The demise of CompuServe and the future of medical nanotechnology

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Unit 4 DB 3 Primary Posting  
The demise of CompuServe and the future of medical nanotechnology
 – Lessons to be Learned?
Joel Maloff
For this assignment, we research an organization that started with a great plan but saw that plan fail due to changing circumstances beyond their control.
Perhaps the most significant example of a failure to “see the forest for the trees” is the demise of CompuServe. Prior to the emergence of the commercial Internet in 1990, online access was the domain of service providers like CompuServe, America Online (AOL), and Prodigy (a joint venture of IBM and Sears). Each of these was an island of connectivity. Users of one service were unable to connect with users of the other services, and each service charged an access fee for a dial-up connection using a landline phone and a modem. At the peak in 1994, CompuServe had revenues of $433 million and 2.2 million customers (Frees, 1997).
The executives at CompuServe failed to see the impact of changing technology. Dial-up access was rapidly replaced by broadband and especially cable connectivity. This meant that thousands of small Internet service providers were replacing the need for modem banks tied to CompuServe. Those small Internet service providers were then, in turn, replaced by the large cable company conglomerates like Comcast, Spectrum, or AT&T. Consumers and business customers now needed only to have access to the Internet and they could connect – often for free – to a nearly unlimited repository of information, social media, and collaboration resources.
The enabling technology for CompuServe was the dial-up modem that locked a customer into their service. The irony is that the Internet was created to establish connectivity among dissimilar networks in 1969. At that time, ARPAnet, DECnet, BitNet, and many others existed in the research, education, and government environments. The Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol was created to address that problem. It was limited to research, education, and government acceptable uses until 1990. Once unleashed, the CompuServe business model was doomed.
The sociotechnical plan that I am exploring involves the use of nanotechnology in medical applications. Nanotechnology is already in use today in healthcare in many areas. However, the promise of nanotechnology is the synthetic management of the human immune system by minuscule machines (Batin, Turchin, Markov, Zhila, & Denkenberger, 2017). The concept evolves from simply monitoring biological systems to actively treating disease and repairing the damage. The future sees nanotechnology continuously repairing damaged cells and substantially prolonging life, minimizing aging effects. The final step envisions nanomachines replacing human biological cells completely, and leading to the prospect of immortality (Batin et al., 2017).
The lessons learned from CompuServe’s failure can be instructive when considering nanotechnology in medical applications. CompuServe’s business model was, at its core, built on dial-up modems and information resources that they provided to their customers would justify the monthly service fees. There were two forces that doomed CompuServe – technical and societal. The technology – the emergence of the commercial Internet – changed and people wanted access to multiple resources with few limitations. That included the rise of social media as we know it today.
The use of nanotechnology in medicine is driven by several forces. This includes economic and emotional. The researchers and developers of medical nanotechnology recognize that illness and mortality are unpleasant realities and that society will pay for reducing disease and extending life. For CompuServe, the game-changer was the commercial Internet. For medical nanotechnology, the forces that must be addressed include ethical, societal, and technical. If the vision of a completely artificial human body is achieved, will humanity continue to exist? Mortality influences who we are. Without it, who will we become? Will medical nanotechnology exacerbate the “digital divide” but now we have the mortal/immortal division?
CompuServe teaches us to not build our business on a technological house of cards. It is important that the value of medical technology not be lost in potential aspirations for immortality. Medical nanotechnology may have repercussions that we cannot possibly consider today.
References
Batin, M., Turchin, A., Markov, S., Zhila, A., & Denkenberger, D. (2017). Artificial Intelligence in Life Extension: from Deep Learning to Superintelligence. Informatica, 41(4), 401-417.
Frees, J. W. (1997). CompuServe's wild ride. Columbus Business First. Retrieved from https://www.bizjournals.com/columbus/stories/1997/03/24/story2.html


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