So this leaves universities somewhat alone. This isn't meant to be self-serving, but it plays nicely into the change in higher education -- it has to become more research university-oriented than just classroom affairs.

Q&A With Nicholas Negroponte

From the we-really-need-to-sell-advertising department:

For nearly two decades, industry sages have heralded the coming age of converging digital technology. But it remained an empty slogan. Now, thanks to faster chips, broader bandwidth, and a common Internet standard, technologies are quickly merging.

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The result is a Big Bang of convergence, and it's likely to produce the biggest explosion of innovation since the dawn of the Internet.

Big Bang!