As the twenty-first century begins, we are experiencing a revolution in telecommunications. We all know about the Internet and the World Wide Web, but they are just in their embryonic stages. The Web's use of audio media is only beginning to realize its commercial potential, and full-motion video, let alone true multimedia, is a sometime thing.
Video teleconferencing is tricky and expensive enough to be restricted to substantial corporations.
Yet these and other new technologies are available today, and their mass commercialization at low prices is just around the corner. No one can predict the future, but two things are certain. First, the revolution in telecommunications now under way will have tremendous economic, social, and political repercussions. Second, the law will have to adapt to the great changes that the new technologies will promote. As the law always does, it will move slowly and ponderously, with frequent missteps, providing full employment for generations of lawyers.