The present debate concerning the National Information Infrastructure (NII)[1] has focused primarily on the introduction of competitive markets for the supply and distribution of information. Although competition will be an important component of the NII, and one which we welcome, we argue that it is inappropriate to frame the debate entirely in terms of competition. Competition can be seen as ...

mation-processing and communications; (ii) that the national information infrastructure will determine the pace of progress in that overall process; and (iii), that these developments in the digitization and NII arenas will form multimedia as the 'break-through industry'. Around 1992, America witnessed an emerging consensus on three specific points: namely, (i) that digitization is powering a t...