The infonnation revolution is upon us. Whereas the industrial revolution heralded the systematic augmentation of human physical limitations by har nessing external energy sources, the infonnation revolution strives to augment human memory and mental processing limitations by harnessing external computational resources. Computers can accumulate. transmit and output much more infonnation and in a more timely fashion than more con ventional printed or spoken media. Of greater interest, however, is the computer's ability to process, classify and retrieve infonnation selectively in response to the...

The infonnation revolution is upon us. Whereas the industrial revolution heralded the systematic augmentation of human physical limitations by har- nessing external energy sources, the infonnation revolution strives to augment human memory and mental processing limitations by harnessing external computational resources. Computers can accumulate. transmit and output much more infonnation and in a more timely fashion than more con- ventional printed or spoken media. Of greater interest, however, is the computer's ability to process, classify and retrieve infonnation selectively in response to...