The Conference Speakers included:

• Gordon Bell, Senior Researcher, Microsoft Corporation
  Discussing: The Folly of Prediction

• Joel Birnbaum, Director, Hewlett-Packard Laboratories
  Discussing: Evolution and impacts of electronic and non-electronic, biological and optical computing technologies

• James Burkes, Science journalist on the Discovery Channel and Scientific American columnist
  Conference Emcee

• Vinton Cerf, Senior Vice President, Data Architecture, MCI Communications Corporation
  Discussing: The future of the internet

• Bran Ferren, Executive Vice President for Creative Technology and Research and Development, Walt Disney Imagineering, The Walt Disney Company
  Discussing: "How information technologies will transform the experience of telling and listening to stories"

• Fernando Flores, Founder, Chairman and CEO of Business Design Associates, Inc.
  Discussing: The impacts of information technology on business communications

• Murray Gell-Mann, Professor and Co-Chair of the Science Board at the Santa Fee Institute, Robert Andrews Millikan Professor Emeritus at Caltech
  Discussing: Quality of information

• Reed Hundt, Chair, Forum on Communications & Society, Aspen Institute
  Discussing: The long-term impact of telecommunications

• Brenda Laurel, Actor and Researcher, Computers and Theatre Arts, Interval Research Corporation
  Discussing: The long-term impacts of information technologies on culture

• Pattie Maes, Associate Professor, MIT Media Laboratory
  Discussing: How intelligent agents will interact in software ecologies

• Carver Mead, Gordon and Betty Moore Professor of Engineering and Applied Science, Caltech
  Discussing: Semiconductors

• Nathan Myhrvold, Group Vice President of Applications and Content, Microsoft Corporation
  Discussing: The future of software, the software industry, and possibly, the features of Windows 47

• William Perry, U.S. Secretary of Defense
  Discussing: How breakthroughs in information technologies are changing the face of war, their impact on international security, and how we can prepare for war and for peace

• Raj Reddy, Dean of the School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University, and Herbert A. Simon University Professor of Computer Science and Robotics
  Discussing: How investments in computing research are likely to pay off. Reddy presents the results of the June 1996 workshop on strategic directions in computing research, sponsored by ACM97 and NSF at MIT, and presents his own ideas on research

• Elliot Soloway, Professor, Department of Electrical and Computer Science, and Professor in the School of Education, University of Michigan
  Discussing: The long-term impacts of information technology on K-12 education

• Bruce Sterling, Author, Journalist, Editor, and Critic, science fiction and nonfiction
  Discussing: The dark side impacts of information technology of society

• Maurice Wilkes, Consultant, Olivetti Research Limited
  Discussing: Impediments to technological advancement imposed by the laws of physics.