Web services has been a long time coming, and it will be a while before it arrives, at least with the standards that are needed for the technology to live up to its promise (see "The Battle for Web Services," www.cio.com/printlinks). But the day will definitely come when computers conduct what CIO Executive Editor Christopher Koch describes as "deep, meaningful interactions with no human intervention." Shortly thereafter, automated machines will be capable of not just telling each other what to do, but figuring out how to do it, and doing it, using computer code, human proteins or both.

Now consider that for much of the past 20 years, every serious company on the planet has been hiring thousands of a relatively new kind of professional worker whose job has been to "intervene" with computers in many of the same ways that will soon be usurped by computers themselves. Those humans have done more than support the technology needed to pursue new business strategies; they have changed the culture of business, and they boosted the role of the CIO from backroom geek to, in many companies, an important member of the board of directors.

It may seem simplistic to suggest that when Web services and automated machines hit their stride, there will be a lot fewer humans in the IT department and corporate culture will change again, in ways larger than we think. But according to speakers at the Symposium on the Coevolution of Technology-Business Innovations, held this fall at IBM’s Almaden Research Center, the long-term potential of new technologies is often very different from what we first imagine. For example, speaker Hal Varian, economics professor at the University of California at Berkeley, reminded the audience that radio was considered a new way for ship captains to communicate with colleagues on shore. And it was that. But today, that’s a footnote in the evolution of radio from technological wonder to world-changing industry.

Could Web services, now seen as a new way for computers to communicate, follow a similarly strange path? Or will it just shave a few bucks off your IT budget? How will your business change when computers do what your staff does today?

Sound Off is a weekly online column about current IT-related issues. Web Editorial Director Art Jahnke (ajahnke@ cio.com) always welcomes feedback.

What drives history: technology or social changes? Some researchers can trace the feminist movement back to the invention of the bicycle. Technological innovation drives social changes in ways that are normally unforeseen. The movement of the wife from home and mother role into the working world would have been impossible without many of innovations; and the social changes that resulted have contributed to the needs fulfilled by other technologies, such as the cell phone.