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Hello, there are now more than 200 million people connected to the Internet worldwide. The world's biggest ever merger has just seen Time Warner,

United with the Internet Service Provider American Online.

And the United States alone, it's predicted that transactions conducted in cyberspace will account for $327 billion worth of business by 2002.

Some shattering statistics.

Is this change going to alter our society radically more importantly, empowering the individual and offering greater choice?

Or will information technology lead us into a dark age for society that destroys democracy, the workplace and family life?

Their arguments on both sides, profound arguments and with me, are two leading players.

Charles Ledbetter, Demos Research Associate and author of the influential book, Living on Thinner, The New Economy,

an Ian Angel, Professor of Information Systems at LSE, and author of a new book called The New Barbarian Manifesto, How to Survive the Information Age.

In Angel, you say in your book that you think the future ages will brand this as a time of revolution.

Can you briefly say why you see it in such great terms?

Well, you've just mentioned the fact that transactions are taking place in cyberspace.

The problem is that in cyberspace, transaction costs are much lower.

And this is having an enormous effect on the institutions of our society that are based on the way we used it to transactions during the industrial age.

But the word revolution is big, especially the way you use it because you refer back to Toffler.

In 1980, it said there were three waves of revolution.

The revolution which came in about 8,000 years ago, when we became agricultural.

And two centuries ago, when we had even just a revolution, and now the third one, the Information Revolution,

so you're paying it high. Can you justify that?

Well, it's better than evolution because evolution makes whole species extinct.

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