NEW YORK -- The man who founded the popular travel Web site Priceline.com, Jay S. Walker, ILR '77, told a standing-room-only New York City audience on April 27 that the "age of the muscle is ending" and is "being replaced by the age of the mind."

Walker was addressing more than 225 Cornell alumni and guests at Cornell Theory Center's (CTC) Manhattan offices at 55 Broad St. In a talk, "Cyber Revolution: Cornell and the Massive Transformation of Business, Culture, Research and Teaching," Walker summarized the history of the machine age and predicted the future of the information age.

The event was sponsored by CTC, the Faculty of Computer and Information Science, and the Cornell Entrepreneur Network, which promotes networking among Cornell alumni.

Introducing the speaker, Robert Constable, dean of Computing and Information Science, noted that Walker's innovations include not only Priceline.com but also one of the world's leading inventions management companies, Walker Digital.

Walker began by charting 500 years of machinery that gradually replaced physical labor, evolving as a paradigm of machines that capture and map information. The information revolution, he said, is changing the way human beings work and live. He said: "Wiring up is the fundamental attribute of the time we're living in. Every last piece of the information age is going to be turned upside down."

He made three predictions: People will widely use the Web for voice communication; chips able to communicate with the Web will become part of clothing; and people themselves will become the network. Walker explained this last prediction by describing a future in which a person could move a finger and speak to a relative in another city. This full integration of human beings and technological information mapping is inevitable, he said. It will allow people in the workplace to "think for a living."