Mathematics оn its way into Information Society

Lecture at the Steklov Mathematical Institute, Russian Academy of Sciences.
The increasing usage of computers leads to a drastic change in the daily work of a mathematician or somebody who is just applying mathematics. Everybody primarily associates this development with better software, increased facilities for numerical calculations or even Scientific Computing. But the more drastic changes happen on a more general level, which is considered by other professionals as their way into the Information Society. Communication behaviour is changing drastically, as it also can be observed for mathematics. For example the chain author-publisher-distributor-reader sometimes is becoming indistinguishable, because the abilities of one party to take care about the job of another one are improving permanently.
The aim of the talk is to give a presentation of the impact of this phenomenon to the work of mathematicians. Topics mentioned will be reference databases, electronic documents, electronic web offers, electronic publication facilities, mark-up languages capable to preserve detailed subject information, software and electronic model libraries, mathematics knowledge management and general web support for doing research in mathematics. This will be exemplified by web offers and running projects with a special emphasis on public domain software and free offers. Also legal and sociological aspects will be addressed as far as possible in a relatively short presentation.