New communications services-what does society want?

Historically, the deployment of new telecommunications services has taken years of effort and large amounts of investment. Thus, being able to predict the market acceptance before taking the business risk is critically important. Nevertheless, the record of success in such predictions has been relatively poor. Many new services are unable to overcome the barrier posed by Metcalfe's law, which says that there is a small value to any service shared by only a small number of users. An outstanding example of breaking this barrier was the World Wide Web, which was jump-started by the promulgation of free browser software. The failure of the industry to have foreseen the Web is indicative of the fundamental inability to predict the future. Whereas engineers sometimes invoke the "field-of-dreams" argument (if we build it, they will come), industry executives demand quantitative business projections. In spite of this fundamental uncertainty in societal acceptance of a particular service, there are common themes in human needs-both in the dreams and aspirations and in the everyday life of average citizens. Telecommunications has helped fulfill those aspirations and needs and will do so to a greater extent in the future.