ABSTRACT
The greatest threat to western society at the moment is the rapid displacement of labour by technology. By the late 1960s, there had emerged in most of the western countries an environment movement able to articulate its concerns in three basic areas: pollution, potential resource shortages, and overpopulation. Technology involves substituting information flows for energy and materials: one example involves the use of the telephone instead of the mail or making visits. Technology can develop other new resources, including a vast expansion of food production in the form of coastal fish farming and making the deserts bloom. Perhaps the most important shift in the economy of the communicative society relates to the increasing specialization of the global economy, made possible by modern communications and transportation technologies, resulting in a trans-national web of production and services. Among the new microprocessor-based technologies emerging are industrial and office robots.
