You can see a demo of our version of this capability, using English as the user language and a collection of approx. 5,000 texts of English, Japanese, Arabic, Spanish, and Indonesian, by visiting MuST (Multilingual information retrieval, summarization, and translation system). Type your query word (say, "baby", or whatever you wish) in and press Enter/Return. In the middle window you will see the headlines (or just keywords, translated) of the retrieved documents. On the left you will see what language they are in: "Sp" for Spanish, "Id" for Indonesian, etc. Click on the number at left of each line to see the document in the bottom window. Click on "Summarize" to get a summary. Click on 'Translate' for a translation (but beware: Arabic and Japanese are extremely slow! Try Indonesian for a quick word-by-word "translation" instead). This is not a product (yet); we have lots of research to do in order to improve the quality of each step. But it shows you the kind of direction we are heading in. = How do you see the future? The Internet is, as I see it, a fantastic gift to humanity. It is, as one of my graduate students recently said, the next step in the evolution of information access. A long time ago, information was transmitted orally only; you had to be face-to-face with the speaker. With the invention of writing, the time barrier broke down -- you can still read Seneca and Moses. With the invention of the printing press, the access barrier was overcome -- now anyone with money to buy a book can read Seneca and Moses. And today, information access becomes almost instantaneous, globally; you can read Seneca and Moses from your computer, without even knowing who they are or how to find out what they wrote; simply open AltaVista and search for "Seneca". This is a phenomenal leap in the development of connections between people and cultures. Look how today's Internet kids are incorporating the Web in their lives. The next step? -- I imagine it will be a combination of computer and cellular phone, allowing you as an individual to be connected to the Web wherever you are. All your diary, phone lists, grocery lists, homework, current reading, bills, communications, etc., plus AltaVista and the others, all accessible (by voice and small screen) via a small thing carried in your purse or on your belt. That means that the barrier between personal information (your phone lists and diary) and non-personal information (Seneca and Moses) will be overcome, so that you can get to both types anytime. I would love to have something that tells me, when next I am at a conference and someone steps up, smiling to say hello, who this person is, where last I met him/her, and what we said then!