This is a book about tomorrow's Information Age, from the underlying technologies and their uses in nearly every human activity to their social, political and economic repercussions. One picture pulls together these developments - a twenty-first century village marketplace, where people and computers buy, sell, and freely exchange information and information services.

The book has three parts: Shaping the future, which explains the new technologies so that readers can judge unfolding events for themselves; How your life will change, which imagines how and justifies why our lives will be recast; and Reuniting technology and humanity, which assesses the impact of these changes on our society and our humanity. An afterword, new to the paperback edition, presents six action agendas for rich people, for the poor, for business executives and entrepreneurs, technologists, humanists, and national leaders who want to benefit from these changes.

Ideas build so that the reader may first gather increasing command over the technology, then its effect on individuals, and then its imprint on society, and finally leading to a grand conclusion about the course of technology and humanity in the twenty-first century. The narrative, too, builds around three characters: me and my experiences in part I, you the readers and your lives in part II, and society at large in part III. The book is sprinkled with anecdotes not only for their interest, but also for the lessons they teach about the future.

What Will Be tries to answer questions frequently asked by people not versed in computer technology, examining benefits as well as concerns. It also sets an agenda for information technology and its uses in the twenty-first century. Instead of focusing only on what is exciting, it strives to assess what is real, assaulting along the way the breathless hype presented by the media, which is often haphazard, narrowly focused, uninformed about what is technically possible, and unaware of just how exciting and wondrous the new world truly is. The issues are viewed from both the techie and the humie (humanistic) side, with affection (and occasional scolding) for both extremes. There is ample affection, too, for the users of these new technologies: the ancient humans we all are. (p. XV-XVI)

CONTENTS
Foreword.
Preface.

I. Shaping the Future.

1. Vision.

A Home for the Web.
The Information Marketplace.
Infrastructure Is the Key.
Global Fever.
Questions.

2. The Revolution Unfolds.

Birth of the Computer Community.
No More Buses.
The Commercial Siren Song.
Arpanet, Internet, and the Web.
War of the Spiders.
Battle of the Pipes.
The Five Pillars of the Information Age.

3. Where Person Meets Machine.

Audio, Video, Bodyo.
Talking to Your Computer.
Bodynets and Smart Rooms.
Virtual and Augmented Reality.
Electronic Noses and Haptic Interfaces.
The Ultimate Human-Machine Interface.

4. New Tools.

The New Software.
Automatization Tools.
Good Ole (and New) E-mail.
Groupwork and Telework.
Pipe Managers.
Hyper-Organizers and Finders.
Computer Security Schemes.
Information Infrastructures.

II. How Your Life Will Change.

5. Daily Life.

Music Match.
House Doctors and Data Sockets.
Auto-Cook.
Your Own Custom Publisher.
Informed Automobiles.
Discovering Insurmountable Needs.
Mass Individualization.
Togetherness.
Financial Planning.
A Virtual Compassion Corps.
Your Day.

6. Pleasure.

From Your Easy Chair.
Forbidden Pleasures.
Creation and Flashbacks.
Art.
Virtual Neighborhoods.
Games and Adventures.

7. Health.

Guardian Angel.
The Medical Information Marketplace.
Automated Specialists.
Robotic and Augmented-Reality Surgery.

8. Learning.

Experiences and Prospects.
Homework.
Simulators.
Design and Creativity.
Automated Tutors and Masters.
The Changes Ahead.

9. Business and Organizations.

Group Power.
Business Changes.
Electronic Commerce.
Making Things.
Services, Services, Services.
Noble Quests.
Pan-Organizational Changes.
Knowledge Fever.
Accountability, Egalitarianism, Responsibility.
Industrial Performance.

10. Government.

Internal Changes.
War and Peace.
Privacy Fears.

III. Reuniting Technology and Humanity.

11. The Value of Information.

End Game.
The Myth of Cheap Copies.
The Economic Value of Information.
Info-Junk and Intermediaries.
The Rich-Poor Gap.
Employment or Unemployment.
The Reach of Information.

12. Electronic Bulldozers.

Plows, Engines, Networks.
What's Wrong with Technology.
Ease of Use Revisited.
What's the Horsepower of Your Text Editor.
Greater Productivity.
Toward a Work-Free Society.

13. Electronic Proximity.

A Thousand Times Closer.
Humans and Machines.
Rise of the Urban Villager.
Nations or Networks.
A Universal Culture?
Crime and the Law.
No Passports, No Checkpoints.
Big Brother.

14. Ancient Humans.

Overload.
Virtual Laughter and Tele-friendship.
The Forces of the Cave.
What Will Be.
The Age of Unification.
Unification.

Afterword: What to Do.

Agenda for Individuals in the Industrialized World.
Agenda to Help the Poor.
Business Agenda.
Techie Agenda.
Humie Agenda.
Government Agenda.

Appendix: The Five Pillars of the Information Age.

1. Numbers, Numbers Everywhere.
2. Two-Fingered Monsters.
3. Computer Labor.
4. Faster Than Smoke Signals.
5. Computer Networks.

Index.

This is a book about tomorrow's Information Age, from the underlying technologies and their uses in nearly every human activity to their social, political and economic repercussions. One picture pulls together these developments - a twenty-first century village marketplace, where people and computers buy, sell, and freely exchange information and information services.