... it is impossible even to guess what kind. But it is highly probable, indeed, nearly certain that they will emerge, and fairly soon. And it is also nearly certain that few of them, and few industries based on them, will come out of computers and information technology. Like biotechnology, each will emerge from its own unique and unexpected technology. Of course, these are only predictions. But they are made on the assumption that the Information Revolution will evolve as several earlier technology-based "revolutions" have evolved over the past 500 years, since Gutenberg's printing revolution, around 1455. In particular the assumption is that the Information Revolution will be like the Industrial Revolution of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. And that is indeed exactly how the Information Revolution has been during its first fifty years. The Information Revolution is now at the point at which the Industrial Revolution was ...

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