Pick your measure. No matter what standard you choose, the information revolution is less than 3 percent complete. That's right: Whether you count users, devices, speed, content or number of applications, the revolution is just revving up. That has two implications: 1) virtual lifetime employment for tech writers; and 2) we don't have a clue as to what the future will bring.

About the only thing we can be sure of is that the revolution will be just that: a time of vast, wrenching change. We can guess at the scale and contours of the forces hammering at us and maybe even plot the trajectories we'll face. But that plural is vital. We haven't an inkling which of the possible futures will come to pass.

So what do we know? The most important thing is that the cost of being wired is plummeting. Chip cost per dollar will drop by a factor of 10 over the next five years. The amount of computing power a dollar will buy will increase 10 times over the next four years. Similarly, the amount of data storage available for a dollar will increase 10 times over the next seven years. Network capacity will increase 100-fold over the next five years; ditto for the local loop. Costs are going to fall 99 percent.