It is difficult to see where the information age is leading ... With so many areas of society being affected, many effects are transitory, many are insignificant, some are contradictory and some are even undesirable.

The future of the information age will be dominated by unintended consequences. The technologists are unlikely to be accurate.

It will be decades before we see the full effects of the information age.

We are not yet to the point we can see the capabilities of networked computers.

The printing press changed the conditions under which information was collected, stored, retrieved, criticized, discovered, and promoted.

"The first century of printing produced a bookish culture that was not very different from that produced by scribes," and "one must wait until a full century after Gutenberg before the outlines of new world pictures begin to emerge into view."

"...roughly during the first century after Gutenberg's invention, print did as much to perpetuate blatant errors as it did to spread enlightened truth."

In science, the notion of cumulative and progressive knowledge was absolutely revolutionary.

As they read a given manuscript, the marginal notes of "wandering scholars" added any corrective or additive thoughts they may have. As scholars wandered, they carried the knowledge from the manuscript with them and could offer it to others.

This capability opens the book into a new dimension with immediate accessibility to definitions of words, alternative means (say, more visually-oriented) of understanding a concept, active discussions of a given topic, further research on the subject, alternative interpretations, etc. The dissemination of knowledge is importantly changed by the immediacy of this new referencing capability.

The printed book brought a variety of changes that led to a more orderly, systematic approach to the printed word. These had both obvious and subtle effects.

Anyone connected with the network can become a "super librarian," searching remote databases via full-text search for any combination of words imaginable.

That the printing press wrought significant changes in this system of learning cannot be doubted. People shifted from being listeners to being readers. Such dramatic structural changes should lead to significant societal and cultural changes, but pinning those secondary changes down is very difficult.

Sometimes the unintended consequences come to dominate the intended ones. The printing press belongs in that class.

The printing press era was dominated by unintended consequences of applications of the technology and we are already seeing the dominance of unintended consequences in some areas of networked computers.