| |
Voir le numéro complet
Acheter le numéro
(version fançaise)
|
|
 N° 10 - June 2020 - Web contents: Uses and archives
issue editor : Michel SCHMITT
 read summary and abstracts
Introduction:
Michel SCHMITT
Conseil général de l’Economie (CGE)
Once upon a time, there were floppy disks with a capacity of 128 kilobytes…. This puts a smile on the face of the older among us, since the Internet and cloud have blown away such objects while imbuing us with the sensation that the space for storing contents is sky high… after all, the contents at our disposal are infinite. Websites offer libraries of films, music and books, all in an astonishing quantity.
This profusion of resources on the Web has changed our behavior patterns. Looking for information or a definition? Wikipedia on the smartphone, which is within reach if not already in our hands. The answer is instantaneous, whereas going to a library or looking for your favorite dictionary and thumbing through it takes much more time. Besides, since the dictionary is an edition dating back a few years, its information might be outdated and, to clap the climax, the information found has not been indexed. As this anecdote shows, the quantity and immediacy of the information placed on the Net have changed our relation to knowledge and spawned new uses.
read more
|
|
| |
Voir le numéro complet
Acheter le numéro
(version fançaise)
|
|
N° 9 - March 2020 - The radio-frequency spectrum! Management of a key resource
issue editor : François RANCY
read summary and abstracts
Foreword:
Gilles BRÉGANT
general manager of the Agence Nationale des Fréquences (ANFR)
Though invisible, radio frequencies have stage-managed for what is happening in much of the visible world. Our everyday lives are now “wireless”. Remote controls, mobile telephones, satellites, radar, etc. are weaving imperceptible webs that endow us with powers like those that heroes or the gods used to wield: actions at a distance, ubiquity, foreknowledge of the weather, sight in the dark, unlimited and instantaneous access to knowledge, etc.
Within a few decades, humanity has discovered and learned to control the radio-frequency spectrum, this strange natural resource. Just as the discovery of the New World upturned history after the 15th century, we shall probably come to realize that the exploration of this terra incognita measured in hertz instead of hectares has set the stage for our destinies since the start of the 20th century. Wireless transmission, radio stations, radar, live broadcasts worldwide, satellites, GPS and mobile telephones have, over the past century, set a fast pace for a humanity that is amazed or… bewildered. As engineers domesticate new bandwidths with esoteric names tainted with mystery (the Ku, Ka and X bands), this resource, though scarce, has new, endless prospects. The speed at which changes have followed upon each other inevitably arouses apprehension. Some persons suspect that the wizardry of radio frequencies is a black magic. However this technology has never been so well controlled as it now is at the start of the 21st century.
read more
Introduction:
François RANCY
director of the ITU-R’s Radiocommunication Bureau
The radio-frequency spectrum is a scarce resource used by most of the applications on which our societies have, within a few decades, become so dependent, ranging from GSM to 5G, from Wi-Fi to Bluetooth, from GPS to satellite imagery, from FM radio to DAB, DDTV and television by satellite. Many an essential activity relies on this spectrum — transportation by air, river and sea, defense and security systems, scientific and spatial research, meteorology, monitoring of the climate and Earth’s resources….
Five billion people currently subscribe to at least one mobile service, including three billion for wideband. Thanks to six billion receivers of radio navigation by satellite, we can be located at all times and at any point on the globe. Nearly two billion people have digital terrestrial television (DTTV); and more than a billion, a receiver for television via satellite. All of this uses frequency bands that have been harmonized, organized and protected worldwide for decades now, while the underlying technology has been undergoing development.
read more |
|
