All too often measurement is used as a substitute for understanding. It may be a salutary experience for policy makers to have to admit to themselves and to others that decisions driven by statistics are liable to be wrong. It could also be a time of opportunity for those purveying complementary ways of achieving a qualitative understanding of the flow of events. A great deal of time and money could be wasted on IT security solutions which ultimately will not work. Security is about human beings, not technology.
Direction comes from what people value most.
Therefore if values change so must directions. At the moment, the success of the Internet has been defined in terms of its contribution to the emergence of the global economy. The more people and things which are moved around the world, the more profit is made on speculation, the more successful the e-revolution is thought to be. The problem is that this vision of the world is proving not to be sustainable in financial terms. Content analysis of Trend Monitor's wider knowledge base suggests that e-commerce is liable to be implicated in a sharp and severe downturn in the world economy in six to eight months time.