He was addressing the increasing difficulties that university libraries are having in maintaining subscriptions to scholarly journals in the face of rising subscription fees and reduced budgets. They then give them away to publishers, who sell the information back to the universities at prices the universities can't afford. By guaranteeing a market commercial CD ROM publishers would compete for the chance to do the job. They'd also sell additional copies of the CD ROM to subscribers for a nominal fee. Personal Computers Will Make Solitude a Scarce Resource.
Daily life is nothing but a string of transactions from credit card purchases to phone calls.
Because these transactions are mediated by computers, each action adds to a spreading electronic wake that we leave behind us as we go through life. As connectivity becomes the inexpensive norm, disconnectivity is certain to gain in status. Executives will seek a special kind of one-way solitude, using computers and communications to stay on top of outside events even as they jealously guard their privacy. Mail filters and automated call screening will be sure bets in the decade ahead, helping the elite create solitude-preserving information black holes that provide them with broad world views while preserving privacy and anonymity. Hypertext Still Languishing in Market Limbo.