the software and hardware 
superhighways.  (Had you heard the line about software is what you boot 
and hardware is what you kick?)  They boil down to the fact that the 
infoway can only carry intangibles.  

***********************************************************************
*
*                             Cargo Rhymery
*
*         People and Goods                              Information
*
*         Physical objects                              Logical objects
*         Raw materials                                 Raw material
*         School texts                                  HyperText
*         Golf clubs                                    Club meetings
*         Newsprint                                     newsgroups
*         Student drivers                               newbies
*
***********************************************************************

You can't really download pizza (yet), but you can download menus, and 
then fax an order to pizza-on-wheels.  You can't download lead, but you 
can download leads.  

The last item on the list, student drivers/newbies, leads me to my final 
embarrassments of the evening.  One is another AI-generated 
sound-and-sight byte, downloaded from alt.fan.dimples, to the tune of 
"Good Ship Lollipop":  

     "On my new chip, Pentium
     Writing COBOL is tedium.
     Wish I could play with fancy languages every day.
     
     From where I sit, Pascal's new.
     Lookin' forward to Modula-2.
     BASIC's OK, but it never runs in less than a day.
     
     I think Visual REXX would be better than sex.
     What an OOI, GUI screen I'd make.
     With a pull-down here and a pop-up there -
     My users would awake with a carpal ache!
     
     I could work such neat-o tricks,
     I could get such virtual kicks,
     On my new chip, Pentium, Pentium, 586."


Finally, here's a sing-along that captures much of the classic Net 
spirit (even though those days may be changing):

     Tune of "Thank God I'm A Country Boy"
     (original words and music by John Martin Sommers)
     
     Well, it's late at night. The kids are in bed.
     Time to get those cobwebs out of my head,
     Live my virtual life instead:
       Thank God for my Techie Toys!
     I'd play Seventh Guest all day if I could,
     But my boss and my wife wouldn't take it very good.
     So I play when I can and work when I should
       Lord love my Techie Toys!
     
         Well, I got me a fine wife, I got me my modem,
         I got my software for up- and downloadin'.
         Time to ride that Info Road an' -
           Surf the Net with my Techie Toy.
     
     Dad taught me how to code and write a flowchart.
     FORTRAN-TWO was my personal go-kart.
     Built my own machine from pinball discards.
       Proud of my Techie Toy.
     I've known how to hack since I was a kid.
     I can't believe the things I did,
     But I did no harm or I kept it well hid
       Or blamed it on my Techie Toy.
     
         But I love my wife and I love my keyboard.
         Ride those wires like Neddie on a kneeboard.
         If I can logon, I'll never be bored -
           Thank God for my Techie Toy.
     
     With the fax and the phone and the VCR
     All tied together with Ethernet wire
     I can talk to my coffee pot and steer my car.
       Incredible Techie Toys!
     Gettin' ready for SHARE, gotta write my pitch,
     Now what in the world rhymes with "glitsch"?
     Checked with the CD-ROM, it said, "Go fish!"
       Stupid Techie Toy.
     
         But I got me a fine wife, she thinks I'm crazy.
         She may be right, but I sure ain't lazy.
         I'll load this logic 'til the dawn gets hazy -
           I love my Techie Toy.


Thanks, folks!  Have a good trip home, and see y'all in Los Angeles in 
February!
