The spread of information networks has already driven some fundamental changes in the way large companies do business. As those networks are extended to small businesses and the home, these changes are accelerating.
For example, the ability to gain remote access to an office computer network is making it possible for more employees to work from home. That's a boon for many, allowing greater flexibility and eliminating commutes. Some companies are making these arrangements mandatory.
Businesses are adapting in other ways. Xerox, for example, has teamed with networking companies in a project that delivers books instantly from computer databases to high-speed printers, where they can be printed at a rate of 135 pages per minute. In time, that could eliminate the concept of 'out of print' -- or even bookstores themselves -- while providing new business for the neighborhood copy shop.
This is a process analysts call 'disintermediation' -- the squeezing out of middlemen and middle managers. Disintermediation will enter not only the information highway but the video distribution system through satellite television communication. Simon & Schuster has invested heavily in a satellite broadcast company known as The People's Network. Many other suppliers of products and services are joining the growing list of those providing direct access and sales to the buyer.
This threatens some jobs. After a decade in which huge investments were made in technology without equivalent productivity gains, productivity is now taking off, enabling companies to get by with fewer workers.
The changes in the job market occur in small ways as well. Networks that link San Francisco Bay-area multimedia developers with high-speed lines allow them to transmit work electronically -- which once had to be delivered physically -- to special effects houses, post-production shops, and other service providers. San Francisco bicycle messengers, beware.
Networks are squeezing the slack out of the system in innumerable ways. Food banks, for example, are reporting a drop in the amount of leftover food they collect from supermarkets as networked inventory systems enable the stores to receive just-in-time deliveries, eliminating waste.
The changes are global. When Saudi Arabia solicited bids for upgrading its network, it asked providers whether there was a way to restrict access to sites on the Internet that contained sexual graphics. Singapore has made itself a regional hub of telecommunications while continuing to restrict the availability of information.
The Net is decentralizing radically, putting computing power in the hands of a broad range of people for the first time. Just as the construction of interstate highways in the 1950s helped restructure the nation's geography around the automobile, opening the way for suburban subdivisions and tract malls, the spread of information networks is starting to reshape society around the computer -- with unpredictable results. The best way to deal with this is to stay abreast of the changes: To be an actor, rather than acted upon.