The Internet is rapidly transforming the communication, use, and management of information and knowledge. It has given birth to electronic commerce, new business processes, and new forms of social interaction. Digital information is at the root of this transformation. Computers enabled digitization, but digitized words have democratized the computer and made every person, machine, or file addressable from anywhere in the world.
Digitization promises convergence through the common currency of bits.
At the same time, it turns words and numbers into a globe-spanning complex of machinery and networks. Paradoxically, publishing is at once globalized and trivialized. It can routinize transactions within processes and regularize processes in logical infrastructure. It can free human capital to focus on new value, relationships, strategy, and implementation. It supports far-flung communities, enables and extends markets, and transcends political boundaries.