Page 15 - Communications Satellites Global Change Agents

xiv PREFACE

ing an immediacy of contact around the world, have altered the nature of interna-
tional relations and even our understanding of war and peace.
In short, satellite networks have engendered technical, political, legal, and eco-
nomic impacts across the broad reaches of our planet and even into outer space.
These issues and how satellites have reshaped (and are reshaping) our world are
ones addressed throughout this book, with an attempt at a broad overview in the
first chapter. Thus, we have organized the book into seven parts that reflect the
many disciplines in the world of satellite communications.
Satellites represent the key new media that have brought us "live" to the Olym-
pic games, the first moon landing, and a bird's eye view of wars, skirmishes, and
border disputes. Via satellite we now see the horrors of AIDS, genocide, and mass
starvation. Yet this is also how we see beauty pageants, global rock concerts, and
Pamela Anderson's Stripperella. Satellites are the key to Internet connections to
over half of the countries of the world. It is space technology that connects the
most remote parts of the world, as well as brings us weddings, beauty contests,
and the most trivial of movie star news. Cable channels such as CNN or E! could
not exist without satellite networking. To offset some of their "electronic ex-
cesses," satellites have also brought new health and educational links to millions
of people otherwise denied such service. Satellites help to create a new vision of a
"World without Walls." Satellite access and related electronic technologies are
creating a new world that might well be called the e-Sphere.
It is not easy to document accurately and fairly all the major changes that satel-
lite communications have brought to our world in four decades, but the results are
undeniably significant and many fold. Some of the most important developments
include:

• Creating the ability for billions of people to witness global events such as
coronations, political elections, the Olympics, and other key historical moments
in real time—on all the continents of the world. Yes, even Antarctica now has sat-
ellite service.
• Allowing a truly global economy to exist via such means as electronic fund
transfer (EFT) networks so that satellites, along with fiber and other terrestrial
telecommunications systems, can now process nearly $400 trillion (U.S.) in "in-
stant money" transactions around the world.
• Making possible the true globalization of the Internet and extending e-
commerce to South and Central America, the Middle East, the Asia-Pacific, and
Africa. (By the end of 2005, there may be as much as $750 billion [U.S.] in e-
business, and satellites will provide the key link to allow such Internet business to
connect to many developing countries.)
• Enabling electronic diplomacy so that heads of state, through the interven-
tion of TV network commentators, can discuss the crisis of the day live via satel-