I define cyberspace as the totality of information that we can access via the Internet and computer systems in general. It is not, of course, a space, and it has interesting differences with libraries. For example, soon my fridge, my car, and I myself will be "known" to cyberspace, and anyone with the appropriate access permission (and interest) will be able to find out what exactly I have in my fridge and how fast my car is going (and how long before it needs new shock absorbers) and what I am looking at now. In fact, I expect that advertisements will change their language and perhaps even pictures and layout to suit my knowledge and tastes as I walk by, simply by recognizing that "here comes someone who speaks primarily English and lives in Los Angeles and makes $X per year". All this behaviour will be made possible by the dynamically updatable nature of cyberspace (in contrast to a library), and the fact that computer chips are still shrinking in size and in price. So just as today I walk around in "socialspace" -- a web of social norms, expectation, and laws -- tomorrow I will be walking around in an additional cyberspace of information that will support me (sometimes) and restrict me (other times) and delight me (I hope often) and frustrate me (I am sure). = And your definition of the information society? An information society is one in which people in general are aware of the importance of information as a commodity, and attach a price to it as a matter of course. Throughout history, some people have always understood how important information is, for their own benefit. But when the majority of society starts working with and on information per se, then the society can be called an information society. This may sound a bit vacuous or circularly defined, but I bet you that anthropologists can go and count what percentage of society was dedicated to information processing as a commodity in each society. Where they initially will find only teachers, rulers' councillors, and sages, they will in later societies find people like librarians, retired domain experts (consultants), and so on. The jumps in communication of information from oral to written to printed to electronic every time widened (in time and space) information dissemination, thereby making it less and less necessary to re-learn and re-do certain difficult things. In an ultimate information society, I suppose, you would state your goal and then the information agencies (both the cyberspace agents and the human experts) would conspire to bring you the means to achieve it, or to achieve it for you, minimizing the amount of work you'd have to do to only that is truly new or truly needs to be re-done with the material at hand. [FR] Eduard Hovy (Marina del Rey, Californie) #Directeur du Natural Language Group de l'Université de Californie du Sud