1. telecommunications: Telecommunications, from Greek, means “communications at a distance”. Telecommunications through voice, data, and image communication is changing the world. The ease of accessing information and people anywhere at anytime is having major impacts on society, business, and finance. Two major trends have occurred in the technology that is applicable to telecommunications. The first trend has been the incredible increase in the processing power of digital computers, namely, dramatic decreases in physical size along with equally dramatic increases in complexity, speed, and capacity. The second trend has been the explosive growth in transmission capacity through the widespread use of optical fiber across continents and under oceans. These two trends have had impressive long-term consequences for telecommunications around the world. The Internet and the World Wide Web have already created a global system for the access of information. It has become popular that people check flight, weather, and hotels before traveling to a foreign country. E-mail makes it easy to keep in contact instantly with colleagues and friends around the globe. But many of the peoples of the world do not even have a telephone, much less access to the Internet and the information. The challenge to the telecommunications industry is to bridge the digital gap and extend the availability of telecommunications to all parts of the planet. For an introduction to the fundamentals of telecommunications, please check out the websites at http://www.privateline.com/manual/one.html and http://www.iec.org/online/tutorials/fund_telecom/. Another easy-to-understand telecommunications primer can be found at http://www.ceci.org/500/primer.html.
2. optical fiber: Optical fiber (or “fiber optic”) often refers to the medium and the technology associated with the transmission of information as light pulses along a glass or plastic wire or fiber. Optical fiber carries much more information than conventional copper wire and is in general not subject to electromagnetic interference and the need to retransmit signals. Most telephone company long-distance lines are now of optical fiber. Transmission on optical fiber wire requires repeater at distance intervals. The glass fiber requires more protection within an outer cable than copper. For these reasons and because the installation of any new wiring is labor-intensive, few communities yet have optical fiber wires or cables from the phone company's branch office to local customers (known as local loop). Single mode fiber is used for longer distances; multimode fiber is used for shorter distances. Please visit http://www.lanshack.com/fiber-optic-tutorial-basics.asp and http://www.arcelect.com/fibercable.htm for more information on optical fiber.
3. information age: When we say that we live in the information age, we mean that we live in a time when information is very important and easy to get. The information age is an era of fundamental and global change in intellectual, philosophical, cultural and social terms. Today's information age began with the telegraph. It was the first instrument to transform information into electrical form and transmit it reliably over long distances. New techniques of encoding and distributing digital information are pacing the spread of the information age throughout society. For a historical perspective on the information technology, check out the websites at http://www.si.edu/resource/faq/nmah/techhistory.htm and http://photo2.si.edu/infoage/infoage.html. The web page at http://www.libraries.psu.edu/crsweb/infolit/andyou/mod9/infotech.htm provides extensive links to issues related to the information age. For a discussion of China in the information age, check out the paper at http://www.sims.berkeley.edu/~pam/papers/chinaip.html.
4. information superhighway: A name first used by (former) U.S. Vice President Al Gore for the vision of a global, high-speed communications network that will carry voice, data, video, and other forms of information all over the world, and that will make it possible for people to send email, get up-to-the-minute news, and access business, government and educational information. The Internet is already providing many of these features, via telephone networks, cable TV services, online service providers, and satellites. In the U.S., the information superhighway is also known as National Information Infrastructure (http://glossary.its.bldrdoc.gov/fs-1037/dir-024/_3476.htm). The information superhighway can be understood to be a highway which has computer technology and modern communication technology serving as the base of the road and fiber-optic cables serving as the surface of the road. The “vehicles” are the multimedia machines equipped with computer, television and telephone, and high speed transmission and exchange of various multimedia information forms the web covering the whole nation. If the national superhighways all over the world are linked together, the global information superhighway will be created.
Who first created the idea of “constructing” a superhighway?
In 1955, Albert Gore, then Tennessee Democratic senator, put forward in the U.S. Congress the act of interstate superhighway, which was later proved to have greatly promoted the American economic development. In 1991, his son, Al Gore, proposed another act — high performance computing act, HPCA (http://www.hpcc.gov/congressional/laws/pl_102-194.html). For the first time, HPCA demanded high performance computer and communication. The core of the act is to set up a national research and education network, NREN.
For more information on the subject, check out the websites at http://trochim.human.cornell.edu/gallery/abrahams/ish.htm, http://admin.engr.wisc.edu/IT/infohghy.cfm and http://www.abc.net.au/http/sfist/shwy0.htm.
5. BellSouth Corporation: BellSouth is a telecommunications company in the U.S. that mainly serves the southern states. Its business ranges from voice (such as local and long-distance telephone and wireless) to data (computer networks) services. For more information about the company, check out its website at http://www.bellsouth.com.
