... there is obviously no speed limit on the electronic highway. It's like driving on the autobahn at 160 kph. Just as I realize the speed I'm going, zzzwoom, a Mercedes passes, then another, and another. Yikes, they must be driving at 120 mph. Such is life in the fast lane of the infobahn.Although the rate of change is faster than ever, innovation is paced less by scientific breakthroughs like the transitor, microprocessor, or optical fiber and more by new applications like mobile computing, global networks, and multimedia. This is partly because of the phenomenal costs associated with the fabrication facilities for modern chips, for which new applications are sorely needed to consume all that computing power and memory, and also because, in many areas of hardware, we are coming close to physical limits.
It takes about a billionth of a second for light to travel one foot, which is something not likely to change. As we make computer chips smaller and smaller, their speed can increase a little. But in order to make a big difference in overall computer power, it will be necessary to design new solutions, for example, with many machines running at the same time. The big changes in computers and telecommunications now emanate from the applications, from basic human needs rather than from basic material sciences.--Nicholas Negroponte, Being Digital, Vintage Books/Random House: New York, 1996.
Nicholas Negroponte is professor of media technology at MIT and founding director of the MIT Media Lab.