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typologize communication and media technologies, including computer technologies. The most widespread
classifications have been based on technical properties, forms of presentation, or the information content. But
as different media technologies merge in digitization, different forms of presentation merge in multimedia, and
different content merges in multi-funtional or full service networks, these types of current classifications seem
less and less instructive and satisfying.
The Classification of Information Traffic Patterns
One possible alternative way of classifying new media technologies, which overcomes some of these
drawbacks, is the media typology developed by [Bordewijk & Kaam 1986]. A media typology which they have
designated as »a new classification of tele-information services«, de facto motivated by the present explosion
of tele-information systems, to be understood here as the merger of digital telecommunication and computer
technology. The distinctive mark of this typology is that it is defined independently of the technical design of
the media, the form of presentation, and the content of information, and instead based on social power
relations and power positions,1 which constitute different ‘information traffic patterns’. One of the most widely
used metaphors for computer networks as media has been the ‘Information Super Highway’. (The extent of its
dissemination is among other things reflected by its many international variations: Der Infobahn (de),
Autoroute de l’information (fr), Autostrade dell’informazione (it), Autopistas de la informacion (es),
Autoestrada de informação (pt), informations-motorveje (dk).) A metaphor that was already a cliché before the
majority understood its implications, and a metaphor that is still heatedly debated, it has been heavily criticized
for creating wrong conceptions. In this particular context, however, the metaphor–as already indicated by the
title of this paper–is appropriate, since it relates directly to the mapping of information traffic on the Internet
Highway, which Bordewijk and Kaam refer to as ‘the idealized information traffic patterns’. In the following, I
will give a brief description of the different information traffic patterns, primarily based on Bordewijk and
Kaam’s presentation.
The typology takes its point of departure in two basic questions, partly concerning the central or decentral
position of sender and receiver, and partly concerning the ownership of the information and the control of the
access to and the use of the information. Here (C) is the information service provider, and (i) is the information
service consumer. These terms have the double advantage of including technical facilities, but leaving the
direction of the information flow open. The two questions can be stated as follows:
_ Is the transmitted information owned by an information service providing center (C) or an individual information
service consumer (i)?
_ Is the transmission and use of the information controlled by an information service providing center (C) or
an individual information service consumer (i)?
The answers to these two questions can be combined in a single matrix definition, thus giving four possible
combinations of answers, representing what Bordewijk and Kaam describe as »four idealized information
traffic patterns«: transmission, conversation, consultation, and registration [see fig.1].
Top-left: Transmission. If the information service center produces and is the owner of the information, as
well as the sole controller of the choice of and time for distribution of the information to the information consumer,
we have a case of transmission. (Bordewijk and Kaam use the term ‘allocution’, but for the sake of consistency
in the terminology I have chosen the term ‘transmission’). In this traffic pattern the flow of
information will thus exclusively run in one direction, from the service center (C) to the individual consumer
(i) as illustrated in [Fig. 2]. If the information center serves several consumers, which is of course often the
case, we have the generalized pattern noted in [Fig. 3], in which (C) is the service center and (i1, i2, i3 etc.)
are individual consumers. In other words, this is the kind of communication often referred to as one-way
communication, one-to-many communication, mass-communication or mass media.
Characteristic features of the transmitting media are that a large (potentially infinite) amount of information
is available to the information center; that all consumers in principle receive exactly the same information
and often receive the information synchronously; and that, with respect to power, the media are strongly asymmetrical
and centralistic, since the center has maximum power over the information traffic by deciding content
as well as programming, and the consumer has minimal power, being totally subject to the decisions of the
center in both aspects. In practical situations, consumers will, more often than not, have the possibility of
giving some kind of feedback, but because the model has been designed as an ‘idealized’ information traffic
pattern, this aspect has been left out. The prototypical examples of the transmission pattern are of course
1. The term ‘power’ as it is used in this context should not be taken too literally, but rather be understood as a sort of
‘relative dominance’ or a ‘right to dispose of’. For a discussion of power and computer technology in a related field see
[Jantzen & Jensen 1993].