June 12, 1996

WORKING IN THE AGE OF THE INTERNET

BY CLIVE SHEARER
Special to the Journal

The telephone has become one of the most influential inventions in history; yet until now most phones have been used merely to transmit sound. The internet, utilizing wired telephone pathways combined with satellite technology, the cellular phone network and TV will have an even more dramatic effect on life on this planet. This article will predict a few of the ways that life and professional services may change.

Consider driving home after work. Which route shall you take? Simply turn on your car monitor and see current traffic flow, downloaded via your cellular phone line from static cameras situated all over the freeways.

Today's hundreds of TV channels will multiply into thousands of niche news channels, commercial web pages and public information sites. In fact, one of the main uses of the Net will be research, from demographics to public records, and from resource locations to historic investigations via world-wide library hook-ups.

Enormous volumes of this type of information is already available. For example, LEXIS-NEXIS currently provides around 300,000 searches each day within their 10,600 news, business and legal sources. And they are adding three million documents each week to their database. Currently available are topics as diverse as banking, energy, entertainment, the environment and public records from every jurisdiction in the country including tax liens and judgments. Subscribers can also identify a key word document model, and ask for similar document searches. Even non-subscribers can access information with the assistance of on-line researchers, and pay via credit card prior to documents being delivered or e-mailed. On-line subscriptions will become minimal and will eventually be scrapped altogether as more and more people pay per downloaded item. "Browsing" will be left to those who have idle time on their hands to find games, watch sports, shop and plan vacations. In business, however, there will be no time for 'surfing' as every entry into the web network will be a carefully planned foray, using invisible search engines that effortlessly find exactly what you want. And information management software to find, acquire, file, store and archive data will become vital.

Keyboards will start to be phased out as voice recognition and voice commands will allow one to operate software 'hands off.' This will be the ultimate security password as each individual on this planet has unique speech patterns, intonation and inflection. Hence we will see the merging of the cell phone, advanced versions of today's primitive electronic message pads and lap tops. Hard copy will have numbered proofing lines, allowing you to verbally describe to the software changes such as, "Delete word 'supervise' from line 15 and substitute word 'manage',"and then telling the system to transmit the document by saying: "Assemble Jones draft report and send 3 copies to Chicago branch," half a world away from a computer, using a cellular phone.

The fax machine will slowly disappear as information will be scanned and transmitted via modems almost exclusively. The copy machine too will change as copies of documents will be transmitted by the sender directly to the recipient's copy center to be run and bound at the reception site.

People will be sought and will seek new jobs on-line. By using key words to find the right candidates, employers will quickly assemble a list of qualified people. It will be common for public relations notices covering new hires, promotions and professional news to be on-line. Revisions in our laws will permit public and legal notices to be published electronically with no further requirement to print them in a daily newspaper, and requests for proposals will be announced electronically by government agencies who will seek electronic submittals based on pre-selected key words and codes.

However, all this will not mean the demise of newspapers. The change in pace and the kinesthetics offered by a newspaper will still be welcomed. But newspaper's link to the Net will open the door to highly targeted marketing, news or professional development "newspapers" being assembled and downloaded to niche subscribers. You will create your own edition, such as for the engineer who wants to know everything current in the international industrial electrical engineering field; for the architect who wants today's worldwide health care design updates; for the attorney looking for current specific case law decisions; for the contractor looking for particular types of bid an negotiated opportunities and for the real estate professional wanting to learn about deals, options, and opportunities.

Read a story about John Smith's latest business acquisition. Use his name as a 'hot link' to learn more about his company, his business history and the associations he belongs to. Want to join one of those associations? Link to its home page to find membership size, composition, meeting times, the next event, and then e-mail a dinner registration.

Actually, the Net will fuel the need to strengthen personal contact marketing. In the private sector, the final determination on who gets the job will still be based on personal contact, but the Net will be the means for pre-selections. Project managers will have to get even more involved in one-on-one contacts, to balance the wealth of available electronic brochure home pages. And the forms that feel they offer a price advantage will also publish their fees on the Net. Will government agencies be forbidden from looking at the published fee pages?

Home pages will be updated as frequently as new information becomes available, becoming visual and aural electronic newsletters. It will be standard practice for web pages to show projects and list all firms on the project team and have 'hot links' to those firms' Home Pages. This will strengthen partnership and cooperative marketing. This means that printed brochures will become as outdated as the slide rule, as web brochure pages will include sound, animation, and narrated tours of projects.

The impact of currently developing Geographic Information System (GIS) data bases will be enormous. Every land feature from homes to fire hydrants will be placed on a data base and GIS referenced with exact location coordinates. Add demographic layers into the mix and target marketing by zip code will become antiquated. Through the Net one will be able to access tiny slices of precise information such as the exact coordinates of the nearest mailbox which your hand-held Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver will take you to. Huge slides of information will be there for the asking. For example, you will be able to find the total number of residents in a given area by drawing a boundary with a computer pen on a screen showing streets on a digitized aerial photograph, and having the answer pop up on the screen. Want information on a particular site? Access to that property's ownership and use history, the geology, survey information, title information, and even existing floor plans will also pop right up on the screen.

Inter-disciplinary, inter-office teams will simplify the way that they currently work. It will be standard practice for CAD drawings and project documents to be networked in all team offices, thereby eliminating surprise changes picked up days or even weeks later. 'Smart CAD' will alert users to conflicts appearing on documents, such as beams and ducts taking up the same space, and pipes meeting at the wrong elevation or sloping in the wrong direction.

On site, a project camera that you can remotely rotate, tilt and zoom from your office in another country, will show you at all times what is happening during construction. This will improve safety, facilitate improved communication and save time. Want a detailed view? Ask the job superintendent to take a digital camera out to show you a particular site feature. Download the image to your screen and transmit it on the Wide Area Net to other team members to discuss appropriate courses of action.

Want public agency code updates, including a summary of what has changed since a particular date? No problem here either. Want to take a client to lunch? Restaurant choices, seating plans, scenic views available, menu selection will all be visible on screen when making a reservation. I hope this article has given you a taste for the future!

Previous columns:

• DEALING WITH CHANGE, 04-10-1996
• DELIVERING THE GOODS, 03-13-1996
• SETTING SERVICE MARKETING GOALS, 02-14-1996
• HIGH COMPETITION MEANS A TOUGH '96 FOR CONSULTANTS, 01-10-1996
• 1996 PREDICTIONS: ECONOMY WILL PICK UP SPEED, 12-13-1995
• LEADERSHIP AND EMPOWERMENT: STAGE THREE, 11-08-1995
• DOWNSTREAM THINKING LEADS TO HIGHER GROUND, 08-10-1995