The 45 papers that comprise this book view the current telecommunications revolution and its developments and effects from a wide range of perspectives. Specific topics discussed in the papers include the following: (1) the future of literature; (2) Brazil and the information societies of the next century; (3) the future of language; (4) instructional technology in the future; (5) noncommunication in the future; (6) the future of global satellite communications; (7) global talk and the world of telecomputerenergetics; (8) Japan as an information society in the 1980s; (9) videotex; (10) synthesized speech; (11) the next generation of telecommunications; (12) using video in rural development; (13) public libraries in the future; (14) the telecommunications role of local governments; (15) telecommunications alternatives to transportation; (16) politics and the new media; (17) communications systems, technology, and culture; (18) microcomputers; (19) the decay of purposive communication; (20) problems and possibilities of future communications; and (21) television and the pseudo-oral tradition in America's future. (FL)