Tom Forester

In the following viewpoint, Tom Forester maintains that information technology has not been the revolutionary force that forecasters of the 1960s and 1970s predicted. He argues that the anticipated transformation of the workplace, home life, and the education system due to advances in computer and communications technology has not materialized. According to Forester, forecasters who predicted such change were too utopian in their visions; they failed to foresee that computers—due to their fallibility and their potential for misuse by people—would create unexpected problems. Forester was a professor at Griffith University’s School of Computing and Information Technology in Queensland, Australia.

As you read, consider the following questions:

1. What percentage of American and European workers work at home full-time, according to Forester?
2. What problems are caused by the...