DIGITAL PATHWAYS TO THE 21st CENTURY

WHERE WE STAND

COMPUTING POWER
Powerful processors such as Intel's Pentium, with 3 million transistors, perform 50 million operations per second--more than enough for spreadsheets and E-mail.

SMART SOFTWARE
Multimedia databases proliferate. Software ``agents'' start to do our bidding, sorting E-mail messages, venturing out onto networks to retrieve information.

MEMORY
DRAM chips store 64 million bits of information, and CD-ROMs hold half a billion bytes--nearly enough for a full-length movie. Magnetic disk capacity grows 60% a year.

TELECOM
Optic fibers carry 3.4 billion bits per second. Four million undersea phone links connect 51 countries. Cellular-phone circuits are crowded in major cities.

TOWARD 2010

COMPUTING POWER
Chips with a quarter-billion transistors cram supercomputer power into a credit card-size device. Computers run on elements of light. 3-D photo-realism arrives in virtual reality games and videoconferencing. Central phone switches shrink onto a sliver of silicon. Computers respond to human voice. Handheld color videophones are commonplace.

SMART SOFTWARE
Smart software manages vast computer networks too large and complex to tolerate human control. Production is highly automated. Software suffuses everything from automobile suspensions to urban traffic systems and global information superhighways. Using genetic algorithms, software can adapt and evolve to solve changing problems, without new programming

MEMORY
Transistors on silicon are just a few hundred atoms wide. Chips hold a billion bits, enough for medical ID cards with x-rays and full patient records. CD-ROMs are replaced by small, recordable disks storing a library of text and video. Experimental storage techniques such as holography move into the mainstream, enabling superfast access to digital images.

TELECOM
Transmission speed is measured in trillions of bits per second. A dense, global network of fiber, satellite, and wireless links bestow unlimited bandwidth. More than 90% of traffic on networks is video, not voice communications. Hospitals and universities are transformed by networks swapping real-time medical images and learning materials.

DATA: AT&T, KMI CORP., FORWARD CONCEPTS, IBM