Computing trends offer significant opportunities to create new systems that would impact and change the nature of society, particularly through political, criminal justice, entertainment, and . Such systems would be based on existing growth of computer and communications technology, particularly its increased capability to handle images, motion, and speech. In the past two main methods dominated approaches to causing digital technology have wider impact. The first increased users' knowledge. The second simplified their access to computers. Today technology enables another way. We can envision cohesion and cooperation replacing hopelessness through local, national and global computer communications.

The state of technology clearly indicates that systems involving and containing computers can now play a wider role. That role should be to increase the participation of all in governance, recreation, and the creation of wealth. There are many examples of this reality today. Computer-based systems can replace failure-prone mechanical voting machines. Chat groups, video games, and narrow cast news via the world wide web provide interactive and individualization possibilities that are unimaginably varied compared to the services previous eras had available. Finally, auctions, internet-based sales, and just in time manufacturing all use computer-based systems and exemplify different kinds of market-access.

Taxation, education, military organizations all have some stake in the nature of information devices and their physical systems. Yet all are also examples of social systems. When society expands the geographical and technical horizons of its people through an event demanding mobilization, the after-effects have great impact. WWII led to GI bill expansion of higher education; Israel's War of Independence needed women as soldiers; 9 11 mandates awareness of Islam. Technology offers support for those after-effects but, more important, it is the driving force in the success or failure of a society in overcoming adverse aspects of the events themselves.

There is no question that lowered costs, miniaturization and increased speed will expand the roles of computer and information technology systems. Where the past viewed computers as stand-alone components, today communications and other aspects of networking changes that. The future will include great increases in the ways human beings access information. The greatest impact and farthest reach of computers will be in changing the way images and sounds are located, perused, employed, and disseminated. The availability of digital data means that audible/viewable information now involves remote-site and multiple-mode qualities. This inevitably means change in entertainment (movie, mass media, personal expression) and governmental functions. For future systems multiple uses mean that developers have to concentrate on varied and innovative global functions. We need system designs that use many digital components and produce new and compelling modes of access for visual and auditory as well as text-based information.