How TeleRead Could Help Business

Management General Website. A great site--and home of a shorter version of this article.

A Not-So-Modest Proposal to Shift Billions from Paperwork to Knowledge--and Smarten Up the Workforce

By David H. Rothman

What if we could fight paperwork, government and private, and also get children to read more books and grow smarter with computers?

Suppose we could popularize the use of electronic forms by everyone, not just Netheads and the patrons of Macys.Com. In a nation with a gross domestic product of more than $7 trillion annually, we could save hundreds of billions over the years. Along the way we could also aid education and training of the workforce, a connection that I'll explain later in this essay.

Today a middle-class family, not just a rich one, may pay H&R Block a whopping $500 or $1,000 a year to guide the victims through the income tax maze. Don't blame the Internal Revenue Service alone. Capitol Hill has riddled the tax code with loopholes, introducing new complexities, and even if politicians kill off the beloved IRS and Form 1040 someday, other joys will abound. The private sector holds out its own pleasures for citizens: health insurance forms, loan applications, you name it. And from the other end, imagine the burden on businesses that deal with consumers. If only the information leapt directly into corporate computers rather than having to be keyed in by armies of clerks.

But suppose electronic forms were truly a mass phenomenon. Consider the rewards for business. An Internet transaction can cost a bank a tenth as much as a transaction at the usual branch, according to a study from Booz, Allen & Hamilton; and other estimates are even more optimistic. It's easy to see why, and not just because of the savings in keystrokes. Electronic forms online can be smart enough to catch errors. Take a Web brokerage; forms can alert you if you're about to pay more for a stock than you have in your account at the time. What's more, Federal Express believes so much in e-forms that it has made computers available to some shippers for free. And of course FedEx and UPS have put forms on the Web; you can see for yourself if a package arrived in Seattle or Waukegan.

Alas, today's technology isn't pain-free for consumers. Typically you must go to your computer table and wait for the machine to boot up, and you must cope with a variety of technical challenges. Enter the TeleRead proposal, which would encourage development of the right hardware for reading. The same little tablet-style computers that excelled for filling out electronic forms could also be superb for displaying books. Right now you can't laze back on the sofa with a 30-pound Dell or Compaq and enjoy a best-seller. Even a laptop won't do.

No, the best computer for such activities would be a machine no bigger than a tablet. The pen-style stylus that you used for forms would work just fine, thank you, for navigating your way through a book or for that matter through the World Wide Web. What's more, with intelligent design, such systems would be easier to use than present computers. Future versions could even transcribe your voice.

Already, several book-oriented computers of the tablet variety are on the way. But at least one industry analyst who has seen two of the machines, David Thor of Sherwood Research, complains that the screens still are not sharp enough for many consumers. Just as frustratingly, you can't use these puny computers to fill out electronic forms or surf the Web, and the costs of the hardware can run well into the hundreds or more. What's more, the machines do not use the same electronic formats to display books at their best; it's a little like the early days of VCRs when Beta and VHS were still duking it out. And at least in one case, the electronic books may still be almost as expensive as paper ones; and that is hardly the best news if you think $25 is a gouge for a book.

Suppose, however, that business and government worked together to hasten the coming of appropriate machines as well as a library of books for Americans to read online. Here's a three-part plan.

PART ONE

First, Al Gore, Newt Gingrich, Fortune 500 companies, schools, libraries and nonprofits should send a strong signal to Silicon Valley. We need TeleReaders, computers fit for both forms and books--not just one or the other--so we can enjoy powerful synergies. Washington and the states could establish programs to encourage local libraries to buy the right machines from a variety of vendors. But that isn't all. Al Gore has helped popularize the Net through constant talk, through the smoke-and-mirrors route; and he, Gingrich and major CEOs could use the same tack here. Perhaps federal and state procurement programs could help libraries and schools buy some machines, but the talk actually might count more than the money, especially if corporate leaders joined in.

Exactly how would the talk help? Well, even if there were procurement programs, the idea wouldn't be a mindless government give-way. Instead, with reinforcement from opinion leaders, the library machines would serve as marketing tools to convince private citizens to buy their own hardware. Once they used TeleReaders in the libraries or perhaps borrowed them, John and Jane Q. could see the advantages. With mass production, the right machines could eventually go for $99.95 or less at the local Kmart even if they came with wireless capabilities. A major Catch 22--how can we have throw-away-priced machines if the market isn't there, and how can we have a market if the machines aren't there?--would vanish. It would not happen overnight, but it would happen.

PART TWO

Part II of the TeleRead plan would be a well-stocked national digital library that eventually would contain thousands and thousands of commercial books, not just classics in the public domain. Books are the best way to encourage sustained thought; it isn't enough just to have students hopping from Web site to site. TeleRead could also include educational software and multimedia, but books should be the real priority. There are some welcome implications here for industry. In an era when corporations are entrusting workers with more and more responsibilities, we urgently need to cultivate analytical capabilities outside the elite. There would also be some cultural benefits. With a Carnegie-style library approach and free books, we could encourage parents to read, not just children; the best role models would be at home. And the end result? Perhaps a society that is just a little more thoughtful, and less hedonistic, and not quite as worshipful of the here and now of computer games and fast-paced TV series. The idea would not be to wipe out sex, television and Duke Nukem 3D; rather, just to just provide a little balance.

But how to pay for the library? Support could come from a variety of sources. Tax dollars, yes. And also private philanthropy. If Bill Gates loves The Great Gatsby enough to own several copies, perhaps he can show some leadership and buy up the rights and donate it to the Net even now. A mere half a percent of his wealth has gone so far for libraries.

Publishers themselves could help support TeleRead books, just as they take chances on existing ones. They would be paid per dial-up, and they could gamble money up front and along the way--to raise the cap on how much revenue they could earn from individual titles. Good publishers would actually come out ahead, because of the tax money available and because the electronic approach would cost so much less than printing and distributing a paper book.

Writers would benefit too. Right now they earn perhaps $6 billion a year from book royalties from U.S. publishers, or less than a third of the amount by which Bill Gates' fortune swelled up in one 12-month period.

No, the answer isn't to oppressively tax away Gates $50 billion; instead, it is to expand opportunities for other developers of intellectual property. Please--no platitudes about his Doing It All On His Own. Windows 98 would be strictly in Buck Rogers Land if the Military Industrial Complex had not helped to pay for the development of integrated circuits and other tech powerful enough to run Mr. Softee's flagship product.

PART THREE

An even more powerful argument exists to counter the skeptics, however--TeleRead's Part III, the popularization of electronic forms. This would aid the very businesses that normally would worry about the tax burden. A national digital library could start small and grow along with the economies that the mass use of e-forms brought about. Indirectly but in a powerful way, corporations would enjoy a massive tax rebate through the more efficient use of information technology. Remember, it is not enough for the corporate world alone to computerize. The more customers go online, the greater the savings from paperwork reduction and other improvements. Children would grow up with TeleReaders. The consumer who was not computer-smart would be the freakish exception.

Quite correctly, Alan Greenspan expects computers and telecommunications to "appreciably raise our standard of living in the twenty-first century." TeleRead would drive it still higher by expanding educational opportunities and diverting resources from bureaucracy to creation of greater wealth.

David H. Rothman (rothman@clark.net) runs the TeleRead project (http://www.teleread.org), does Web consulting and is the author of NetWorld! (Prima Publishing, 1996) and other books. Earlier versions of the TeleRead proposal have appeared in U.S. News & World Report, the Washington Post, Computerworld and Scholarly Publishing: The Electronic Frontier, an information science collection from The MIT Press and the American Society for Information Science.