One emphasis is Revolutionary Computing, which supports research into the use of quantum and biological devices for computing. The technology is within our grasp to create richly detailed multimedia representations of ancient Rome, of the world's great museums, and of nearly every other type of intellectual content. Ruzena Bajcsy Assistant director of the National Science Foundation, head of the NSF's Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering XML and Web services are at the center of the technology revolution going forward. This has profound implications for the delivery of Web-based services to consumers, and for enabling businesses to take the Internet to the next level, both in terms of increasing their own agility and with respect to delivering products and services to customers. Building on the common standards of XML, and the kinds of Web services Microsoft is investing in through .NET, we'll be able to move from a world where information is mostly contained in digital silos, to a connected world where people and businesses communicate and share information seamlessly across PCs, the Internet, smart phones, the TV, and other devices and networks.
Most people use the Web today only to browse information or make modest purchases.
Over the next several years we'll see this evolve as Web sites collaborate to provide customized services that help people manage their lives and make businesses tremendously more productive, efficient and agile. I think that robotics is going to start entering people's everyday lives. There had been big iron around for years, isolated from ordinary people. Computers were locked up in machine rooms and only the priesthood got to interact with them. Then in the mid seventies things started to change.