Competing Definitions of Openness on the NII

Jonathan Band, Attorney, Adjunct professor at the Georgetown University Law Center

1/27/2008
(Original Publish Date: 11/1/1997)

In the early 1990s, the computer, entertainment, and communications trade press began to devote increasing attention to the "information infrastructure." Although no one vision for the information infrastructure emerged, the dominant metaphor was the "information superhighway." Just as the federal interstate highway program of the 1950s and '60s created a vast road network that facilitated automobile travel throughout the United States, so too would the information superhighway create a vast communications network that would facilitate the movement of digital information throughout the United States.