In one human generation, the world's work has moved from muscle to machines that move information rather than goods. Driving the information revolution is the computer, a machine of unquestioned power but questionable intelligence. Arno Penzias, whose Bell Laboratories stands at the center of electronic innovation, explores here the relationship of human beings to the new electronic world. What, for instance, is information besides an assemblage of symbols, of numbers and words and pictures? When processing this information, how do machines extract meaning? How close can a machine come to human competence? How smart are computers likely to become? What does this mean for the human role in modern economic life? These are cutting-edge questions of technology and society answered here by the author, who shared the 1978 Nobel Prize in physics.