The learning curves underlying convergence

The convergence of telecommunications and computing technologies and services into a new medium offering integrated services through digital networks was predicted in the 1970s and is beginning to have major social and commercial impacts in the 1990s. This article analyzes the technological infrastructure of convergence to an information highway, tracing the origins of the concept, the false starts, the growth and origins of the Internet and World Wide Web, convergence as a substitution process, and the learning curves of the technologies involved. A number of substitution processes underlying convergence are identified: electronic for mechanical devices, digital for analog devices, and general-purpose programmable devices for special-purpose devices. A model of convegence in terms of a tiered infrastructure of learning curves in information technology is proposed and used to explain the past and forecast the future. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Inc.