What is the NII?

What is the National Information Infrastructure?

Professor John McCann
Fuqua School of Business
Duke University

Last update: March 6, 1995

The National Information Infrastructure (NII), a phrase that has been popularized by the Clinton administration, means many things to many people. This site contains definitions and descriptions of the NII that I have found in my Web wanderings and readings. I will be inserting new definitions as I run across them. Please send new ones via email.

The following views were expressed during a video forum on the NII:

Ester Dyson:" It is like an ecosystem. It grows naturally and has lots of different micro-climates and room for lots of communities. Don't mess with it lightly."
George Conrades (CEO of Bolt, Beranek & Newman, Inc.): "It's like rock 'n 'roll. The kids got it right away. They understand the beat and the language and the attending social phenomena."
Warren McFarlen (HBS Professor): "It isn't like the interstate highway system because technology is changing at a rate of 35 to 50 percent a year and the shape and form of the vehicles are in transition. It is coming but it will be more expensive, complex, and disruptive than we think."
Craig McCaw: "Human nature is nomadic and we should regain the freedom we lost with the rise of the industrial age ... a utopia in which we will be able to wander the globe, armed with our cellular phones and personal digital assistants, free from nasty inconveniences like a home or community." Note: A Nomadic Research Center has been started by a bicycle-powered nomad.

Source: Natalie Engler, "A Video Forum on the NII," Open Computing, February 1995, p. 18