The information superhighway (from German: infobahn)[1][2] is a late-20th-century descriptive phrase that aspirationally referred to the increasingly mainstream availability of digital communication systems (and ultimately the Internet and its World Wide Web).
The 1996 publication Wired Style: Principles of English Usage in the Digital Age defines the term as "the whole digital enchilada - interactive, cable, broadband, 500-channel [...] then-Senator Al Gore Jr. introduced it at a 1978 meeting of computer industry folk, in homage to his father, Senator Albert Gore Sr."[4] The McGraw-Hill Computer Desktop Encyclopedia, published in 2001, defines the term as "a proposed high-speed communications system that was touted by the Clinton/Gore administration to enhance education in America in the 21st century.
[5] The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) defines the term as "a route or network for the high-speed transfer of information; esp.
It will be an electronic super highway carrying entertainment, education, and informational commerce, making possible a new and closer coupling of the citizen to his society and culture, but from the retained privacy and convenience of his own home.
Assuming we connect New York with Los Angeles by means of an electronic telecommunication network that operates in strong transmission ranges, as well as with continental satellites, wave guides, bundled coaxial cable, and later also via laser beam fiber optics: the expenditure would be about the same as for a Moon landing, except that the benefits in term of by-products would be greater.