Over the past century the technological means of communication have expanded to include the telegraph, telephone, facsimile machine, data modem, and the Internet. The modalities of communication have also expanded to include the transmission of voice, data, document images, graphics, and video. Meanwhile, the computer has evolved from a device suitable for large computations, to a manipulator of large bodies of information (enabled by mass-storage technologies), and then to a tool for communications (enabled by computer networking). Looking to the future, depending on the perspective chosen, there will be a strong trend toward incorporating communications as an integral part of computing applications, or incorporating information access and manipulation as an integral part of communications applications.