Repository: UIHistories Project: Dedication - Grainger Engineering Library Symposium [PAGE 29]

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QUESTION: First. I have always wanted to ask somebody that know—who does own the Internet? My second question is. do you really think that we are moving toward a place where information, like journals, will ever become the bulk of the use of the electronic medium, as opposed to now. where the bulk of the use is in paper form. / would hate to be the kind of person to have said ten years ago that CDs will never catch on. People keep saying. "Lets have electronic journals." but I see people that print out their e-mail so they can have a hard copy. People want to take it home and read it in their living room where they don't have a computer. I would be a skeptic and say that it wilt never happen, but I don't want to do that, and 1 am curious ifyou would say that. ANSWER: (Mr. Allen): I don't believe that will happen. I think it just demonstrates that there are supplemental ways to get information, and all of those forms of media will continue to increase in use. I do think as a generation change occurs, for example, my children, and even more so my grandchildren, are much more comfortable with electronic information, exceedingly so. What that means in terms of how the future of Information is obtained and used, I'm not really sure. There is a clear trend toward ease of use, at least in their minds. As I mentioned in my comments, it is up to those of us who try to employ technology to make it much more user friendly than it has been in the past so that many more people without a lot of training and rigor can use it. In fact, 1 am convinced that we will be able to do this with voice commands. You have a voice print, I have a voice print, just like we have different fingerprints. There is security involved In that. We will be able to convert your voice Into a request for information that won't require all of the keyboard activity. When that happens, my keyboard is the first one to go. But It doesn't phase my children and even my grandchildren, who are very young. So, I don't know how to predict, but I don't think one will ever replace the other one.