History

What is it?

Infobank Computer as a development goes back over 30 years to the mid 1970's.

  • 1976 a computerized information service

  • 1978 a consumer financial services product with instant computerized underwriting (later adopted as credit scoring by the housing industry and others)

  • 1981 early efforts at online services using cable tv as the distribution channel

  • 1983 pioneered in Public Access Systems coupled with online services known then as Videotex

  • 1985 early work in multimedia, authoring tools, systems architechure, economics of information, online strategies for consumers

  • 1987 pioneered in taking technology and online services to the consumer with early cybercafe development

  • 1988 pioneered in creating and developing a corporate villa and integrating networking as strategy

  • 1990's continued to refine the infobank model to include all digital data types

Contributions to it and homage come from earlier work by family members.

George Neal worked for the ELECTRIC UTILITY industry in Kansas, Pennsylvania, and Iowa beginning in 1908, and his library provided an invaluable perspective on the development and growth of a new and similar industry that we could use as a model. He retired as Chairman in the mid 1960's and his firm is now owned by Berkshire Hathaway.

William R. Norris worked in FINANCIAL BANKING at a family bank for over 30 years until his death in the 1960's.

William R. Norris Jr. worked in ROAD CONSTRUCTION and BANKING until his death in 1967.

Today, Infobank is led by William N Norris (Will) who looked at the emerging digital industry in the 1970's and recognized that there were similarities to the emergence and development of the ELECTRIC UTILITY industry, the FINANCIAL industry and ROADS. In 1983 he gave definition to his work by defining it as a DIGITAL UTILITY. By the 1990's he had further refined the various digital data types incorporated in a DIGITAL UTILILTY to include, video, music, animation, text, money, software, grid or cloud services, communication, news, and pictures in all languages of the world.

His pursuit of a DIGITAL UTILITY over a 25 year span was a brave but early decision. Many of the key components of the industry went thru many icarnations, took years to mature, to become accepted and usable. It's fair to say that Will was knee deep in much of this change.

Trust is a valuable commodity. We believe in family stewardship, diligence, continuity of values, the long term perspective and independence. Relationships are important to us. Each generation has followed the same principles and we intend to continue with that focus.