Tracking Our Techno-Future >BY Norman H. Nie

American Demographics, July, 1999

Whether the most important changes resulting from telecommuting will be the reduction of gridlock and further urban sprawl, or the production of work and careers without meaningful collegial relations, nothing is preordained. We are conscious social animals who have created all of this technology through the application of scientific methodology. If we apply the same rigor to investigate the impact of these and other innovations, we will have the time to react, reinforcing the good and mitigating the bad. That is our core mission at the Stanford Institute for the Quantitative Study of Society. However, this kind of social monitoring requires far more than any single organization can provide: It calls for the determination and the resources of a wide range of public and private institutions. But it is in the interest of all of us-including those in Silicon Valley and other high-tech centers who have made their fortunes on techno-innovation-to understand the social consequences of what we have created.

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