Elon University

Archives: Expert Predictions

2.2 Electronic Commerce

In the near future, every home and business could have an information appliance that combines the capabilities of telephone, television, newspaper, computer, and Internet services such as electronic mail … Avaliablity will be enabled by services that support the publication, dissemination, and access of multimedia information. Convenience will be enhanced by intelligent services that allow inexperienced users to browse information spaces with a combination of speech and graphics and to delegate tasks associated with brokering to automated agents.

1.2 Role of the Federal Government in Information Infrastructure

Information Infrastructure technologies will play a critical role in the Federal government’s own plans to re-engineer its work processes … Vice President [Al] Gore has drawn an analogy between the NII and the first use of telegraphy in a limited government-sponsored demonstration, subsequently followed by widespread private-sector deployment on a national scale.

1.1 Relationship Between HPCC and NII

Today’s highest-performance computing technologies are tommorow’s desktop technologies, and today’s desktop techonlogies will find their way into tomorrow’s appliances. The same server technology needed to feed high-speed performance computations with high-data-rate streams of information can be used to disseminate information to American households.

Computer-Based Communication

The electronic message will overcome its current limitations in form and ease of use. When that happens, we can expect that the meeting activities will receive the next big wave of information-technology investments.

Will Teenagers Yak on Computers the Way They Do on Telephones?

The spread of home computers and their use as communication devices will almost certainly influence the viability of important institutions like the neigborhood, the local newspaper or the city schools. Not everyone will be a winner in this process; it’s a safe bet that the home computer will support some institutions while undercutting others.

Nuturing the Net

[The Internet] makes it more efficient to be parochial, but at the same time it gets you to come across people and interests that you wouldn’t have simply by being in your small location with your previous identity. We’re seeing both things happening, and we don’t know which is going to be dominant.

The Future of the Distributed Worker

Consider a day in the life of many General Electric Co. service technicians. When they finish their service visits at the end of the day, they sit down at home with their laptop computers and modems and order parts and equipment and get the next day’s assignments. While they sleep, their vans, still sitting in their driveways, are restocked, so work can start immediately the next morning … As America becomes a nation of distributed workers, jobs and employee-management relations are inevitably going to change … On the plus side, employees can have more independence and flexibility … The possible disadvantages of distributed work may be just as significant. Telecommuters often earn less than on-site workers and can have greater expenses … Some people may end up working more or harder at home or on the road than they would in an office. Isolation could be a serious problem.