ABSTRACT
Changes in the social and economic order, in science and technology, in population growth and urban concentrations, in knowledge bases and value systems are a dominant characteristic of all dynamic industrial and post-industrial societies. Our times are marked not only by this universality of change, but by the phenomenal increase in the rate of change. The dynamic process, instead of the stable situation, has become the norm. Instead of living in a traditional environment of familiar situations, enduring objects, and known facts, we experience today, to an ever-increasing degree, situations of novelty and unfamiliarity, an explosion of new knowledge. Our greatest challenge is to plan for diversity and complexity in a dynamic fashion; to reduce complexity to manageable proportions, to allow for diversity through the options of choice, and to create an orderly but flexible framework for change.
