A Forecast for the Future

In order to understand the impact of computer technology in the 1980s one must first understand the force underlying its ever-widening proliferation: electronic integrated circuit technology. Integrated circuit technology's impact on society will rank in importance with the invention of the steam engine and other such technological innovations or perhaps surpass them. This technology is presently in its infancy. Most of us are aware of some of the early progeny: calculators and electronic watches and games. Some may be aware that it is now possible to buy a small home computer for about $700. This is just the beginning of what will become a wide variety of products which will affect every person. The reason? Low cost. The semiconductor process continues to enable ever-greater complexity at ever-decreasing cost. The future will bring lower-cost storage, processing and communications. The processing of electronic signals can be performed in two basic ways: analog and digital. Although impressive gains have been made in both technologies from an electronics point of view, the greater visible impact will be from digital electronics and the discussion here will be confined primarily to advances in that area. Indeed, digital electronic circuits need not be "computers " in the commonly used sense, but I will further restrict this discussion for the most part to digital computer and digital storage technology. In this discussion, I will concentrate on developments that will have a significant impact on libraries and library users. The impact on users will be in terms of the improved methods of using libraries they will have at their disposal because of other, nonlibrary related developments. Th