Resumen
The easiest predictions to make about the next 50 years of computer science are those centering on computers, not the people. The biggest surprise from the first 50 years of computers is that computation turns out to be a cultural object in its own right, with all its warts and semicolons. Many a visionary had imagined that computers and networks would have a transformative effect on culture, but it was usually assumed the nasty details would become invisible as their influence increased. It is still part of the marketing orthodoxy of the computer industry that hardware and software must in some misty future become "consumer products," as unobtrusive as toasters. This is the frontier that information science opens up to mankind. There are other frontiers enabled by science, of course the exploration of space, the study of the brain. But only people will continue to reveal unsuspected potential in the most precious of natural phenomena, relationships between human beings.