(Scientific American, July 1997. Copyright 1997 by Scientific American)
Michael Dertouzos attacks what he calls the five myths of the Information Age:
1) Information technology will close the gap between the rich and poor.
"The gap can be bridged, but left to its own devices, the information marketplace won't close it. We will need concerted efforts, charity, and more."
2) Information technology will bring about frictionless capitalism, in which buyers and sellers will deal with one another directly.
"There will be a growth of intermediaries. You still need middlemen because you are buying a lot more than just the product. You buy trust, the ability to return it, to ask questions, to find it amid the growing infojunk."
3) The information revolution is moving too quickly for most to keep up.
"We've been four decades into the business, and we've hardly done anything. The second industrial revolution took nine decades. So relax."
4) Information technology will force a universal culture on everyone.
"This technology simulataneously strengthens tribalism and diversity. Tribal forces are powerful, but each of us belongs to multiple tribes. So we'll develop only a thiin veneer of universal culture."
5) Information technology creates the need for new laws.
"Human nature is immutable. The angels and the devils of infocollaborators on the good side and infocriminals on the bad side are not in the technology. They are in us. Technology acts as a lens."
Dertouzos also says "We made a big mistake 300 years ago when we separated technology and humanism....It's time to put the two back together." (29)
I couldn't agree more - but if my reading of history (including _Wittgenstein's Vienna_) is correct, it wasn't the Enlightenment so much as the post WWII American university that really pulled the two apart.