As Yogi Berra once observed, "It's tough to make predictions, especially about the future." Even so, there are some clear trends in American society today that are likely to have long-term consequences.

One current reality is that the salary gap between the highest- and lowest-skilled workers in our society is increasing. Data from the U.S. Census and Department of Labor have shown that, for the period from 1969 to 1989, constant-dollar earnings for low-skilled male workers dropped by 24 percent, while the earnings for those in the top quintile increased by 13 percent. It has not been the case that a rising economic tide raises all boats. In fact, jobs at the bottom of the pay ladder are disappearing at a prodigious rate as they are being automated or shipped to other countries where salaries are even lower.

Another reality is an information / communication gap. While it is the case that about 45 percent of U.S. homes have computers (many connected to the Internet), studies by the Census Bureau have shown that computer access is strongly correlated to household income. As a rule of thumb, current computer penetration in homes can be estimated by taking family income in thousands of dollars per year and expressing the number as the percent of homes with computers. In other words, 70 percent of homes with a combined income of $70,000 or higher have computers, and 10 percent of homes with a combined income of $10,000 have computers in them. The numbers follow a nearly linear progression for intermediate income levels and hold pretty well independent of whether the communities are rural, urban, or suburban.

The digital divide is real, and the financial have-nots are also the informational have-nots. Given the importance of information technologies in the future, this gap can produce a permanent underclass and further expand the gap between the haves and the have-nots. For this reason alone it is essential that access to powerful information technologies is provided in every classroom, library, and other places where people from all backgrounds gather.

Another aspect of current reality is the continued downsizing of large corporations, with the concomitant growth of small businesses. Large corporations are not only downsizing, they are disappearing. Since 1994, a significant fraction of the companies in the 1980 Fortune 500 have disappeared through acquisition, breakup, or bankruptcy.

There is good news, however: It has been estimated that, for every job lost in the Fortune 500, 2.5 jobs are created by small companies. The skills needed to thrive in small dynamic companies are different from those typically associated with corporate giants. Again, it falls to our educational institutions to prepare students for this new world.

Emerging trends

Against the stark background of today's realities, several strong trends stand out. Here are a few of those current trends and their consequences:

* Rapid increase in the growth of information. It has been estimated that information, worldwide, is doubling every two years. To get a glimmer of the impact of this growth, imagine that the total amount of information available in the world today is represented by a line 1 centimeter in length. By the time today's first-graders enter 12th grade, that line will be 64 centimeters long.

One could argue that much of the information we have today is useless and, even worse, inaccurate. This only makes the challenge harder. In a world of rapidly growing information, how do we find the information we need and determine its accuracy and relevance? This is a pivotal skill that every member of our society needs to master, and master quickly.

* Collapse of the information float. Not only is information growing quickly, the time lag between discovery and application -- the information "float" -- is rapidly shrinking. For example, it took many hundreds of years for the steam engine to move from being a curiosity to being a commercial product. In contrast, recent discoveries in science and engineering show up in products virtually overnight.

* Increasingly global marketplace. The communications revolution has shrunk the world to our desktops. International access to information, markets, and services is commonplace today. This means that any venture with a presence on the web is, in principle, capable of conducting business virtually around the world. This global marketplace exists as easily for the sole practitioner as it does for the giant corporation -- provided that the practitioner is willing to learn a foreign language or two.

While advances in translation technology are occurring daily, the process of learning a new language also exposes the learner to the culture in which that language is used. This cultural component is essential for effectively conducting business on a worldwide basis.

* Computers continue to increase in power while dropping in cost. A 1980 model Cray supercomputer was the fastest machine of its day. It cost $12 million, weighed 10,000 pounds, consumed 150 kilowatts of electricity -- and had only 8 megabytes of RAM and operated at a speed of 80 MHz. You can't find personal computers that poorly equipped on the market now. A typical personal computer today has about twice the raw power of that $12 million Cray and can be purchased for $2,500. This trend of increased power at lower cost is likely to continue well into the next century. The driving force for this change is the continued advancement in silicon chip technology.

* Computer chips continue to follow "Moore's Law." A current state-of-the-art silicon chip the size of your thumbnail is as complex as a complete road map of the United States -- including every interstate, every street, and every alley in every city. And the chip has the capacity to switch traffic on this highway system in a trillionth of a second.

Today's chips are more powerful than those made a few months ago, and those available next year will dwarf today's chips in capacity. The raw power of silicon technology doubles every 18 months. This observation was first made by Gordon Moore, cofounder of Intel, and it is now known as Moore's Law. Based on this law, we can safely predict that, by the year 2004, silicon chips will be in production containing over a billion transistors on them. A chip of this capacity is capable of meeting the switching needs for 42 central office telephone switches.

* Bandwidth is becoming free. At the same time silicon technology is increasing in power, so are the capabilities of various communications media, including glass fibers, copper wires, and wireless communication systems. For example, scientists at Fujitsu and elsewhere have demonstrated the capacity to send data over a single strand of glass the diameter of a human hair at a speed of 1 trillion bits per second. At this speed, every word from every issue of the New York Times, since it was first published, could be sent in under one second.

Advances in bandwidth over existing copper lines have not been as dramatic. Nevertheless, it now appears that much of the wire currently connecting homes, schools, and offices can be used to receive information at speeds in excess of 6 million bits per second using a technology called ADSL (for Asynchronous Digital Subscriber Line). Cable television providers are preparing to offer broadband services such as @Home, which operate at speeds of up to 10 million bits per second.

As bandwidth increases, the cost of sending information drops. Some have argued that, in the future, communication costs will be too cheap to meter. Already some communities have taken an aggressive stance to ensure their participation in the communications revolution. Residents of Glasgow, Ky., for example, have access to the Internet at speeds of 2 million bits per second for a flat rate of $11.45 per month. This service is provided by Glasgow's power company -- a municipal utility that has branched out from providing power to also providing cable TV and broadband digital communication services. America's power companies have already installed so much fiber-optic cable that they have the capacity to be the second largest provider of telecommunications if they want to.

* Network power continues to obey "Metcalfe's Law." Advances in the technologies of computers and bandwidth have combined to feed energy into a digital tornado of epic proportions: the Internet. The Internet is a global communications network that allows information to be sent and retrieved through the infosphere like fragments of informational DNA.

The Internet is a network of networks -- a dynamic communication system built from the bottom up. All participants on this network have agreed on a simple set of protocols that define how data are to be formatted and routed from one place to the next. As a result of these simple rules, the Internet is capable of displaying incredibly complex behavior, including its capacity to grow incredibly fast without collapsing under its own weight. The Internet is currently doubling in size every year. Homes, schools, businesses, libraries, and museums are connected to the net, and each new connection adds value to the whole. This added value was first expressed by Bob Metcalfe, inventor of the Ethernet, who observed that the power of a network increases by the square of the number of users. This statement is now known as Metcalfe's Law. In combination with Moore's Law, it forms the foundations of the communication revolution we are now experiencing.

Consider, for example, the web. The web is a collection of multimedia-based sites that contain information of all kinds, composed in a common format that allows the information to be sent across the Internet and displayed on virtually any computer in common use today. Schools, museums, and corporations have web sites, as do students and hobbyists. The web has become a new platform for the presentation and communication of ideas worldwide.

Unlike the Internet, which is doubling in size every year, the web is doubling is size every 90 days. And even the use of the web pales in comparison with electronic mail. In 1996, the U.S. Postal Service delivered 185 billion pieces of first-class mail. In that same year the Internet handled about 1 trillion e-mail messages. Given that much of this Internet traffic originated from homes, schools, and small businesses using ordinary voice-grade telephone lines, one can only imagine what will happen when broadband services become commonplace.

The impact of the web on education is likely to be profound. It is already being used to allow students access to the latest breakthroughs in scientific discovery years before they are likely to appear in textbooks. Furthermore, students can perform their own research on various topics and post their results on the web for other students, teachers, and researchers to see and evaluate.

Implications for education

Changes of this magnitude require a complete rethinking of education, both in terms of the curriculum, and in the development of pedagogies that ensure that every student acquires the high level of skills needed to thrive in the dynamic world of the 21st century.

In addition to the basic skills of literacy and numeracy, every learner must also master the three C's: communication, collaboration, and creative problem solving. Beyond these are the equally important skills of knowing how to use numbers and data in real-world tasks, the ability to locate and process information relevant to the task at hand, technological fluency, and, most of all, the skills and attitudes needed to be a lifelong learner.

Let's look at these new competencies:

* Technological fluency. Larry Irving, assistant secretary of commerce, has suggested that 60 percent of the jobs available at the turn of the century will require skills currently held by only 20 percent of today's workforce. If anything, this may be an understatement.

The Congressional Institute for the Future recently conducted a study of the 54 jobs identified by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics as having the highest numerical growth between now and the year 2005. Of these 54 jobs, we could only find eight -- such as manicurist and restaurant worker -- that do not require technological fluency, and none of the eight currently pays more than twice the minimum wage.

Technological fluency is a step beyond technological literacy. To be fluent in technology use means that we can sit down at a computer and use it as easily as we can pick up and read a book in our native language. Of the challenges facing education today, preparing students to be fluent in the use of computational and communication technologies is one of our greatest. As of January 1997, only 14 percent of America's classrooms were wired to the Internet. Failure to address this issue immediately will perpetuate the widening gap between the information haves and have-nots.

The lack of technologically fluent workers is already a problem. A report by the Information Technology Association of America warns that one out of every 10 jobs requiring information technology skills is going unfilled due to a shortage of qualified workers. The association surveyed 2,000 large and mid-sized companies and found that companies will opt to send more of their work overseas where they can find eligible job candidates.

* Preparation for jobs that have yet to be invented. If our challenge could be limited to preparing people for the kinds of jobs available today, we would still have a lot of work to do. But many of the jobs that will be available at the turn of the century have yet to be invented.

Consider: One job in great demand today is webmaster -- a person who designs, creates, and maintains web sites. This job did not exist 10 years ago -- or even five years ago. The people who are working in this new field have acquired their skills largely on their own.

Other new jobs will be created by breakthroughs in the study of biochemistry. Companies like Affymetrix, for example, have created automated technologies to identify mutated genes in a few minutes. Tests that used to take several weeks can now be performed inexpensively and quickly, giving doctors the chance to identify life-threatening problems before they show up in a patient and to recommend a course of action early on. Technologies in the emerging biotech arena will require lots of workers with a new skill set.

In the realm of marine biology, advances are taking place at breakneck pace. The Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, for example, has two research vessels that use deep-sea robots to search for new life forms. Scientists at the institute are finding about one new species every week.

Moving from the depths of the ocean to the fringes of our solar system, it now appears that life might exist in some form under the icy layers on Jupiter's moon, Europa. If so, the demand for exobiologists (biologists studying alien life forms) will spring up overnight. Once again, we must create an educational system that prepares students to work in fields that do not even exist today -- a tremendous task!

* Anywhere, anytime lifelong learning. For many of us, learning took place primarily in school. Today, inexpensive compact technology allows people to have access to learning opportunities anywhere and anytime. To take just one example, Sharp Electronics has released a hand-held computer with a color display. Attachments to this device allow it to be a digital camera, a notebook, and even a wireless browser for the web. This device is currently selling for about $1,000.

Many corporations are moving their staff development activities to the web, allowing employees to acquire new skills when they need them (just-in-time learning). Furthermore, these employees can acquire these skills from the comfort of their office or home, without having to fly across the country to attend workshops in another city. It is easy to imagine, when all learners have access to powerful technologies in their homes, that learning resources suitable for all ages can be made available for access from home, thus extending the learning day far beyond the time we spend in school.

One stellar example is the Buddy Project in Indiana, in which students at about 80 schools have been provided computers with modems at home. Researchers have found that this project has had the impact of adding about 30 days worth of instruction to the school year without keeping the school doors open one extra hour -- at a cost equivalent to keeping the schools open just one extra day. This 30:1 payoff is a result of student enthusiasm for learning using powerful tools in their homes. The Buddy Project found the results were similar for both urban and rural students and for those from high- and low-income families.

Once truly inexpensive technologies become commonplace with all students, the tools for lifelong learning will be in place. More important, however, is fostering the notion that lifelong learning is a survival skill. This is one task that must be addressed immediately, even as we are waiting for new technologies to come into existence.

We must transform all formal institutions of learning, from pre-K through college, to ensure that we are preparing students for their future, not for our past. Schools that ignore the trends shaping tomorrow will cease to be relevant in the lives of their students and will disappear quickly. As General Electric CEO Jack Welch has said, "If the rate of change inside an institution is less than the rate of change outside, the end is in sight."

David D. Thornburg is senior fellow at the Congressional Institute for the Future and director of the Thornburg Center for Professional Development, San Calos, Calif.