Chapter 12: Critical Issues

As the economy shifts, people and societies who are appropriately educated will tend to do best. The premium that society pays for skills is going to climb, so my advice is to get a goof formal education and then keep on learning. Acquire new interests and skills throughout your life. A lot of people will be pushed out of their comfort zones, but that doesn’t mean that what they already know won’t still be valuable. It does mean that people and companies will have to be open to reinventing themselves – possibly more than once. Companies and governments can help train and retrain workers, but the individual must ultimately bear principal responsibility for his education.

Chapter 12: Critical Issues

It will take many years for the highway to be utilized so widely for shopping that there will be significantly fewer middlemen. There is plenty of time to prepare. The jobs those displaced middlemen change to might not even have been thought of yet. We’ll have to wait and see what kinds of creative work the new economy devises. But as long as society needs help, there will definitely be plenty for everyone to do.

Chapter 12: Critical Issues

Men and woman are worried that their own jobs will become obsolete, that they won’t be able to adapt to new ways of working, that their children will get into industries that will cease to exist, or that economic upheaval will create wholesale unemployment, especially among older workers. These are legitimate concerns. Entire professions and industries will fade. But new ones will flourish. This will be happening over the next two or three decades.

Chapter 12: Critical Issues

Societies are going to be asked to make hard choices in such area as universal availability, investment in education, regulation, and the balance between individual privacy and community security. While it is important that we start thinking about the future, we should guard against the impulse to take hasty action. We can ask only the most general kinds of questions today, so it doesn’t make sense to come up with detailed, specific regulations. We’ve got a good number of years to observe the course of the coming revolution, and we should use that time to make intelligent rather than reflexive decisions.

Chapter 12: Critical Issues

As with all major changes, the benefits of the information society will carry costs. There will be dislocations in some business sectors that will create a need for worker retraining. The availability of virtually free communications and computing will alter the relationships of nations, and of socioeconomic groups within nations. The power and versatility of digital technology will raise new concerns about individual privacy, commercial confidentiality, and national security. There are, moreover, equity issues that will have to be addressed. The information society should serve all of its citizens, but only the technically sophisticated and economically privileged. In short, a range of important issues confronts us. I don’t necessarily have the solutions, but, as I started off the book saying, now is a good time for a broad discussion.

Chapter 12: Critical Issues

The new technology … will enhance leisure time and enrich culture by expanding the distribution of information. It will help relieve pressures on urban areas by enabling individuals to work from home or remote-site offices. It will relieve pressure on natural resources because increasing numbers of products will be able to take the form of bits rather than of manufactured goods. It will give us more control over our lives and allow experiences and products to be custom-tailored to our interests. Citizens of the information society will enjoy new opportunities for productivity, learning and, entertainment. Countries that move boldly and in concert with each other will enjoy economic rewards. Whole new markets will emerge, and myriad new opportunities.

Chapter 10: Plugged In At Home

The really interesting highway applications will grow out of the participation of tens or hundreds of millions or people, who will not just consume entertainment and other information, but will create it, too. Until millions of people are communicating with one another, exploring subjects of common interest and making all sorts of multimedia contributions, including high-quality video, there won’t be an information highway.