我们相信深入计算是一个将对商业和社会产生深远影响的趋势。当然把难题扔向计算机的观念并不新鲜。它可以追溯到这种产业刚出现的时代。但是今天的不同之处是现在的系统非常强大，价格又极为公道，以致于能够在各种商业和政府部门、各种科研机构中广泛应用。

　　The second major development in Information Technology is of course for a topic, already discussed here this evening, and that is the rise of global networks, like the Internet to create a network world, or what some call a network economy. About 16 million people use the Internet today. And the estimates are that that number will grow to 500 million, and perhaps someday to a billion. Now what will these connected people going to do, or they want to do? Not too long ago, people in my industry thought that the action was going to be an information dissemination - news, weathers, sports scores, online magazines called E-zines, and short consumer information. IBM has had a different view for some time. We believe the real potential of the network world is for conducting transactions of all kinds, between parties of all kinds, an effect that seems to be what is happening.

　　就象今天晚上已经谈到的，信息技术第二个重要的发展是全球网络的崛起，比如 Internet，它创造了一个网上世界，也有些人称之为网上经济。如今有 1600 万人使用 Internet。估计这个数字很快就会升至 5 亿，也许有一天还会达到 10 亿。那么这些上网的人打算做些什么，或者说想做些什么呢？不久以前，我们这个领域的人认为网上活动将会是信息发布 -- 新闻、天气预报、体育比分、在线杂志（被称作 E-zine）以及简短的消费信息。IBM 对此持不同观点已经有一段时间了。我们认为网络世界的真正潜力在于引导所有不同团体之间的不同种类的交易，网上现在正在发生的情况似乎就是如此。