Computer technology and, more broadly, information technology, are bringing about a fundamental transformation in our society from an industrial economy to an information economy. A review of the short history and present state of information technology identifies two major undercurrents: I) the miniaturization of computer components, which has produced a millionfold increase in the complexity possible in a single chip of silicon, and 2) the integration of four previously separate areas of information technology: computation, communication, databases and the user interface. Microelectronics, computer networks, data storage and user amenities are the basic technologies that support these four areas and stimulate their progress. Future trends in speech recognition, voice synthesis, artificial intelligence, expert systems, computational imaging and scientific workstations are also examined.
