The Information Society involves just about everyone. In the last couple of years the European Community, has been trying to improve the integration between the different actors involved in this new Society, as well as developing teams of experts to better understand what the nature of this Society is, which possibilities it offers, and what are the best ways to harness them. Actually, we should not expected any less of the European Community, which has always interested about the social and economical aspects of the Fifteen member countries. I expect that the enthusiasm emanating from the official documents and reports does not reflect reality; changes, especially the social ones that we are undergoing and will face in the future, are slower than the economical ones. 
        One very important aspect that I wish to point out in this work is the lack of healthy mentality and of a culture that is open and trusting towards these new technological innovations. 
        One of the main innovative characteristics concerns the new services that are now available. We are talking about new on-line and interactive services, in which we can see the active role of the consumer. He does not limit himself to choosing the kind of services, but he directly interacts with them, modifying them and adapting them to his needs. These new possibilities exist thanks to the exceptional means of spreading the informations that are bytes (and not atoms), in other words, the telematic networks. Applications and economic possibilities are now really huge, and all this can play an important role in the enterprises; for instance the proximity and the easiness of communication between consumer and seller, and the demolishment geographical distances, which allows access to market niches which before that was impossible to think about. This situation will improve after 1998, with the complete liberalisation of the telecommunication market all over Europe. 
        The presence of on-line services is one of the most important telematic innovations: this implies a radical change in the relations between consumers and sellers, as we can should expect, and also between persons who exchange information or simply ideas, thanks to Fora, newsgroups and obviously to E-mail. 
        From certain points of view these ideas are unrealistic, especially in regards to the more traditional SMEs, but it is obvious things are slowly changing. People are becoming more and more interested in the knowledge offered by the Internet and firms that understand the capacity of the Net would hardly want to lose a potential market of over 80 million customers worldwide. Technical problems are at most times manageable, and the increasing dominance of this new mentality till it reaches a critical mass, is basically a cultural aspect. 

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