Construction

But to get to the information resources you need another piece of information infrastructure equipment--information appliances--these are the electronic gadgets which will let you surf the Web, so that you can buy clothing, order pay per view movies, music, and on and on. Soon you may be watching TV on the telephone and talking over the TV--it won't matter because of Digital Convergence.

The final information infrastructure component is the communications networks: the equipment and physical wires (or airborne sound waves) that carry all this digital information. These include local and long distance telephone networks, broadcast and cable TV, radio, satellite, and cellular networks. Do you think these networks will be big enough to carry all the great applications and information resources? Check out the Interactivity.

Construction of the network of networks is so important our government has given it an official sounding name--the National Information Infrastructure or NII. Whoa! There are four main pieces to the NII pie. People come first! A huge number of creative, hi-tech workers are needed to build and operate the network of networks.

Next comes the creation of information resources, which include virtually any information that can be stored electronically. You name it--television programs, movies, music, books, magazines, newspapers, business databases, and anything else you can find browsing the information highway.