1. from analog to digital - "Digitization not only improves quality (compare a music CD to vinyl) and enables interactivity, it provides the foundation for a whole new world of computer- and networked-based applications as well as enabling fundamentally new approaches to finding and managing information." (p.97)
2. from traditional semiconductor to microprocessor technology - the microprocessor - a computer on a chip - is at the center of the new economy - the combined advantages of size (portability), incredible performance (approaching 2 billion instructions per second, or BIPS) and low cost have been and will continue to revolutionize technology
3. from host to client/server computing - as opposed to old 'master/slave' configurations, where slave computers were simply windows on to a master computer, the new architecture of client/server computing enables software to work on client machines as well as a network server - "The computer becomes the network and the network becomes the computer." (p.100)
4. from 'garden path' bandwidth to information highway - the analogy Tapscott makes here is that if a plain old telephone service (POTS) is a garden path (in terms of how much information it is able to carry) then the emerging technologies of OC3 and OC48 are equivalent to superhighways 1 mile and 16 miles wide respectively, an incredible advance in information-carrying capacity