AND THE WALLS CAME TUMBLING DOWN

Information technology eventually will affect every human, every insti tution, and every nation on earth. The new power it provides is adding to the functionality of goods and services and opening opportunities for new ones. In ever-widening circles, information technology is tran sforming our lives: our concepts of place/space; the influence of time on what we can know and control; the way we work and with whom we wor k; the sense of community we develop and the groups with which we iden tify; the values/beliefs/culture that guide and motivate us; and the w ay we think, that is, the processes by which we convert data into info rmation and use information to form our perception of reality The impa ct will be felt for decades, possibly even centuries. A change of this magnitude inevitably will be disruptive and threatening as well as li berating and empowering. The balance achieved between the two will be determined by what we do, not by the technology itself. A nearly unive rsal feature of the changes occurring is a focus on smaller things, sm aller events. The resolving power being created is analogous to an int ellectual microscope which enables us to identify characterize, manipu late, and control small ''units of account'' in huge number. Concurren tly, in a further analogy, we are developing an intellectual telescope that enables us to see and control a growing landscape of events that may be remote in time or space. This power enables us to tackle probl ems heretofore intractable or invisible. Copyright (C) 1996 Elsevier S cience Ltd.