the digital community. And far from teaching a body of
knowledge that will last for life, the new generation of information
professionals will be required to search out, add to, critique, 'play
with', and daily update information, and to make available the constant
changes that are occurring."

1996: PALM PILOT

[Overview]

In the 1990s, Jacques Gauchey was a journalist and writer living in
Silicon Valley and specializing in IT (information technology). He was
also working as a "facilitator" between the United States and Europe.
Jacques was among the first to buy a Palm Pilot in March 1996, and
wrote about it in his free online newsletter. As a side remark, he
remembered in July 1999: "In 1996 I published a few issues of a free
English newsletter on the internet. It had about 10 readers per issue
until the day (in January 1996) when the electronic version of Wired
Magazine created a link to it. In one week I got about 100 emails, some
from French readers of my book La vallee du risque - Silicon Valley
[editor's note: The Valley of Risk - Silicon Valley, published by Plon,
Paris, in 1990], who were happy to find me again." He added: "All my
clients now are internet companies. All my working tools (my mobile
phone, my PDA and my PC) are or will soon be linked to the internet."
Despite fierce competition, Palm stayed the leader in the PDA market,
with 23 million Palm Pilots sold between 1996 and 2002.

1997: DIGITAL PUBLISHING

[Overview]

Digital publishing became mainstream in 1997. This was a new step in
the changes underwent by the traditional publishing chain since the
1970s. The traditional printing business was first disrupted by new
photocomposition machines, with lower costs. Text and image processing
began to be handed over to desktop publishing shops and graphic art
studios. Impression costs went on decreasing with desktop publishing,
photocopiers, color photocopiers and digital printing equipment.
Digitization also accelerated the publication process. Editors,
designers and other contributors could all work at the same time on the
same book. For educational, academic and scientific publications,
online publishing became a cheaper solution than print books, with the
possibility of regular updates to include the latest information.

[In Depth (published in 1999)]

Since the 1970s, the traditional publishing chain has drastically
changed. The printing work done by pre-press shops was first