Your workplace and your idea of what it means to be “educated” will be transformed, perhaps almost beyond recognition. Your sense of identity, of who you are and where you belong, may open considerably. In short, just about everything will be done differently.
The global information market will be huge and will combine all the various ways of human goods, services, and ideas are exchanged. On a practical level, this will give you broader choices about most things, including how you earn and invest, what you buy and how much you pay for it, who your friends are and how you spend your time with them, and where and how securely you and your family live.
When you hear the phrase “information highway,” rather than seeing a road, imagine a marketplace or an exchange … All manner of human activity takes place, from billion-dollar deals to flirtations. Many transactions will involve money, tendered in digital form rather than currency. Digital information of all kinds, not just money, will be the new medium of exchange in this market.
A different metaphor that I think comes closer to describing a lot of the activities that will take place is that of the ultimate market. Markets from trading floors to malls are fundamental to human society, and I believe this new one will eventually be the world’s central department store. It will be where we social animals, sell, trade, invest, haggle, pick stuff up, argue, meet new people, and hang out.
One of the most remarkable aspects of this new communications technology is that it will eliminate distance. It won’t matter if someone you are contacting is in the next room or the next continent, because this highly mediated network will be unconstrained by miles and kilometers.
Informational tools are symbolic mediators that amplify the intellect rather than the muscle of their users … these tools … are helping us now by making it much easier to store and transmit information that is already in digital form, but in the near future they will allow us access to almost any information in the world.
You will be able to conduct business, study, explore the world and its cultures, call up and great entertainment, make friends, attend neighborhood markets, and show pictures to distant relatives without leaving your desk or armchair. You won’t leave your network connection behind at the office or in the classroom. It will be more than an object you carry or an appliance you purchase. It will be your passport into a new, mediated way of life.
We may be about to witness the realization of Adam Smith’s ideal market, at last.
This is meant to be a serious book, although 10 years from now it may not appear that way. What I’ve said that turned out to be all right will be considered obvious and what was wrong will be humorous. I believe the course of the creation of the highway will mirror, in many ways, the history of the personal-computer industry É Everyone will be touched by the information highway, and everyone ought to be able to understand its implications.
It is crucial that a broad set of people – not just technologists or those who happen to be in the computer industry – participate in the debate about how this technology should be shaped. If that can be done, the highway will serve the purposes users want. Then it will gain broad acceptance and become a reality.