"For years pundits have predicted that information technology will obliterate the need for almost everything - from travel to supermarkets to business organizations to social life itself. Individual users, however, tend to be more skeptical. Beaten down by info-glut and exasperated by computer systems fraught with software crashes, viruses, and unintelligible error messages, they find it hard to get a fix on the true potential of the digital revolution." "Drawing from rich learning experiences at Xerox PARC, from examples such as IBM, Chiat/Day Advertising, and California's "Virtual University," and from historical, social, and cultural research, the authors sharply challenge the futurists' sweeping predictions. They explain how many of the tools, jobs, and organizations seemingly targeted for future extinction in fact provide useful social resources that people will fight to keep. Rather than aiming technological bullets at these "relics," we should instead look for ways that the new world of bits can learn from and complement them."--Jacket.

Introduction: Tunneling Ahead1 -- 1 Limits to Information 11 -- 2 Agents and Angels 35 -- 3 Home Alone 63 -- 4 Practice Makes Process 91 -- 5 Learning--in Theory and in Practice 117 -- 6 Innovating Organization, Husbanding Knowledge 147 -- 7 Reading the Background 173 -- 8 Re-education 207 -- Afterword: Beyond Information 243.