Page 19 - Communications Satellites Global Change Agents

xviii PREFACE

net—something that fiber cannot and will not accomplish even by the end of the
21st century.
This is not just a story about technology or technological competition, but
rather an interdisciplinary investigation of how satellites have changed the world.
We explore as much as we can from what might be called the bigger picture, or at
least the interdisciplinary one. We seek to look at how business, entertainment,
and social and moral changes in the family and workplace will never be the same.
We examine how worldwide news, new ways of waging war with GPS-guided
"smart bombs," and unsuspected cultural and technological forces have been af-
fected by the world of satellites.
We look into how satellites have changed just about everything in terms of
how we live, how we are entertained, and how world trade and global finance
work. In the process, we address some basic questions as to why the world is mov-
ing more and more quickly. We look into why economic cycles are increasingly
more global than national in scope. Likewise we examine why global businesses
in terms of stock markets, travel agencies, banks, insurance companies, and even
manufacturers are increasingly migrating to a 24/7 work schedule. As humans
spend less time at the office or plant, machines put in longer and longer hours.
Ultimately, this is a story about how satellites—together with fiber, computers,
and other technologies—have changed global economic, social, and cultural sys-
tems in new and unsuspected ways. It is a story about how technology and funda-
mental values remain in conflict. It is a story of how the 20th century brought us
skyscrapers, megacities, mass transportation, superpowers, and centralization,
and how this will now change in response to terrorism and new technology. In
many ways, only modern communications could enable all of these things to tran-
spire, but this is only half the story. The other parts of this book also explore fu-
ture trends and the shifts toward decentralization that the new millennium will
bring. This is, in part, a story of how satellites and other information technology
(IT) capabilities may bring us long-term security. The desire to cope with pollu-
tion, soaring energy costs, and security risks will also change our world. These
forces could move us toward decentralization, telecities, telework, and possibly
new forms of intercultural understanding.
In this book, our goals are to (a) explore how satellite communications have
impacted and shaped the world, and (b) analyze how they might dictate events in
the 21st century. To this end, we have asked over a dozen knowledgeable people,
who understand satellite systems from a variety of backgrounds, to contribute to
this undertaking. These contributors participate from the perspectives of their var-
ious disciplines. They have a breadth of understanding of the field that ranges
from technology; to business and economics; to historical, legal, and political sys-
tems; to society and culture. We hope that the collective result is a better under-
standing of the broad patterns of global change that satellites have caused and will
cause in the future. Specifically, this collective process has resulted in the identifi-
cation of the top 10 conclusions we jointly reached about past and future trends