Here is a test of your prevailing intuitions about computing. Which of the following paragraphs rings more true for you?

The computer is the ultimate symbol of control for large, over-powerful organizations, as well as their most threatening tool. The power of centralized databases has given government and multinational corporations the ability to track information--intimately personal information--about even the largest population. Megasystems hooked into worldwide communications hold such a competitive marketing edge that the large corporations that own them will dominate any market they enter. The same systems, utilizing audio/video monitoring equipment, will let government agencies observe and police all aspects of daily life. The acceleration of raw processing power will eventually let owners of the most expensive systems (none but the biggest government organizations need apply) overcome any private attempts at data encryption--revealing all private information, but letting the truly powerful hide their very existence.

Computers are the lever of technology, driving our society into an era of unprecedented personal fulfillment and individualism. As the cost of processing drops, reduced barriers to entry in many areas of the economy, from desktop publishing to online retailing, allow entrepreneurship to flourish. Record numbers of Americans have become their own bosses. The Internet's communications revolution has given people the ability to link with like-minded people around the world for both commerce and pleasure, and the result has been enhancement of specialized hobbies and the flourishing of products that could not have found sufficient buyers with traditional local communications.

Returning to the problem: Is information technology a tool for stifling corporate and governmental monoliths or a boon to the individual?

Both are opinions, far from truth. Presuming you are reading this in 2001, the second scenario, which emphasized individual empowerment, probably struck you as more familiar, whether or not you agree with it. It is a view of computer technology that is commonly expressed, at least currently. The first opinion, however, would probably have been selected by someone reading these just 40 years ago. Consider a post-war novel like "1984," in which a prominent feature of authoritarian governments--the original form of Big Brother--was the power of the computer, a source of information control in the hands of the large, intimidating organization.

There were good reasons for that attitude; those books may have played a part in developing that attitude. Further, the dominant computers of each period (the mainframe in the 1950s and the PC now) are significantly different.

The cause for the change in opinion about computers may be the generation that dominated public opinion at either time. In the 1950s and 1960s, America (and England) were dominated by a generation that respected the power--if not the intent--of large civic and commercial institutions. The mainframe computer seemed like an instrument of too much power, one that could be trusted in the hands of no group. Technical development and social reaction to computer use by this generation may have helped push PCs to become, by the 1980s and 1990s, the individual-friendly, widespread tool that evokes opinions like the second one above.

Many people would attribute this change in opinion from one generation to the next to the development path of the technology itself--essentially, that computers matured, or evolved into an individualized tool. Yet the actual explanation may lie in the eyes of the beholders, so to speak--the people who managed American business and society during each period. Could it be that the generations changed, and not the technology?

Contrasting views of significant technological innovations, held by two different generations, have occurred with other technologies, and in other periods. Television came of age in roughly the same period as the computer, although it entered private homes when mainframe computers were staking a claim in big business.

In the first two or three TV decades, with three national programming networks and a handful of local channels, conventional wisdom was that television was a unifying force, that a nation of people who all watched the same programs would share some universal values, sense of humor, and even common knowledge.

The generation that came of age during World War II actually hoped TV would unify the nation, engendering respect for the government and institutions they served. Its attitudes were different from the Baby Boomer and Generation X desires expressed 30 years later, when television splintered into dozens, even hundreds, of program options, destroying any chance to generate universality. Different technology, but same generations, and same result: A perceived unifying force turned into a divisive agent.

The same kind of perception shift has occurred in other generational periods, as well. The motorized tractor was perceived as an intrusive technology in the early 1900s, because its cost would favor large, industrial farms. Two generations later, tractors seemed to be the only tool that could help independent family farmers tend enough land to remain financially competitive.

One of the oldest theories of periodic time is the idea of a repeating cycle of generations. Proposed as early as Plato (if not earlier), it is fully described by William Strauss and Neil Howe in their book, "The Fourth Turning." The cycle, or saeculum, consists of four distinct periods, each lasting roughly 20 years. The uniqueness of the four periods explains why attitudes seem to change from one generation to the next; but in fact, the four periods simply cycle through about 80 years.

The idea that history is steered by a repetitive cycle is uncomfortably deterministic, seemingly taking power away from both human initiative and technological advance, the latter of which has been given credit for recent events ranging from economic growth to changes in primary education. Yet the idea of the saeculum and its generational cycle is a convincing one--Strauss and Howe's book is a prophecy, but not one that delivers only rosy predictions.

Generational theory and its possible effects should be considered by anyone attempting to predict the prospects of new technological advances. The ultimate effects of new technology, like quantum computing and artificial intelligence, may, according to the generational theory, be determined by when in the saeculum they are introduced.

Contributing Editor Joe Rudich joe@rudich.com is a network administrator with the St. Paul Companies in St. Paul, Minn.