Ithiel de Sola Pool

Ithiel de Sola Pool (October 26, 1917 – March 11, 1984) was an American academic who was a widely celebrated and often controversial figure in the field of social sciences and information technology. He did significant research on technology and its effects on society. He coined the term "convergence" to describe the effect of various scientific innovations on society in a futuristic world, and made predictions of ways that technology would impact society that were often prescient.^[1] In his 1983 book Technologies of Freedom, he predicted that digital electronics would allow convergence between historically separated modes of communication, and that these modes would eventually become one single grand system.^[2]