Internet Access: Flat Fee Vs. Pay-per-use :: essays research papers

lucre Access Flat Fee vs. Pay-Per-Use     Most Internet users argon either not charged to entryway knowledge, or paya low-cost flat fee. The Information throughway, on the other hand, will kindredly be based upon a pay-per-use model. On a gross level, one might say thatthe payment model for the Internet is closer to that of broadcast (or perhapscable) television while the model for the Information SuperHighway is likely tobe more like that of pay-per-view T.V.     "Pay-per-use" environments affect user access habits. "Flat fee"situations encourage exploration. Users in flat-fee environments navigatethrough webs of information and escape to make serendipitous discoveries. "Pay-per-use" situations give the public the incentive to focus their attention onwhat they know they already want, or to look for well-known items previouslyrecommended by others. In "pay-per-use" environments, people tend to follow moretr aditional paths of discovery, and seldom explore totally unexpected avenues."Pay-per-use" environments discourage browsing. Imagine how a persons readinghabits would adjustment if they had to pay for each article they looked at in amagazine or newspaper.     Yet many of the most interesting things we learn ab show up or find come from undermentioned unknown routes, bumping into things we werent looking for. (Indeed,Thomas Kuhn makes the claim that, even in the hard sciences, real breakthroughsand interesting discoveries only come from following these unconventional routesKuhn, Thomas, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Chicago University ofChicago Press, 1962).     And people who have to pay each time they use a piece of information arelikely to increasingly rely upon specialists and experts. For example, in asituation where the reader will have to pay to read each paragraph of backgroundon Bosnia, s/he is more likely to rely up on State Department summaries insteadof paying to become more generally informed him/herself. And in the seventies and1980s the library world learned that the introduction of expensive pay-per-usedatabases discouraged individual exploration and introduced the need forintermediaries who specialized in searching techniques.Producers vs. Consumers     On the Internet anyone can be an information provider or an informationconsumer. On the Information SuperHighway most people will be relegated to therole of information consumer.     Because services like "movies-on-demand" will drive the technologicaldevelopment of the Information SuperHighway, movies need for high bandwidthinto the home and only narrow bandwidth coming back out will likely dominate.(see Besser, Howard. "Movies on Demand May Significantly Change the Internet",Bulletin of the American Association for Information Science, October 1994)Metaphorically, this will be like a ten-lane highway coming into the home andonly a tiny path leading back out (just wide enough to take a credit card number