UN General Assembly
1989

Mankind is today at an epochal turning point. The invention of the steam engine in the late eighteenth century completely transformed the social and economic structures that had been developed through the course of human history. From the nineteenth century to the middle of the present century, the pace of technological advance accelerated with the development of synthetic chemicals and progress in nuclear engineering, petro-chemistry and materials and electronic engineering, and society rode an unbroken wave of development. Flushed with that success, we turned our gaze outward towards space, downward to develop the technology to explore the ocean floor and, finally, inward to biotechnology with its promise to unlock the secrets of life. At the same time, rapid advances in communications satellites have made possible the real-time exchange of information and image-reception everywhere, making the world a single informational global village.