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Now that computers have established themselves as the main driver for socioeconomic change in the foreseeable future, many analysts are questioning whether their perceived productivity gains are largely illusory. Issues such as software complexity and time efficiency weigh against a prevailing mindset that businesses and individuals cannot succeed, or even survive, without their new silicon-based mentors.

In the coming decades, autonomous robotic devices will patrol battlefields and vacuum the floors in homes. Recent advances in software and hardware are preparing the way for a generation of vehicles and tools able to operate with minimal human supervision for prolonged periods of time.

U.S. Navy meteorologists directly aided coalition forces in the Kosovo operation, where the advantages of high-technology weaponry and rapid force deployment could easily have been offset by new vulnerabilities imposed by a dynamic environment. While cold fronts, wind and rain may not immediately be thought of as combatants, weather and sea conditions are more than a mere backdrop for military forces. And, the applications for weather pattern data go beyond determining if it is safe to send aircraft into the skies.

As China's great wall of trade barriers crumbles, telecommunications companies are positioning themselves to take advantage of the major emerging market in Asia. The promise of increased competition and fewer Chinese government impediments to trade could result in a dramatic shift in the focus of telecommunications marketing and is already changing the way companies operate in the region.

Researchers are adapting voice over Internet protocol technology to establish communication between Earth and spacecraft, satellites, and, perhaps someday, other planets. Using modified commercial approaches, scientists will design space-based and mobile Internet standards that provide access to science mission data and interactive communication with inhabited and uninhabited spacecraft. These technologies also will become the connection to a future Mars-based communications infrastructure.

Future military cyberspace security may require next-generation network management and intrusion detection systems that combine both short-term sensor information and long-term knowledge databases to provide decision-support systems and cyberspace command and control. Sophisticated computer hardware and software would identify a myriad of objects against a noise-saturated environment. Cyberspace command and control systems would track the objects, calculate the velocity, estimate the projected threats, and furnish other critical decision-support functions.

Past met present and looked toward the future as top-level decision and policy makers convened in Hawaii to discuss the role of the military in the Pacific. With reminders of Pearl Harbor and the Cold War present, key military, industry and government leaders expressed the need for preparedness in the region. They also explored the technologies that are key to operations in the area.

Future North Atlantic Treaty Organization missions will rely extensively on information interoperability among member and nonmember nations. This will encompass combining existing military and commercial systems with emerging capabilities to provide rapidly deployable communications links.

The U.S. defense intelligence community is changing its information philosophy from emphasis on-call functional or geopolitical expertise toward rapid access to relevant knowledge from vast data files. To accommodate this shift, new technologies are enabling planners to implement an information architecture designed to provide authorized customers with streamlined access to vital information or expertise.

When it comes to education, industry is getting back to the basics: It is exploring the fundamentals of exactly how people learn. The objective is to perfect the virtual classroom by matching technology to the learning process rather than matching the learning process to the technology.