Next comes the information (not technology) revolution.

"In the 1980s information technology (IT) took off. Computing went from an occasional activity for specialists to routine in the lives of most technical professionals. Then it did likewise for white collar workers and students. Then, for many blue collar workers and on into our homes. In the 1990s, we've gotten networked — first the technical community, then business and school, then home — via modems, Ethernet, some broadband and wireless. That's an 'IT Revolution.'

"Now we're poised for the Information Revolution. Newly accessible digitally formatted information is weaved into our daily lives. Technical professionals first, then white collar workers and students, then most of us will rebuild our work and home lives around this resource — ubiquitous electronic information."

— Alan Porter, Director, Technology Policy and Assessment Center

Interpersonal aspects of commerce and education will remain.

"Just as the photocopier and the desktop computer did not eliminate paper, secretaries and offices (as many had forecast), the devices of the Information Revolution, will not eliminate the interpersonal aspects of commerce and education. For those with access, the pace and volume of human interactions on the network will increase enormously, and for many this change will be enriching.

"But the important social aspects of commerce and education — gathering, sharing, learning about behavior, spontaneously connecting with others — that require face-to-face contact will not decrease significantly. People will continue to congregate in classrooms, offices, churches, bars and shopping malls.

"The cumulative impact will be a continuing increase in the speed and number of total 'information events,' and people 50 years from now will wonder why so many in our era thought that the Information Revolution would increase our leisure."

— Dr. Richard Barke, Associate Professor, School of Public Policy

Most lives will remain untouched.

"In the years ahead, the vast majority of people of the world will go about their daily lives largely untouched by the Information Revolution. The requisite massive expenditures on technology infrastructure, operations and personal equipment will not be justified in developing countries until more fundamental needs of adequate food, clothing, shelter, medical care and basic education are widely satisfied.

"Satisfying those needs will absorb most of the income of the increasingly populous Third World for the foreseeable future. To be sure, there will be many juxtapositions of the old and the new — for example, when a peasant walks half a day over dirt trails to visit a village doctor in a hut equipped with a satellite link to a distant medical center. But those instances will be the exceptions, not the rule, in people's daily lives."

— Dr. Peter G. Sassone, Associate Professor, School of Economics

Who will win the new power struggle?

"The ongoing computer revolution, the Internet and other new information technologies have resulted in a remarkable array of new applications.

Technology-driven socioeconomic change is occurring. However, there will be many struggles between forces for central control (as has been encouraged in the Industrial Age and existing power bases) and those for individuality (as is encouraged by the two-way communications of the Internet and similar technologies).

"Already the power of technology for free exchange of information has been seen in the breakup of the Soviet Union. While there will be considerable pressure by many governments and commercial and social interests to 'regain control,' the fact is — and will remain — that technology-aided information exchange will remain 'free.'

"The genie is out of the bottle."

— Frederick B. Dyer, Principal Research Scientist Emeritus

What is beyond the human-machine interface?

"Two revolutions have occurred in information technology: We use electronic machines instead of paper to store information, and we have successfully connected these machines together. As a consequence, computer users suffer a lot of 'red eye' as they interface with their information machines.

"The next revolution will move beyond today's human-machine interface — and liberate all those 'red-eyed' users. Machines interfacing with machines — 'knowledge-based systems,' 'automatic search systems,' 'preprogrammed abstracting systems' and much more — will become commonplace. Look for the coming of the automatic 'information finding, classifying and processing' machine."

— Dr. Donghua Zhu, Visiting Professor, Technology Policy and Assessment Center

Decentralization is the future.

"The Industrial Age was based upon the centralized coordination of large numbers of manual laborers and service workers. The 'Knowledge Age,' in contrast, is based upon the decentralized coordination of large numbers of knowledge workers. One should therefore expect that decentralized mechanisms of all sorts (e.g., products, services, business processes, business strategies, markets, government agencies) will flourish at the expense of centralized ones in the future.

"Predictions: The network computer will not be a successful product; governments will lose control of their currencies and the ability to control interest rates; communications industries that developed as monopolies, oligopolies or because of sheer size will wither."

— Gary S. Tjaden, Director, Center for Enterprise Systems, Information Technology & Telecommunications Laboratory, Georgia Tech Research Institute

An ethical dilemma exists.

"Ethical issues and concerns have always underscored the utilization, management and control of information. In the Age of Information, political and societal tensions will increasingly surface and coalesce, creating significant differences among groups within nations, as well as among nations. The quality of information content will be deliberated by the perceived haves and the have-nots. Who controls information will be a major issue for 21st century scholars and politicians."

— Don Frank, Assistant Director for Information Services

Management of knowledge capital will take off.

"Because knowledge is becoming the key wealth-creating asset, and because high-value knowledge is hard to accumulate in organizations — and even harder to organize and effectively deploy — managers in both the private and public sectors will want to learn how to master the process of knowledge management. And, they will want to become innovators in creating knowledge capital in order to achieve competitive advantage. As a consequence, leading schools of business and public administration will make major curriculum changes early in the 21st century."

— Dr.William H. Read, Professor, School of Public Policy

Mere access to information will not be enough.

"The development of information networks has not followed a purely technological imperative. They have been shaped by social networks. New social networks will interact in their own way with the current information infrastructure to lead the next stages in its implementation. The Internet, for instance, serves to keep track of the dynamics of various socio-economic phenomena.

"Networks not only bring about change, but are the ideal means to monitor change. Because of the importance that this has for both business and government, it is foreseeable that the automatic feeding of transaction information to control and decision centers of various kinds will become ubiquitous.

"The key strategic issue in this environment will be the ability to bring processing power, broadly construed, to bear on any point in time and space that circumstances may demand. Mere access to information will not be sufficient. Making something happen with information, from attribution of meaning to rapid incorporation into ongoing decision processes, is what will make a difference."

— Dr. Juan D. Rogers, School of Public Policy

Science will move online.

"By 2010, scientific publication will be a fully electronic medium. Journals will no longer be the major means of organizing scientific information; browsers will help scientific readers select new papers from across a variety of disciplines and sources. Scientific 'papers' will contain digital information of all sorts, including, but not limited to, text, graphics, movies, audio, simulations and visualizations. The life cycle of scientific publication will be considerably shortened by electronic media. Collaboration, authorship, submission and review will become more intertwined as science moves online. Quality assurance will be provided by electronic labeling services — entities neither fully academic, corporate, nor governmental in nature."

— Scott Cunningham, Science Policy Research Unit, University of Sussex

Electronic learning is the future.

"The evidence is clear that there are many problems with the current academic system. The fact of the matter is that college instructional methods have not changed much over the last 50 years. Those institutions that properly assess the changes coming and respond in the appropriate manner will grow and prosper, while many others will decline and close up shop.

"The present educational process can be likened to an ancient cottage-shop industry that is neither efficient (costs are growing relative to income), nor effective (does not do a very good job of increasing learning). Clearly college education is ripe for major technological change that makes education both more efficient and effective.

"There is no question that electronic learning is going to grow rapidly in importance and dramatically change the college educational process."

— Dr. Farrokh Mistree, Professor, School of Mechanical Engineering

Authentication will be more important than copyright.

"The creative human process of authoring is in part based upon the collection, interpretation and analysis of existing information. In the future the source, ownership and authentication of information become significant issues as intelligent processors duplicate these human processes to become both primary and secondary publishers.

"Authentication of information sources becomes more important than copyright to ensure these processors do not reuse data that is out of context, thus resulting in false conclusions. As this prediction matures, changes will occur in the publishing business, in educational use of information, and in the purpose and use of libraries."

— Robert G. Patterson, Manager of Knowledge Transfer, Institute of Paper Science and Technology

Winners will apply and use technology.

"Our physical ability to send, process and display data will increase enormously with cost-effective developments in bandwidth, computing, optical storage, imaging and display technologies.

"But the real challenge of the Information Revolution isn't the development of technology, but how to apply and use it. The technology is developing faster than our ability to adopt it. The greatest difficulty is getting people to change. Companies spent huge sums on information technology in the 1980s, with limited improvements in productivity.

"The winners in the Information Revolution will be the people and organizations that can adopt change to the way they work and live."

— Dr.William H. Bellinger, Visiting Professor, School of Management
— William M. Riggs, Director, Management of Technology Program

Software dependency will become a problem.

"Traditional approaches to use of information systems has lead to a naive dependence on these systems. In the future, information systems will continue to support more complex and critical functions, resulting in even more dependence on these systems. It is my prediction that such dependence will result in an IS-based crisis with national and/or global implications.

"Further, use of these systems will have a negative impact on quality of life. Whether or not continued integration of information systems into organizational processes leads to the optimization of these processes, information technologies will not decrease the length of the workday. Rather, they will allow organizations to claim more hours of the worker's day as these technologies continue to become accessible and mobile. Work will permeate more and more aspects of our lives."

— Dr. Judith P. Carlisle, Assistant Professor, School of Management

Information organizing is not the future.

"Organizing information will not be so important in the future; evaluating, validating and analyzing information will be. Consequently, there will be a growing need for information and knowledge analysts whose activities are focused on content, meaning and value of information. They will need to know how to use the most modern information technologies and at the same time be educators and mentors in a changing learning environment."

— Julie Yang, Librarian