ABSTRACT
This chapter speculates on the future to encourage critical and divergent thinking for today's applications. It presents both evolutionary and revolutionary thinking about information technology (IT) for various levels of the human service delivery system. Each level includes future scenarios, trends, impacts, requisite skills, and issues. A continuing trend is the declining cost of hardware relative to total application development costs. Computer technology has been important for community practice, primarily for managing mailing lists, agency information systems, word processing, and volunteer management. IT affects other forms of societal control. In the physical world, identity is relatively permanent because it is based on one's gender, age, and residence. The Internet has greatly expanded the role of IT in policy formation and analysis. A lack of policy is preventing technology-mediated counseling on the Internet. One issue will be keeping policy current with technology to prevent problems.
