The World in 2030

56 The World in 2030
We don’t have any option but to embrace change, and
very rapid change, in the 21 st century and the only successful
antidote to the painful symptoms of change that I have
discovered is continuous, life-long learning. Keeping up to
date is vital to weather the storms produced by high-speed,
violent change. As Louis Pasteur remarked: ‘Change favours
the prepared mind.’
Rolf Jensen of the Copenhagen Institute for Future
Studies describes it very simply in ‘The Dream Society’:
The past is receding from us at a dizzying speed. The
future is heading toward us with increasing velocity.
You might say that the future is drawing closer – it is
almost becoming part of the present. 107
At the root of almost all of this change is the computer –
these days specifically the microprocessor and its associated
architectures – which until a few years ago was doubling in
power and speed every two years but which now appears to
be developing even faster.
Moore’s Law
The most important of all of mankind’s inventions will
turn out to be the computer – and, by extension, computer
networks, wired and, increasingly, wireless. As the computer
is a universal tool it is of crucial importance to the future of
science, medicine, security, business, education and industrial
activity. The most dramatic technological change in society is