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February, 2002 CHIEF GUEST |
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"The Web will disappear. And with it will go the buttons." Wendy Hall, Professor in the Department of Electronics and Computer Science at the University of Southampton, loves to portray herself as "a hitch-hiker to hypermedia and the Web". Hall was awarded a CBE in the Queen's Birthday Honours list in 2000 and became a fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering the same year. Hall's research interests include the development of multimedia information systems and their applications in education, industry and commerce. Her group developed the open hypermedia system, Microcosm. In a discussion with Sudhir Chowdhary of Computers Today, the digital communications guru stressed that for a country like India, small mobile devices would be an ideal solution to bring information to the masses.
What is the future of digital communications in developing countries like India where infrastructure is still inadequate? To put the record straight, infrastructure is incomplete even in the United Kingdom and other developed countries; there are high bandwidth connections, but only in pockets. However, the future belongs to small wireless devices. And I think there is tremendous potential for such devices in developing countries. From my experience in South Africa, I feel countries like India can leapfrog technology and drive the future. The kind of networking machines we use today are all plug-ins, and these won't work in the future. Mobile phone networks and customised small devices-allowing people to meet all their computing and communications needs-would be in vogue. You won't need something called the Personal Computer. You have developed a computing device in Bangalore called the Simputer. Such a device has huge potential. Talking about services, I was in Australia recently and was pleasantly surprised to find you could pay for a can of Coke by dialling a number on your mobile phone. Developing countries with capabilities, particularly India, have a greater chance of leapfrogging technology. People would have to figure out ways how a person, in the middle of nowhere, can have access to the Internet, though certainly, there would be language and interface problems.
Bandwidth is a major bottleneck even in the developed world. It's worse here because you don't have the infrastructure. Basically, it's a mindset problem-one that we went through earlier. I remember telling organisations in the UK that they could get all their information on the Web. But people failed to see the Web's potential mainly because of low bandwidth-it was too difficult to get on the Web. They saw it more as a barrier than as a facilitator. When asked to make company information available on the Web, the most common reply was: "Over my dead body". However, once the technology matured, people started seeing its potential and their perspectives changed overnight. That is what happened in the UK. So in India, changing mindsets ought to be priority number one, so that people start thinking of saving everything in digital format. And with technology advancing, bandwidth would not be a problem. I would like to reiterate that wireless and mobile devices are going to change this mindset; that's where your energies should be channelled. Is there a need for the Web to get personal? In the 1990s, we dubbed the Internet the 'information superhighway'. So why is it still so difficult to find what we are looking for online? It is mainly because the Web is mostly link-less. What's more, if we want the Web to be useful in our daily lives, Web links would have to become much more personal than they are today. Hand-crafted Web sites generally contain few links because they are too difficult to maintain; it is hard enough to manage content, let alone links. Also, Web links are notoriously frustrating. Computers let us click on objects and text, but only to follow predetermined information paths. Using current systems, Web surfers are destined to remain forever lost in cyberspace, because designers cannot anticipate each of the thousands of different ways that people might want to use-and develop-information contained in their pages. What if links were not predetermined? What if information paths could be dynamically created and tailored to our interests? We've developed new systems that do just this. The key to such systems are paths called "user trails", which are basically a record of what information a Web surfer has sought. It can be automatically created by a system as a user navigates around an information space. Although the Web is often presented as a mechanism that replaces human contact, Internet systems, which rely on user trails, will have human activity patterns integrated in their core. At present we all see the same Web. We actually need different Webs and different links, depending on what we are trying to find, what we already know and what context we are in. What would be the role of technologists in this new system? Their job is to put these more personal elements back into the system to reduce our dependence on predetermined paths and links. One thing is certain. The Web will disappear behind the screens. And with it will go the buttons. Hypermedia is more than just point-to-point links. It is about making connections or establishing relationships. We need to go "back to the future" in reducing our dependence on buttons. What lessons could India learn from the trials of multimedia systems that are taking place in the United Kingdom? Very soon, in the UK interactive information about a number of basic amenities would be available on the Net. For example, we expect to get basic information on the Internet not just about services being offered by the National Health Service, but also about, say, my child's running temperature and when I might need to take my child to a doctor. Translating that to India, we have heard about the campaign against AIDS. This and other heath care-related information can be imparted to a significant number of people by using the Internet. Education via the Internet is one area with good prospects, though we are yet to realise its full potential. That said, even the best online courses should have personalised teaching involved somewhere. Here, videoconferencing won't be enough to sustain this media. Human learning is an interactive experience, so it's not advisable to run the whole course online. What technological and financial ways do you suggest for tackling information poverty in a developing country like ours? Mobile devices: that's where you need to put your resources because it would be exciting to see rich interaction with the Web through a mobile device. The Simputer is an indicator for this coming era. The biggest challenge really lies in not just being able to put the whole Web page on the small mobile device screen, but being able to access the Web interactively. Frankly, that's what I would be putting my money on. |
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Does India need to evolve new Internet
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