THE bewildering array of crises, real and fancied, which buffet the public consciousness and preempt the attention of public policy makers—inflation, unemployment, energy, environment, health care, crime, urban decay—have tended to obscure other important public issues which, if less critical, cannot be ignored. Among such other concerns, the future of our communications system is emerging as one of the most important.

The vital role of communications in our society is such a commonplace that it could perhaps be passed over without comment. But, possibly because no crisis has riveted public attention on the pervasive influence of communications technologies and services in our lives, we take them largely for granted. There is no harm in that, provided we do not permit the comforts of our age to lull us into complacency about the social and economic role of communications, which grows in size, importance, and complexity each year. In some circles, it is claimed that what Daniel Bell has labeled the "post industrial society" has become an "information society." One recent study indicates that as much as one half of the nation's GNP and its labor force can be attributed to the production, storage, distribution, or manipulation of information. The precise accuracy of that figure is debatable, as are the policy implications which some have sought to draw from it. Nevertheless, it is quite apparent that we are moving unambiguously towards an economy in which the production and distribution of information is a dominant element. Communications is not merely indispensable to that information economy; it is increasingly inseparable from it—a fact which poses some vexing problems of public policy (about which more later).