>According to Mitchell, why should we care about the digital revolution? Should we care for reasons other than the ones he cites?

I choose to answer this question, as I feel it has the greatest impact on our lives. As Mitchell states, this "era will profoundly affect our access to economic opportunities and public services, ...our daily routines"

A poignant personal example of this is my eighty plus year old mother. Whenever I get a voice mail and there is a long pause and then a disconnect, I know it is my mother trying to reach me. She is confused when she gets my greeting instead of me personally and doesn't know what to do. Imagine her trying to call her doctor or a hospital and getting the "choose 1" for this or "choose 2" for that or "choose 3" for something else. If she needs gas in her car she calls my daughter to help her because she doesn't understand how to operate the self-serve pumps. She is unable to function/interact via this media. It scares her.

For myself, although I am not afraid of the new media, I find it very difficult to keep up with the fast evolving technology. In my office we are required to utilize many software programs in order to perform our jobs. We are responsible to communicate via fax and e-mail and to operate in Windows 95 environment for correspondence, reporting, and recording.

As the manager of our area, it is my responsibility to impliment appropriate programs to utilize our staff efficiently. Any function that was performed manually in the past, I have now converted to electronic media. As a department, we could not function unless we kept up since as a corporation, much of our systems policy is dictated by the Information Systems Department. When they implement a new media device we are required to attend training classes and utilize it. This includes telephones, faxes and even which word processing programs that are available for us to use.

To put it very bluntly, if I don't successfully assimilate to the new media, I become obsolete. I would not be an asset to the company. I would lose my job.

One recent phenomenon that I have noticed most recently is the implimentation of many new area codes. Where once, most of us had a phone at home and a phone at work, now we also have phone lines for our fax machines, cell phones, the internet and lap tops. This has created the activation of thousands of new phone lines nation wide and the need for multiple area codes for large cities like Chicago, Detroit and New York. Even the State of Indiana has added two new area codes.

Although all these changes are convenient I often wonder how efficient they really are. After all, each time something new comes along, we have to take time to go to training and work through the learning curve until we become proficient. Life used to seem so simple!