Fast Forward [Hardcover] [Rare books]

In the final few years of the twentieth century, an agent of social change has burst into prominence, one that may well have a greater and quicker cumulative effect than all the changes that have ever gone before. It is the rise of the Internet--the electronic interactive community that links the world's people and businesses. Now, in the infancy of this new medium, leading American thinkers and business people lend you their expertise and make startling predictions about the future in the pages of this fascinating book.

The very speed and productivity of computers have accelerated the pace of change--and their ubiquity means that the Internet affects nearly every walk of life. For Fast Forward, former Federal Communications Commission chairman Alfred C. Sikes assembled a "power panel" of twenty-four Americans from a variety of disciplines who are leading the march into tomorrow, and asked them to provide an authoritative glimpse into the wondrous world of potential that is literally at our fingertips.

How will instantaneous electronic mail--and even more sophisticated methods of communication still to come--continue to erase the geographical boundaries between far-flung families? What will be the effect of virtual shopping and instantaneous price comparisons on bricks-and-retail stores and on their customers? When individuals and families have access to vast resources of medical information, how will the doctor-patient relationship change? And amid all this communication and linking of computers and households, how are we to ensure our families' privacy and security?

Many of these questions have been posed before. But never before has such an impressive array of experts been brought to bear on them: journalists, entrepreneurs in the New Economy, media executives, financial authorities, health care professionals, futurists, and more--the ultimate collection of brainpower for the Information Age.

Here is a stimulating, provocative book of dazzling ideas and informed speculation that will be essential reading as we enter a new millennium at Internet speed-Fast Forward.