RICHARD L. MARCUS [*] I INTRODUCTION It is always unpleasant to be caught on wrong side of generation gap, and people my age may be on wrong side of computer generation gap. The title of this article may be misnomer, for, according to our juniors, what we need to do regarding discovery of electronic material is to confront present. Although pace of change in computer developments is arresting, and future undoubtedly holds more change, reality is that discovery of material stored on computers is already important. Particularly in complex cases--the focus of this article--discovery of electronic material is increasingly pervasive and central to legal outcomes reached in new millennium. The question for present is whether this new development calls for reconsideration of our rules or methods of discovery. Ideally, procedural system should be designed so that it can cope with technological (and other) developments without major overhaul, and perhaps without any revision. For instance, in 1999, Supreme Court dealt with thorny problem of interpreting 1949 amendment to removal statute [1] in case involving courtesy of complaint sent by fax. [2] The court noted that Congress could not have foreseen use of this technology when it amended statute in 1949 but did not find that fact critical to interpreting statute suitably for era of faxed communications. [3] The question whether advent of Internet generation calls for reexamination of other procedural techniques and rules has divided scholars. Although Supreme Court has noted that Internet is a unique and wholly new medium of worldwide human communication, that does not mean that existing doctrines governing limits of personal jurisdiction, for example, must be revised to cope with new technology. Thus, some scholars argue that personal jurisdiction issues raised by Internet activity can be readily analyzed under existing legal rules, [5] while others see Internet as upsetting apple cart of contemporary personal jurisdiction rules. [6] This article addresses similar issues about rules governing discovery. It first sketches background of current rules, for this is not first time someone has argued that discovery rules are no longer suitable for challenges of contemporary discovery, particularly in complex cases. The article then examines ways in which discovery of electronically stored materials might present qualitatively different problems from those raised by discovery of hard copy materials. Against that background, it surveys possible courses of action, by rule amendment or otherwise, and concludes that no clear solution has yet emerged. Indeed, as members of generation that has seen most vigorous challenge to unfettered discovery, we might conclude that there is really no generation gap because types of discovery problems that arise with new technology are analogous to those presented by hard copy discovery. [7] II THE DISCOVERY REVOLUTION AND ITS WAKE As Professor Stephen N. Subrin detailed in 1998, adoption of discovery provisions of of Civil Procedure (the Federal Rules or Rules) in 1938 accomplished in discovery. [8] Although pieces of Rules' discovery apparatus can be found in prior systems in United States or in England, no prior system gave litigants such variety of discovery tools, or ability to use them so vigorously without judicial oversight. [9] A prime motivating factor behind this revolution was assumption articulated by Supreme Court in Hickman v. Taylor [10] in 1947: Mutual knowledge of all relevant facts gathered by both parties is essential to proper litigation. [11] By then, federal bench seemingly had absorbed new ethos; lower court in Hickman thus observed that the [Federal] probably go further than any State practice. …