This soon developed into desktop broadcasting. Computer bulletin boards worldwide pour out new kinds of information on several hundred thousand varied, narrow-niche interests. These bulletin board systems have proliferated far and wide because The cost of modems has plummeted while their capabilities and transmission speed have multiplied. Faster modems send more information each minute for less cost. Long-distance phone costs per minute dropped 50 percent in 10 years.
Modems are now an integral part of most office computers and many home computers.
In fact, the number of modems is an ever bigger percentage of the total number of computers worldwide. There are often thousands of databases available which are of some potential usefulness to a single field of interest. Later in this and subsequent chapters, we'll explore computer bulletin boards and online networks in greater depth. Users by the millions send billions of messages a year. Eighty percent of them are internal or within an organization.