Chapter 17: Digital Fables and Foibles

Future rooms will know that you just sat down to eat, that you have gone to sleep, just stepped into the shower, took the dog for a walk. A phone would never ring. If you were not there, it won’t ring because you are not there. If you are there and digital butler decides to connect you, the nearest doorknob may say, “Excuse me, Madam,” and make the connection. Some people call this ubiquitous computing, which it is, and some of the same people present it as the opposite of using interface agents, which it is not. These two concepts are one and the same.

Chapter 16: Hard Fun

Over time, there will be more and more people on the Internet with the time and wisdom for it to become a web of human knowledge and assistance. The 30 million members of the American Association of Retired Persons, for example, constitute a collective experience that is currently untapped. Making just that enormous body of knowledge and wisdom accessible to young minds could close with generation gap with a few keystrokes.

Chapter 13: The Post-Information Age

In the post-information age, we often have an audience the size of one. Everything is made to order, and information is extremely personalized … In being digital I am me, not a statistical subset … Thinking of the post-information age as infinitesimal demographics or ultra-focused narrowcasting is about as personalized as Burger King’s “Have It Your Way.” True personalization is now upon us. It’s not just a matter of selecting relish over mustard once. The post-information age is about acquaintance over time: machines’ understanding individuals … The post-information age will remove the limitations of geography. Digital living will include less and less dependence upon being in a specific place at a specific time, and the transmission of place itself will start to become possible.

Introduction: The Paradox of a Book

We will socialize in digital neighborhoods in which physical space will be irrelevant and time will play a different role. Twenty years from now, when you look out a window, what you see may be five thousand miles and six time zones away. When you watch an hour of television, it may have been delivered to your home in less than a second. Reading about Patagonia can include the sensory experience of going there. A book by William Buckley can be a conversation with him.

Chapter 10: Plugged In At Home

As on-line communities grow in importance, they will increasingly be where people turn to find out what the public is really thinking. People like to know what’s popular, which movies friends are watching, and what news others think is interesting. I want to read the same “newspaper front page” as those I’m going to meet with later today, so we can have something in common to talk about. You will be able to to see what places on the network are being looked at often. There will be all sorts of “hot lists” of the coolest places.

Chapter 10: Plugged In At Home

Some communities will be very local, and some will be local. You won’t be overwhelmed by the number of choices of communities any more than you are now by the telephone system. You’ll look for a group that interests you in general, and then you’ll search through it for the small segment you want to join.

Chapter 9: Education: The Best Investment

Having students connected directly to limitless information and to each other will raise policy questions for schools and for society at large. I discussed the issue of regulation of the Internet. Will students routinely be allowed to bring their portable PCs with them into every classroom? Will they be allowed to explore independently during group discussions? If so, how much freedom should they have? Should they be able to look up a word if they don’t understand? Should they have access to information that their parents find objectionable on moral, social, or political grounds? Be allowed to do homework for an unrelated class? Be permitted to send notes to each other during class? Should the teacher be able to monitor what is on every student’s screen or to record it later for spot checking?

Chapter 8: Friction-Free Capitalism

You wonÕt be drowned by the deluge of unimportant information because youÕll use software to filter incoming advertising and other extraneous messages and spend your valuable time looking at those messages that interest you. Most people will block e-mail ads except for those about product areas of particular concern.