ABSTRACT
The past 40 years (roughly one working lifetime) have been a period of rapid technological progress across a wide range of human activity. It has included the development and miniaturization of the computer, the development of the Internet, massive improvement in communication, significant understanding in medicine, vast increases in our knowledge in many areas, and enormous improvements in infrastructure such as transport. This has been coupled with major reductions in cost, placing them within range of many more people than was ever envisaged. One newspaper was quoted as saying that there is more knowledge in a single edition of the New York Sunday Times than was acquired by the average individual living 400 years ago. It is difficult for anyone living in the developed world today to understand what it must have been like to live at that time. Our dependence on technology, enhanced by education, has transformed our lives.
