Australian Computer Society
Tom Worthington will give an update on a three month project on the future of the organisation
in the on-line environment. This follows from his work in on-line policy development and implementation
for the Federal Government and will include consultation with the Presidents of the world's computer societies, meeting in
the UK on global electronic operations in November. Tom will outline a vision for the future where the
Internet is the basic means of commerce and the challenges this raises for organisations.
Draft of 25 October 1996: The content of this talk will be developed here. Suggestions and comments welcome: tom.worthington@tomw.net.au
Digital Money
There are numerous schemes proposed for electronic payments via the Internet. These rely on various
forms of encryption to provide sufficient security. There is vigorous discussion as to which schemes have
sufficient or even too much security.
There are enough people working on this issue that I expect the practical issues to be sorted out by December this year and we can then start using the 'net for routine transactions.
Special Note: Advance Bank Announces Ecash, Thu, 24 Oct 1996 11:30:20 +1000 (EST)
People will buy physical goods on-line, much as they now buy products by mail-order or telephone. Australians appear to be more reluctant to buy by mail order than Americans. This might change with the increased amount of information it will be possible to get on-line. You should be able to get detailed specifications and photographs of the product, as well as comments from previous purchasers on-line.
The interesting part will come with the purchase of non-physical goods and services. We can expect to see new products and services invented and marketed which never were sold before. This will be possible because they can be delivered on-line and paid for very cost effectively. This will create a problem for the community in adopting acceptable business practices for these new products and services. Even the distinction between a product and a service will blur.
What is an on-line publication? No one really knows, but a lot of people think we will have a lot of them.
Media organisations are trying to work out how to extend their operations into the on-line environment. Organisations such as the ACS, are trying to work out how to do academic publishing on-line.
Early attempts by newspaper publishers to produce on-line editions failed. Subscribers were not prepared to pay for on-line newspapers. Payment schemes were crude and it is possible with simple electronic cash on-line newspapers will become popular.
However attempts at on-line publishing have concentrated on the last stage of publishing, which is distribution. The 'net is a very easy way to distribute information, but that is a problem for established publishers as anyone with a PC and a modem can do it.
Much of the information in newspapers is not prepared directly by people employed by the newspaper. The information comes from press agencies or from media releases. Both these sources can be made available directly on-line to the newspapers readers.
The product a newspaper can provide on-line is the cataloguing, summarising and verifying of information. You can try and read all the media releases yourself, but which can you believe and what can you skip?
We may see on-line "publications" which consist of only links to material provided by others. The links will provide an index to quality information on a topic, so valuable people will be prepared to pay for it.
On-line publishing will see what were monolithic organisations taken apart to their component parts and reconstructed into new combinations. The customers will be able to see "the works" which were previously hidden and in some cases build their own custom services.
Some dusty old disciplines, such as librarian, archivist and records manager will become new and trendy, just as IT professionals have become reborn with the 'net. These disciplines have traditionally delt with sorting, indexing and keeping information. Those skills will now become highly valued for refining the world's stock of information into useful information commodities.
Much as vaults of old films became valuable with cable TV to use them, the world's libraries and indexes to all types of information will become valuable property.
This could present the opportunity for organisations to exploit their workers and customers or for a more rational human form of organisation to emerge.