ABSTRACT
The speed and range of the revolution in the field of production, the technical innovations and scientific discoveries in the world today, signalize the inception of processes making for radical change in the structure of the productive forces and in the material base of human life; the prospect is that all previous achievements of civilization will be surpassed. With the rapidly accelerating stream of scientific advance, inventions can now be registered in minutes. Whereas at the start of the century technical innovations usually yielded slight rises in productivity, today, more often than not, entire operations are transformed. Man is penetrating the structure of matter and inauguratiog the space age. Human activities are assuming new forms, life is changing under our eyes—distances grow shorter, time more intensive, man-made environments are replacing the natural—and at every turn we find science opening up new dimensions of mobility. People are gradually mastering the basis of their own being. Hitherto each generation has taken over from its predecessors a ready-made pattern of existence that had shaped the entire course of its life; now, however, it will evidently be necessary to reckon with the fact that each generation will experience more than one reconstruction of the nature of civilization and the entire pattern of human life.
