by Al Gore

About the author: Al Gore served as a U.S. senator for seven years before becoming the forty-fifth vice president of the United States in 1993. He is the author of Earth in the Balance.

In 1993 I wrote in Discover’s October issue that technological innovation was a powerful engine driving our national economic growth. I called for continued research, development, and investment in the new technologies that will lead us into the twenty-first century, and I outlined President Clinton’s vision for the National Information Infrastructure—a seamless web of communication networks, computers, data bases, and consumer electronics that will put vast amounts of information at users’ fingertips and will forever change the way we live, learn, work, and communicate with each other.

Technological innovation continues to be...