ABSTRACT
We are living at a time of unprecedented change, with technology advancing faster, and producing more new opportunities, than ever before (Lilley 1995). IT has created not only the mechanisms to do more with less, but also the means of storing, accessing and transporting information on a scale inconceivable just ten years ago (Emmot 1995). Technology feeding technology, with machines used to design better machines, is the evolutionary process responsible for the exponential capability growth now driving society. In contrast, our wetware (the brain between our ears) has seen no significant change during the past 150,000 years, and in evolutionary terms mankind is in stasis (Calvin 1991). So if we are to survive in a technologically driven world that is changing faster than we can biologically accommodate, we have to use the very technology that engendered our predicament to help us cope; it is our only course of action. Going back to earlier, and in many respects simpler, times is not an option-no matter how distortedly attractive it may appear (Bronowski 1973). The progress of our species has always been, and remains, irrevocably linked to innovation and technology-and it is one way only! We just could not support the world’s population of over 5 billion without the technology we have come to take for granted (Toffler 1971).
