The World in 2030

46 The World in 2030
materialist to acknowledge that technological capability
– through its complex interactions with individuals,
institutions, cultures, and the environment – is
a key determinant of the ground rules within which
the game of human civilization is played out at any
given point in time. 91
In the previous section ‘The Backdrop to 2030’ I quoted the
American futurist Ray Kurzweil’s observation that ‘the rate of
technological development is exponential’ and that even this
rate is itself speeding up exponentially. Other futurists agree
and some go so far as to suggest that accelerating technological
change produces accelerating change in society itself.
Rolf Jensen 92 of the Copenhagen Institute for Future
Studies 93 describes this in his 1999 book ‘The Dream
Society’:
The pace of development from one societal type to another
is accelerating. The agricultural society originated
10,000 years ago, the industrial society between 200
and 100 years ago, the information-based society 20
years ago. Who knows how many more years the logic
and economics of the Information Society will last? 94
And Alvin Toffler, 95 the world-famous American futurist whose
work initially inspired me to go into the field, put it even more
bluntly in his best-selling 1970 book, ‘Future Shock’:
Western society for the past 300 years has been caught
up in a fire storm of change. This storm, far from
abating, now appears to be gathering in force. 96