That makes ours the generation of transition in publishing and the information age. The decisions made over the next several years will have lasting impact on the future directions of scholarly publishing. Electricity, the telephone, and the airplane are phenomena of modern times. Scholars of ancient history remind us how the wheel and the plow dramatically altered civilization. Now we have the Internet and genomics.
Pivotal technologies change the possibilities and the opportunities.
They change the way we perceive our world, the nature of our work, the process of art, and the very pattern of our thinking. Scientists and publishers alike recognize the dramatic influence of information technology on our work. Information systems have played an important role in my own research on the water-borne disease, cholera. Much of my research was done in Bangladesh, where cholera is common. It is inconceivable now for me to imagine doing my research in the decades since my graduate student days without computers.