The bridge will be built from innovations unseen today. New markets untapped. The bridge will also be the product of new jobs and new wealth. Computer software and services employment in the U.S. alone has increased over 380,000 positions in the last five years. While layoffs are an unavoidable expedient as companies respond to new competitive pressures, today's headlines tend to obscure the bigger picture-and the larger truth.
Employment is up and so are new company starts.
Again in the U.S., ICT companies took wing at an average rate of 7,200 new firms per year since 1992. The economic transformation is not limited to the workplace. Digital on-ramps to homes and schools are being built at rate that will, as the saying goes, change everything. Digital Planet authors forecast World Wide Web utilization to hit 100 million people by the end of this year and 320 million by 2002. Every year, an additional 50 million people gain access to telephone lines in their homes.