Recent years have witnessed rapid changes in technology and increasingly more knowledge-intensive societies.
Nuclear technologies pose risks to modern society in terms of weapons and wastes.
Environmental technologies offer the prospect of transforming modern societies to a new more environmental benign form. Decisions now need to be made in the face of larger amounts of information and ever-greater uncertainty. Technological progress can also be linked to growing inequality within and between countries, and increasing environmental degradation. Social exclusion of segments of society has come to be recognized as symptomatic of many of the most advanced societies. However, economic exclusion for countries of the South could represent an even greater concern as the technological gaps between the developed and developing world continues to widen.