In her 2001 book The Death of Distance: How the Communications Revolution Is Changing Our Lives, Frances Cairncross makes a number of predictions about the future of the Information Age. “The death of distance and the communications revolution will be among the most important forces shaping economies and societies in the next fifty years,” she writes. More specifically, she predicts that “the Internet will change electronic products of all kinds, from television and the telephone to games and cameras”; that “for consumers everywhere, electronic commerce will eventually bring empowerment: to search, to bargain, to specify”; and that the Information Revolution “will, on balance, be a force for peace. . . . The best way to discourage countries from fighting one another is surely through better communication.”

Cairncross’s forecasts are modest compared with some...