speaking. That means that a computer in 2010 is about 150 times as powerful as a computer in 1990. Roughly speaking. I had a computer in 1990. With any kind of luck I'll probably be around in 2010, and I rather imagine I'll have a computer then, too. So exactly how impressed am I supposed to get about a 1996 computer? It's maybe five percent of the computer I'll eventually be using. That's like comparing a matchbox car to a Rolls Royce.

Even paperback books have a far longer lifespan than computers. It's a humble thing, a book, but the interface doesn't change and they don't need software upgrades and new operating systems. A five dollar paperback book will dance on the grave of a five thousand dollar computer.

Nothing that is real is absolute. In anything real there is good news and there's bad news. The Information Society has become a reality. There's good news, ladies and gentlemen, and there's bad news. The good news is, the digital revolution is over. The digits won hands down. Casualties were low, considering. We now live in the early days of the digital provisional government.

The bad news is that the provisional government is inherently unstable. Its powerbase is a giant virtual castle made of bits. Bits of sand.

It's a very mixed bag, the information age. Don't get me wrong; I love living here. Like a lot of my generation, I grew up more or less expecting nuclear armageddon, and with that prospect off the front burner, life for me is a carnival. In the Information Age, every day's an adventure. I'm never bored.

The Information Age has many stellar virtues. It is market driven and extremely innovative. It's high-tech, hip and fast on its feet. People who work in this field are deeply opportunistic and will seize on the slightest chance at daylight.

The bad news is, if you survive every day by agile broken-field running it's easy to lose sight of your goals. In fact, you can forget the very concept of