Believe me, this is no time to be sedated. In my job, I spend a lot of time talking about information technology with business executives, government officials and education leaders. So I'm delighted to be speaking to a group of people who are not intimidated by computers. Certainly the world you are entering is much different than the one your parents and I entered. And contributing to many of the historic political and social changes of the last 30 years is this powerful, new, very young and immature technology.
Information technology is like the electric light, the printing press, and manned flight.
It's one of those technologies that comes along every century or so and changes things forever. Consider that Americans spend more on PCs than TVs. The Ford Taurus contains more computing power than the first lunar landing module. And the chips inside today's Sega video games are more powerful than the supercomputers of 1976, the year many of you were born. Something very important is happening here.