Fifth Generation Distance Education (Higher Education Series No. 40)

Over the past twenty years, the transformation of a relatively simple computer network used by a few researchers into a global Internet, involving hundreds of millions of people and generating a new economic order, took government, business and education, by surprise. Given the well-established tendency for people to underestimate the extent and rate of technological change, it seems reasonable to suggest that the extent to which the Internet created economic and social upheaval in the past ten years is likely to pale into insignificance by comparison with the changes occurring in the next decade. The next few years will encompass the significant impact of broadband, wireless, smart cars, smart fridges, streaming media, voice recognition and the inevitable growth of new Internet applications. In the present context, change is the only constant.