Oswald H Ganley
Several trends and forces developed in the 1980s that related to international communications and information policy issues as they begin to appear in the 1990s. They include: 1. high-definition television, 2. increasingly powerful personal computers and workstations, 3. more internationalization, flexible regulations, and competition in telecommunications, 4. the 1992 initiative of the European Community, 5. advances in socialist and less developed countries, 6. demographic shifts, 7. growing economic interdependence, and 8. the expanding influence of the mass media in domestic and international political events. These new issues are augmented by long-standing policy concerns involving communications and information. These issues include; 1. the concern of other nations that they will be overrun with US information materials, 2. the growing need for sophisticated international communications, and 3. problems related to the free flow of information.