Our technology knows no national bounds but this secret apparently still eludes some. The advent of email and the ubiquitous World Wide Web has helped break down these boundaries. Surprising as it may be to our academic colleagues, not a few US companies still impose serious Web access limitations for their technical employees. In my own office, it is normal for me to get through my email most days, but seldom do I make an appreciable dent in my snail mail pile. I figure that if it is really important, my correspondent will use email.
Snail mail is largely junk.
We are now witnessing bizarre government regulatory discussions in certain parts of the world which are a throwback to the discredited practices of information control which characterized the Cold War. The notion that foreign information is either irrelevant or dangerous or in anyway inferior to domestic information is, on its face, absurd. Technical know-how knows no political boundaries and scientists, engineers and technologists are doing themselves and their supporters a disservice by tolerating such discrimination. In the control field, it is IFAC that represents this international community of professionals. New technology makes the IFAC family more inclusive.