We are now faced with the responsibility of discernment. Just as our ancestors quickly realised that no one was going to force them to read the entire library of a thousand books, we are now overcoming the initial alarm at the sheer weight of available information - and coming to understand that it is not the information itself that determines our future, only the use we can make of it. The next millennium will be, I am sure, more amazing than the last. As a species, we are 'hard-wired' to explore our environment and our imagination. We should never underestimate the capacity of our own ingenuity to take us by surprise.
New technologies offer new avenues of exploration.
I must confess that I had never considered myself incomplete without the ability to enjoy the world's great composers while sitting on my favourite beach - until someone in the Sony Corporation came up with the Walkman. However, we should not lose sight of the ancient truth that 'quantity is the enemy of quality', and temper our enthusiasm with humanity. There are still those in the world who have never seen a Walkman - and probably never will. I must hope that we are reaching the point in our technological evolution whereby we are able to commit more of our time to solving the problems of inequality that still plague the poorer peoples of the earth. As the century that saw the birth of both electronics and optronics draws to a close, it would seem that virtually everything we would wish to do in the field of communications is now technically possible.