Month: July 2010

underestimating intelligence at network edges

dialing numbers is too complicated -- leave that job to the operator

Considering the merits of using automatic switches rather than human telephone operators to connect telephone calls, a Bell System technical expert in 1891 declared:

experience and observation have united to show us that an operation as complex as that of uniting two telephone subscribers’ lines [connecting a telephone call] . . . can never efficiently or satisfactorily be performed by automatic apparatus, dependent on the volition and intelligent action of the subscriber.[*]

In short, telephone subscribers lack the discipline and skill needed to dial correctly telephone calls.  A human telephone operator is needed to connect telephone calls for them.

With the benefit of history, you know better than this telephone system expert.  He under-estimated the intelligence of most persons at the edges of telephone networks.  Most persons have proven to be quite capable of dialing telephone calls.

More generally, shifting service implementations (intelligence) to network edges has made the Internet a more powerful, general-purpose communication technology.

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[*] Bell System engineer Thomas Lockwood, quoted in Lipartito, Kenneth (1994) “Component Innovation: The Case of Automatic Telephone Switching, 1891–1920,” Industrial and Corporate Change, v. 3, n. 2, p. 329, from AT&T Archive, Box 1286, Stowger Aut0matic Exchange Switching, Lockwood-Hudson letter, Nov. 4, 1891.

time watching television continues to grow

Average television watching time per U.S. adult grew from 16 hours per week in 1995 to 20 hours per week in 2009. From 2003 to 2009, television watching time increased 9%.[1] Television watching time accounts for about half of total personal discretionary time and far exceed time spent on the web.[2]  Not surprisingly, new media firms are eager to combine television and the web.

While traditional television watching continues to dominate time using media, other changes suggest ongoing communications industry changes.  Time spent socializing and communicating in person and time spent reading (as conventionally understood) fell 12% and 7% on average among U.S. adults from 2003 to 2009. Time spent playing (computer and non-computer) games and computer use for leisure increased 31%. [3]  Time spent playing computer games and using computers for leisure is likely to continue to increase relatively rapidly in the future.

Time use by age categories suggests that easing loneliness is an important value of media use.  Persons 75 years and older spent about twice as much time watching television and reading as do persons ages 15 to 19 years. The former, elderly group also spend 36% less time socializing and communicating than do the young, later group. Easy-to-use social networking technology potentially could offer the elderly a more engaging way to spend their time.

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Data: U.S. time use data (Excel version)

Notes:

[1] These figures are for time watching television as the primary activity in non-work time. They are based on well-developed, openly documented time-budget surveys.  Other commercially produced statistics of television watching time are considerable higher.  See Galbi (2001) Section III.  The second figure is based on comparisons among American Time Use Surveys.  In these surveys, a separate category specifies “computer use for leisure.”  Hence television-watching time is best interpreted to mean watching video on the traditional special-purpose and specially placed device called a television.  For the data, see U.S. time use data.

[2] Persons in the U.S. ages 15 and older watched about 4600 minutes of television per month in 2006, compared to about136 minutes of online (web) video per month in March, 2008. See note [2], sources and details of television vs. online video. A widely cited comparison of television watching time to “personal Internet time” was quite misleading.

[3] See worksheet on U.S. time use trends over the past six years.

geographic communities of communication

Just as trade is more likely to occur between parties less geographically distant, the same appears to be true for communication.  In the U.S. telephone network about 1983, the share of calls within the local switching office averaged 66% for rural switching offices, compared to 31% for urban switching offices. The greater share of intra-office calls in rural switching offices occurred despite rural offices serving on average only 700 telephone lines, compared to 41,000 telephone lines for urban offices. The relevant difference seems to be geographic distance: rural offices served on average 130 square miles, while urban offices averaged 12 square miles of service area. Geographic distance shaped calling patterns much more than the number of persons that could be called.

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Data: switching-center statistics for the U.S. public telephone network, c. 1983 (Excel version)

not so Calder mobiles

differentiating telephone service

coin box from a payphone prior to 1907

Differentiating telephone services drove telephone service growth in Chicago at the beginning of the twentieth century.  From 1901 to 1906, the total number of telephones in service grew the equivalent of 23% per year.[1]  Within that total, private branch exchange telephones and nickel-in-slot 10-party-line payphones grew 33% and 47% per year respectively.  Private branch exchanges catered to the needs of large organizations, while nickel-in-slot payphones offered cheap, per-call prepaid service.[2] By August, 1906, these two services accounted for 54% of telephones in use in Chicago.

Plain-old telephone service (POTS) is a term from a later, less dynamic telephone industry.

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Data: Telephones in use in Chicago, 1901-1906, by telephone type (Excel version)

Notes:

[1]  These data are from a special telephone report delivered to the Chicago City Council in 1907.  The report includes extensive economic and operational data on early nineteenth-century telephone service in Chicago.

[2] Here’s information on long-term trends in business telephone service, and recent developments in private-branch exchange service. On nickel-in-slot telephone service in early nineteenth century Chicago, see John, Richard R. (2010) Network nation: inventing American telecommunications (Cambridge, Mass: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press) pp. 295-8.