Isaac Asimov once observed that a lunar landing had been predicted long before the actual event occurred. Yet among all those early prognosticators, not one ever imagined that the whole world would be seeing the event unfold on television. The art of prediction is always performed while standing on a slippery slope. As the train we call the new millennium inexorably chugs closer and closer to its destination, two trends both predominate and shape the landscape. The first is the profusion of information technologies .
New facts arrive at incredible speeds.
Perhaps more importantly, the number of people with access to this new information is growing exponentially. The pattern, rhythm and content of the change process that developing countries are experiencing today will certainly differ from earlier encounters with modernization. Our mythical northerner has gone from being a manual worker to a knowledge worker and, in the process, has shifted from being an isolated farmer to an organizational employee. The features that mark this evolution are the use of more knowledge, more abstract reasoning, and more intelligence to earn one's daily bread. The second trend, globalization of the economy accompanied by diffusion of capital , asserts itself more vigorously with each passing day.