Interactive multimedia and information infrastructure receive a lot of attention in the press, but what do they really mean for society? What are the most significant and enduring innovations? What does the convergence of digitally based technologies mean for U.S. businesses and consumers? This book presents an overview of the exciting but much-hyped phenomenon of digital convergence.

Interactive multimedia and information infrastructure receive a lot of attention in the press, but what do they really mean for society? What are the most significant and enduring innovations? What does the convergence of digitally based technologies mean for U.S. businesses and consumers? This book presents an overview of the exciting but much-hyped phenomenon of digital convergence.

Systems integrationâ€"the enterprise-wide integration of computer applicationsâ€"offers an enormous opportunity for U.S. firms to capitalize on their strengths in such areas as complex software, networking, and management. In this book, industry leaders, university researchers, and government policymakers discuss what systems integration is, its importance and prospects for growth, why it is expected to define the characteristics of computerization for decades to come, and why the United States is perceived to have a strong competitive advantage.

This book warns that retaining U.S. preeminence in computing at the beginning of the next century will require long-term planning, leadership, and collective will that cannot be attained with a business-as-usual approach by industry or government. This consensus emerged from a colloquium of top executives from the U.S. computer sector, university and industry researchers, and government policymakers. Among the major issues discussed are long-term, or strategic, commitment on the part of large firms in the United States; cooperation within and among firms and between industry, universities, and government; weaknesses in manufacturing and in the integration of research, development, and manufacturing; technical standards for both hardware and software manufacture and operation; and education and infrastructure (in particular, computer networks).

This volume is a compilation of papers reflecting many of the issues related to telecommunications that are being debated today and are likely to continue to be addressed in the next few years. The papers examine the ways in which economic and technological forces are changing the regulation of telecommunications and the characteristics of the industry itself. After an introduction on issues such as the information highway, industry consolidation, market integration, and constraints on new policies, the papers cover such topics as the changes in Canadian telecommunications and their economics, the role of telecommunications in productivity and competition, the business network concept as an alternative governance structure, competition policy, convergence of technologies, separation of infrastructure from services, European telecommunications policy, and the historical context in which Canada has handled earlier transformations of a technological nature.