Discovery is a process that must unfold in time. Drawing on colourful vignettes from the scientific past to inform his vision of the technological and cultural future, Edward Burman uses the 'paradigm' thinking explored by Thomas Kuhn in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (over a million copies sold) to assess the Internet as a breakthrough like any other. Dismissing its attempted hijack by dot.com business as cynical and doomed to failure, he cuts through uncertainty to point out how far we have come - already we take instant connection for granted, and the Internet is embedded deep in our personal and working lives. The problem, he explains, is that as we undergo a Shift! of this magnitude we are unable to see where we are going. Thus we persist with old terminology and models in the new paradigm. Companies continue to place 'tollbooths' in a world designed to offer freedom of movement. People still see the Internet as the province of the young and gifted. There is not even general agreement as to what the Internet is really for. Shift! unravels the past and predicts a time close ahead when capability becomes usability, benefits outweigh costs, and the public embraces the Internet as wholly as the electric light, the telephone and the car.
