The much-touted "information superhighway" that will bring exciting new communications capabilities may be getting closer to being a reality, but there are still many questions to be answered about what the new systems will entail, what services they will offer, what services the consumer will support, what technologies will be needed, how soon they will be available, and so on. Much about the new information superhighway is uncertain, and comparisons that have been made to existing communications systems and technologies may be interesting and may provide helpful data, but they also may be misleading. In truth, there will probably be no such thing as an information superhighway and will be a number of different information systems complementing one another and offering different capabilities to different people or for different purposes. We see the beginning of this today with fax machines, cellular telephones, computers, video-teleconferencing, home video systems, and other technologies which have already changed the ways people interact, the ability of the individual to acquire information rapidly, and the work and living habits of millions of people. The future will most assuredly bring more change, more interactivity, more access to information and working programs for computer, and other systems that will benefit a wide variety of professions, including that of technical writing. In addition to providing much to write about, the changes will provide new ways of doing the writing itself and of transmitting it to those who need the information it will contain.
The proposed information superhighway involves a certain vision of how electronic communications will be developed and used in the future:
The vision is simple: and unprecedented nationwide and, eventually, worldwide electronic communications network that connects everyone to everyone else and provides just about any sort of electronic communication imaginable...