Evolution: personal choices in a networked society

I suggested earlier that I would come back and devote more space to some of the all-important new skills that individuals - such as you and I - will need to exploit, and even to survive, the developments resulting from the e-Revolution. For just one example, if you are one of the teleworkers we have been looking at, the skills of self-management - in effect of managing your own small business - become much more important. These are very different skills to the ones people normally expect that they will need. Currently many employees scheme to avoid what their boss wants to impose on them. Soon, as self-managed teleworkers, in effect they will be that boss themselves! There will no longer be any way to avoid those things you hate to do.

MBA?

You might argue indeed that this demands the sort of skills we teach in management schools. You might equally argue that this is special pleading on my behalf - and my experience with our alumni does indicate that the moment they get their MBA they happily shed any pretence of following our hard taught theories! Accordingly, no doubt to the horror of my fellow academics, I myself would reckon that there is no general requirement to spend years earning an MBA just in order to run your own little business - and certainly not in order only to manage yourself.

Home Office Self-Discipline…but, that aside, teleworking does require a very different set of disciplines. Even if you have all the physical facilities I have described, especially an office large enough to work in and isolate yourself from interruptions, that seclusion can never be total. Someone is sure to break into it just as you reach a critical point in your work. In any case, you will want to relax from time to time - everyone does.

Now, though, it is not a matter of visiting the coffee machine in some dark corner of the office but of joining loved ones in the welcoming warmth of the kitchen. In one sense that represents a real benefit of teleworking, since it is a much more relaxing environment than that normally provided in the office. But how much more difficult does it then become to drag yourself back to that boring project you are working on? That really will demand a very considerable degree of self-discipline.

VITAL QUESTIONS

• Do you think you would have the self-discipline needed to work from home? Would you be able to manage yourself??

'Self-management'…covers many things which you might normally expect other people to do for you in the current office environment. You have, for instance, to schedule your own work. This means you can take the children out for the afternoon, but beware the backlog when you come home! You have to provide your own support services. You can't just ask someone else to do your photocopying, or type a letter, you have to do everything yourself. You really do have to become multi-skilled - even if some of those skills are rather lowly ones. Without your secretary, you will even have to learn how to make drinkable coffee!

Multi-Skilling…but moving away from teleworkers, who perhaps offer the extreme example of the changes with which we might be faced, all of us are going to have to become multi-skilled. The craftsman in olden days may have been proud of his many skills in metal-working, and he indeed was able to do all that was needed to produce a complete product - a genuinely rewarding form of multi-skilling. But this has long since been bastardised into the single skill needed on the assembly line demanded by O & M! Indeed, that craftsman also undertook many of the management tasks we now thing of as belonging to small businessmen. The variety of tasks, and their immersion in the whole 'product' - to see their creations emerge in their entirety, may be why it was then, and is still, seen to be such satisfying work. It is paradoxical that we have to go back in history, in this way, to find a model for our future! Something similar to that craftsman's experiences may be one of the great benefits of the new moves to multi-skilling.

Service Encounters

In particular, in the case of a service encounter where staff make up a great deal of the service offered to the customer, helping someone to choose the best insurance policy for instance, they may indeed cover a very considerable part of the whole 'production' process in our new ecommerce world. Indeed, their own efforts may form a great part of the resulting 'service product'; a fact that service providers are only now coming to terms with. It has long been a paradox, that many of the service industries - especially hotels and catering - which sell themselves on the level of their service actually treat their staff, who provide that service. with something approaching contempt! The one saving grace even now is that those who - despite everything that is done to them - work in the service and knowledge industries can enjoy a great deal of personal satisfaction from seeing the impact made by the full breadth of their work. They may even experience some of the fulfilment of being told by their customers that they are doing a great job - even if their own bosses still fail to recognise this!

But multi-skilling, which is already widespread and will become almost universal, means that you must have - by definition - many skills. Even if you are still on a 'production line' you may now need the skills to match a range of processes. This is very different to the de-skilling which lay at the heart of work-study (O & M). That started from the very dubious presumption that the worker was unintelligent and uneducated - something which is certainly not true of modern workers. In our experience at the Open University, most people are able to rise to challenges far above those that their managers - and they themselves - think them capable of. But others go even further. I recently had a fascinating conversation with the Chair of the Finnish Parliament's Education Committee. He was genuinely worried that they were having difficulty in boosting their take up of undergraduate education much beyond three quarters of school-levers. No wonder the Finns as a whole are fast becoming one of the richest peoples on earth!

Education for the Future…for the individual, multi-skilling doesn't just end at the group of skills that our employer currently demands of us; and sometimes even trains us for! It means going far beyond these, and developing the skills which we will be need in future jobs. Only then will we be equipped for them when they come along. As I have already said, and as we will see later in this chapter, the key to this must be education rather than training. To a degree it is a matter of semantics - of how you define the words - but the difference in philosophy is fundamental. Here, at the start of the chapter, it is worth emphasising that training is best seen as something very short-term; enabling you to develop the skill(s) necessary for your current job. Education, on the other hand, is much wider than this. It should prepare you for a wide range of jobs, even though it does not give you the specific skills for any one of them. It imparts the knowledge and learning skills which will offer the best intellectual frameworks within which you can later train for the new jobs.

It is these intellectual frameworks that will provide the answer to your long-term career needs - even when you don't know exactly what the future holds. With technology - and industry structures - changing so rapidly, it is often near impossible to decide in advance what your next job move is likely be, let alone the one beyond that and the training needs for either of them. On the other hand, if you already have the correct - educational - framework in place, then you should be able to learn those skills - whatever they may be - that much faster and put them into the correct context even faster still. In particular you should be able to integrate them into a much richer package than your 'competitors' - so that you should always be best-equipped to get the best job.

VITAL QUESTIONS

• How well has you existing education prepared you for future challenges? What new education do you need to fill the gaps?

• Do you have an 'education plan', albeit an informal one just lying around somewhere in your head, outlining what, how and when further education you will undertake? Why not - have you never given serious consideration to this?

Personal Change Management

You may also be able to indulge in a bit of what is now called 'change management'. This is a term which is typically applied to organisations, but - I believe - may increasingly apply just as much to individuals who are managing the rapid changes in their own lives. What it essentially means is that you must understand the changes taking place around you and their consequent impacts on your life. With this understanding, you will then be able to plan the changes needed to 'manage' those impacts; to take advantage of them - or at least survive them!

You will have seen, in the earlier chapter, that the organisational environment is becoming somewhat chaotic, even anarchic. Until people take it upon themselves to - organically - co-ordinate the new groupings (cells) of individuals which are emerging from this chaos, you will be almost certain to live in 'interesting times' - as the oriental curse demands! Choosing to lead one of the cells in which you find yourself is a very positive way of becoming one of the new breed of managers. So, once you realise that this is likely to happen at sometime in the future, you can start on your education - and subsequently the training - to prepare you for this, confident that few others will! At a lower level, maybe you will just develop the 'mindset' necessary to handle the new developments, or read a few books which give you some of the background and perhaps a little (basic) understanding. The point, whichever route you choose, is that you are preparing for the future rather than just existing in the present; and, as is too often the case, relying on the past.

VITAL QUESTIONS

• Do you have a 'change management' plan, albeit once more at the back of your mind, suggesting how you are going to cope with the main changes which are likely to face you? Why not? Again why haven't you considered your future?

The Friendly PC

It is a cliché to say that the e-Revolution is changing all our lives. Of course it is, and you will already have seen that, in dozens of different ways. There are very few of us now who can avoid the baleful - even perhaps malevolent - stare of the personal computer sitting on our desk. Yet that PC is potentially the best friend you have in the workplace. Of course, it can turn work into a chore - forever filling out the forms it presents to you. But it can also deliver skills we never previously thought possible. Indeed, the personal computer will become the great leveller of our age. Increasingly the crucial skills you need - and maybe some of the education - will be provided by your PC; simply by pressing a few keys. Certainly most of the knowledge you need will be delivered in this way.

VITAL QUESTIONS

• How do you see your PC? Is it an annoying taskmaster? Or has it opened up your horizons?

Professional Redundancies…a hidden result of this will be that many of the professions, which used to rely on their monopoly of certain parts of society's knowledge, will find life a lot less lucrative. Why pay for an expensive lawyer to give you an opinion, when your PC will do it at the press of a key? The difference, which is why those professions will continue to dominate their field - and will surely heave a collective sigh of relief at this point, is that you will still need the intellectual frameworks which they also possess; to be able to handle the information coming in. Indeed, these framework skills will become even more important when there is so much knowledge flooding in!

Without these frameworks, detailed knowledge is almost useless - and you will soon get hopelessly bogged down. With them, anyone - you or I - will soon be able to have almost instantaneous access to all the public knowledge the world holds and that is an awful lot of information. Despite my caveats, these developments will do some of the professions out of lucrative parts of their business. Those bits which have required little real (framework) skill, but which they have often been charged out at the same rate as everything else, are most at risk. Even the simplest form of (computer) artificial intelligence may be able to handle conveyancing now! If you are a professional, a lawyer or accountant or consultant say, then have a quick look to see whether your business is about to be handed over to a computer - which may no longer be your particular friend, but your competitor!

Your Best Friend…so a computer on your desk is - the above cases apart - your best friend. It will allow you to be much more efficient at the job you do. Learning how it can do this, and developing those information frameworks which relate to your job, offers great benefits. But another boon is that it can at the same time expand your horizons - using those frameworks to take in other areas of knowledge - and in so doing enriching your job, and your performance in it, by improving your effectiveness. And, the computer is not just a knowledge machine. Increasingly it is a communications device with which you can greatly expand your small world, by communicating effectively with an even wider group of contacts - globally if you need to.

Thus, your computer now enables you to talk to almost anyone in the world. It can as easily take you to the US president - or at least to his aides - as to the guy next door. For those of you who already 'surf the net' this is a reality. The rest of you will just have to take my word for it, until you try it yourself - and you must try it!. It really is not as difficult as you might think. I always reckoned, and still do, that I could get the answer to almost any question by no more than six telephone calls, because the experts who I would talk to at each stage would direct me to another level of expert - each time getting nearer to the one expert (perhaps the only one in the world) who could provide the answer. I doubt that you will want to know the answers to some of the esoteric questions I was then posing, so you should be able to find your own answers even more quickly. My intention here is just to indicate how easy it now is to use the world-wide resources at your disposal.

It also hints at one reality the media don't tell you about. The way to navigate this endless maze of data is to talk to people, not to use the much publicised 'search engines'. Using these I can't even find my own web-site! In fact, when I mentioned the telephone earlier this was not just about returning to more primitive times, it was a recognition that this is in many ways still the model for such communications. Pick up the handset, dial the correct number, and you are in vocal contact. The PC offers more in some areas; in searching the phone directories in much more sophisticated ways; in sending written and graphical data; in sending messages which will be there when the other person is available (some time later) to pick them up. But the principle is exactly the same, and the etiquette is also much the same. So don't be afraid of using the net - unless you are an out and out technophobe and even fear the telephone!

Database Libraries

There are now a large number of 'databases' of information available. The effect of these, though, is no different to that of the books and directories you are used to finding at your local reference library. So, in theory at least, you need no more skill than you did there. But, there you had the friendly librarian to help you sort through the catalogue of the hundreds of books on its shelves. Unfortunately, on the Internet you have nobody, and there are lots of catalogues - listing millions of 'books' - all of which now seem to be selling you something rather than helping you find what you want. None of this seems to be anything like the friendly librarian. As yet, the computers themselves do not help, they are only able to answer the question if it is (exactly) correctly put. That will change in the future and your friendly librarian will surface in a new (computerised) guise. But, in the meantime, your best bet is once more to start making those phone calls (or emails) to the experts. Not least, they will alone will be able to answer open-ended questions - even ones which are badly defined and hazy. Most days I get a couple of such requests myself. I guess the first stage is recognising that the problems lie with the search engines not yourself, and having the confidence to bypass them.

VITAL QUESTIONS

• How good are you at finding your way around the Web? How useful do you find the search engines?

• Do you use personal contacts to help you find the really important information you need?

Communications Skills

In this way, perhaps the skill which is now most important for everyone is that of communicating. I mentioned earlier that this is greatly neglected by the formal education systems, and by the commercial ones which follow later in life. Our existing skill, such as it is, is typically learned from experience - and, for many people, maybe it is no worse for that. But it is so important that we should never leave this skill to pure luck. After all it is what most of us now spend most of our time doing. So, in the absence of anyone specifically teaching you, you must learn well from experience and learn the skills you need in the specific environment in which you operate. Maybe you will sit in an office, where your prime form of communication will be through your computer, and there are many commercial courses (albeit often of dubious value) which will claim to make you expert in this field. Maybe you will be on the sales-floor, communicating verbally (and through body language) with your customers and there are just as many commercial organisations (albeit very often of even more dubious value) who will promise to make you the most successful sales-person ever! Somewhere in between these two extremes are the spectrum of options which will suit the rest of us.

Listening…surprisingly perhaps, in all these situations the key to success is listening rather than - as most people think - talking. And underpinning this is the skill of effective questioning. In practice, the most powerful questions are the simplest - especially 'why' and 'how'. Little children are very good questioners. You may hate them after a while, when they keep repeating 'Why, why, why…', yet they learn at an incredible speed by doing just this - by asking such simple, open-ended, questions! You too can learn a lot by simply asking 'why' in many situations - though you had better realise that people are a lot less tolerant of adults if they repeat this too often!

Indeed, most people are not very effective at asking questions. They typically ask very specific questions ('closed' questions in the terminology of selling) which tend to narrow discussion; and, in particular, tend to confine the discussion to the areas set by the questioner's personal preferences or prejudices. In our modern society, this tendency is reinforced by the fact that the PC, and especially the Web search engines, thrive on closed questions; and are very bad at answering open-ended ones! Unfortunately, in wider usage, 'open' questions are much more useful since they allow the person being questioned to adopt a wider viewpoint.

Open Questions…of which the simplest - Why? How? What? - are the most powerful, encourage the speaker to say what he or she considers is most important about the topic. (Examples are: What did you do? Why did you choose that equipment?) The listener can then gain the most benefit from the speakers knowledge and expertise. Later in the conversation 'directive' and then 'closed' questions can be used to steer the conversation to the topics of greatest interest to the listener. Even so, the most important, and productive, questions, at least in the first instance, are the 'open' ones; which allow the person being questioned to ramble on. They also seem to be the most difficult to ask; perhaps because they are not so obviously leading directly to the answer that is wanted, or maybe because the questioner feels less in control. But they are the key to unlocking the tongue of the person facing you. If the conversation proceeds with very short replies (and particularly just 'yes' or 'no'), it is likely that you are not using enough open questions; and may be missing the real answers.

The more open the question the better. The most powerful question is quite simply 'Why?', often closely followed by 'How?'. In practice, open questions come naturally if the questioner is genuinely interested in finding out what makes the other person tick.

Laddering…a particular technique, used for example by skilled researchers, is 'laddering'. In this case the question 'why?' is repeated until the respondent cannot explain any further. It is a powerful technique for finding the underlying motives. Unfortunately, in most normal discussions, it is a very aggressive technique and must accordingly be used with great care.

Rambling…a slightly less stressful and equally successful, if little reported, approach is 'rambling'. The best method for getting to know about the views of the person opposite you is to give him or her the time and space to 'ramble' around the subject. This can be an enormous strain on the listener, for it is difficult to concentrate and even more difficult not to interrupt.

Silence…even if people do ask the correct open questions, they often undermine the progress by stopping the answer in mid flow. The natural accompaniment to an open question is silence. Silence is probably one of the most underused of questioning devices. It is, though, a surprisingly aggressive technique, and you should not make it too obvious - it is best just to look very thoughtful. It requires a great deal of courage to use; but it is effective. The person you are questioning will eventually feel obliged to talk, and usually what he or she then says is especially enlightening (since he or she too will have had time to consider).

VITAL QUESTIONS

• Do you allow sufficient time for others to answer your questions?

• Do you ever force the issue by asking 'why' a number of times, or by remaining silent until you get an answer?

Closed Questions…typically require the answer 'yes' or 'no', have (justifiably) received a bad press. But it is still necessary to use them quite extensively to clarify points. The problem only comes when they are used instead of open questions.

Directive Questions…are a form of closed (or partially closed) question which is designed to steer the conversation in the direction you wish it to go. Typical examples are; 'If you could..', 'Do you..', 'Would you..'.

Agreement…in many situations by far the most important closed questions (and arguably the most important questions of all) are those where you check for agreement. As the discussion progresses, it is imperative that you establish whether or not you are taking the other person with you; or is he (or she), as is all too often the case, politely acting out the role of audience to your orator?

Listening and Analysis…as mentioned earlier, just as important a skill is listening. Many of us are too busy trying to put our own view across to hear what is being said in reply; and thus we miss much of the key data in our conversations. But listening implies far more than hearing. It also involves the process of analysing what is heard, to understand it; to make sense of it in general, and then to put it into the 'intellectual framework' of what is being discussed. Listening is a very active pursuit, not a passive one; or the listener will soon become a sleeper.

Understanding…but even listening, is not enough. The key is understanding. This is a process to which the main contribution must, of course, be made by what the person being questioned says; though it should be noted that this may include what he or she said in a number of previous meetings as well as in the current one. But it will also include all the other evidence you have unearthed. Put it all together and, hopefully, you will be able to complete the jigsaw.

Understanding is, therefore, a cumulative process; that may span several discussions.

• A useful approach to improving your questioning and listening skills requires that, over the next working week, you should make notes after every meeting, formal of informal:

• At the end of the week analyse the notes. Ask yourself what is your style in such meetings, and how effective is it, and how might it be improved?

Symbiosis with your Computer

This brings us through to the final part of this section on skills. In fact it is not really about a personal skill, it is about a form of symbiosis. It is the emerging symbiosis between you and the computer and thence with the world-wide computer networks. It is no longer enough to be just 'you', now you have to be both the physical 'you' and that other virtual part of you which resides on the computers.

Chips on the Brain…let me explain what I mean by this, by looking at the most extreme version of it - which is likely to come about two or three decades hence. Thus, it is now clear that, over that timescale, electronic chips are going to implanted in some people's brains - maybe in most of us - to allow them to communicate directly with computers. Parts of this technology are already available in the labs, so it is not a pipe-dream. It is one of those bits of known 'science' which is well down the path to technological implementation and some of the large telecommunications companies - such as BT - have already announced that they are developing the technology to take advantage of this.

I used to be somewhat sceptical in terms of the timescales - arguing that it would take much longer than a few decades before people would allow anyone to operate on their brains in this way. On the other hand, in one of our research sessions a participant simply noted that 'if the end result is so powerful [and it will be] then of course people will want the operation!' He then extended it to the analogy of a blind man; 'Wouldn't he accept the operation if it meant he could see?' I too am now convinced we will see such physical links, symbiosis, emerge sooner rather than later!

But, whatever the ultimate outcome, let us consider what happens if we - you and I say - have one of these chips in our brains. The point is that we will then be able to communicate with the computer networks directly from our brain; we won't need a keyboard, we won't even have to look at the screen anymore - everything will be delivered direct! We will come to exist in an almost hallucinogenic mixture of real and virtual environments. This means we will be able to directly share our thoughts and - for the first time - our feelings, something we have long had difficulty putting into words.

• How would you feel about having a computer chip (painlessly!) inserted into your brain? What if it made you twice as intelligent?

With this important exception, however, the advantages of such an advance may be much more limited than you might expect. Already the fastest route to our brain is through the optic nerve. So the simple screen we now use to feed this is unlikely to be replaced in the near future - at least not for the major part of our work. The feeds to brain-chips are unlikely to be faster. Maybe they could work faster in the other direction, the keyboard skills of most of us are above all noted for their slowness and inaccuracy. But we are now reaching the stage where spoken input is becoming possible, at least for normal business letters and documents. Indeed, I have even used it in 'writing' parts of this book. And, I guess that the speed of such spoken output is just about as comfortable as we can get - faster than that and we can't get our brain into gear and become tongue-tied. So strike out this need too.

Feeling Your Way Around

But for most of us the speed of communication will not be the important aspect. It will, instead, be the symbiosis I have already mentioned. Thus, we will start to 'feel' our way around the information we are working on - in dimensions beyond the three we now see in the world around us and the two dimensions on our screens. Not only that, but when we are communicating with the computer through it we will be able to understand other people's complex responses - not least their emotional ones - as well as the facts they state. At one extreme, this may be a problem when we are swamped by them. At the other, it may offer major new dimensions for love - unless you find out how much the object of your attention dislikes you! But, overall, it should immeasurably help our understanding of others. In any case, sooner or later we will be able to control these emotional outbursts as we currently do our tongues. Then we may be able to exchange our loving thoughts with the greatest lyricism that humanity has ever seen. Indeed, you will be able to share - or remember - every aspect of an event. All your physical senses, and emotional experiences, will be available in this way!

Symbiosis is Here Already…but let me go back to the idea that really, for many of the things we do in our work and in our life, implanted chips will not make a great difference. The information we need can be just as easily exchanged through the screen and keyboard. Why I am stressing this point is that having a chip in the brain - which obviously will change you, to create a new symbiosis with the computer which now shares your brain - is not fundamentally necessary to create a lesser form of this symbiosis. Even without these chips we are already well on the way to something approaching the same symbiosis. Indeed, we are already experiencing this in one form or another. It is just that this is hidden behind the crudity of the interfaces involved.

• What happens when your PC stops working? Does your life stop? Could you now cope without your PC? Have you already become addicted to it?

You have only to witness what happens when one of your fellow-workers' PCs goes down The result is typically that they run around like headless chickens, looking for somebody - anybody - to help. When that happens, you soon realise that you simply can't exist without your PC. Our interaction with our personal computers is becoming ever more complex, ever more sophisticated. To put it in simplistic terms, we are even now starting to merge with our computers - to share our lives with them. Already it is becoming difficult to see where we end and they start. Increasingly, we put our memories on the computer; first our business memories - I cannot write a document now without pasting in bits from my hard disc - and then our personal lives - as family photos now join the store of data.

PCs in Charge

I have previously talked about access to knowledge. Many of my generation spent years at university imbibing the knowledge that is now available to anyone at the touch of a button on a PC. So, laziness takes over. We no longer have any reason why we should fill our brains with such memories. Let the computer take the strain. Let it remember for all of us. After all, it is much better than us at doing so. Its memories are so much more accessible, and brilliantly vivid in their accuracy. But that means that many of the functions of our memory, of what we are, are being handed over to our PCs and the networks they feed. Increasingly, other bits of us will also be handed over in this way. We are going to pass over knowledge of our likes and dislikes - another mark of our individuality - so that the computer can cater for them. Even now that is happening with the purchase of some CDs, where clubs in the US are building profiles of you so that they can tell you which new releases you will, and I mean will, like! Alright, there is still some element of decision-making left, but a large part of the processes - of your critical faculties which are an especially important part of you as an individual - will soon have been subcontracted to the computer.

• Do you already use your PC to run your diary? Do you respect the tailored book suggestions Amazon offers you?

There is nothing fundamentally wrong with this. Maybe the computer will even have better taste than you! But it brings us back again to the educational importance of intellectual frameworks. Your job will increasingly be to manage all these helpers, by understanding how their - and your - systems work, so that the combination - of you and your computer - is optimised, and is all that you would want it to be. Eventually, in this way, large parts of you will actually be in the computer. This once more will be fine, just as long as you remain in control of the symbiotic personality which results - and, of course, as long as you have access to that computer.

Immortality…it also offers, for the first time, the concept of genuine immortality. As more and more of you creeps into the computers, and especially as it is shared as a common group memory with others, the 'real you' will ultimately come to reside in the computer. Unless someone pulls the switch, you can stay there for ever - long after your physical body has been reduced to dust! That is quite a reassuring concept. Just make sure you pay the electricity bill!

• Do you want to be immortal, as a memory on the Web? Have you thought about how you can burnish that memory so that future generations will respect it?

11. MORE EDUCATION

I have now spent some time examining the possible challenges facing us as individuals; at home and work. This chapter, on the other hand, is probably the most important part of the book - in terms of giving you the skills you will need to meet these challenges. For education is the most general, and most important, tool now available to you. So, let us now move on, to look at the 'purer' forms of education rather than those which overlap skills training. I have to declare my interest at this point, because I am an educator - a university teacher - and this must inevitably bias my viewpoint. Having said that, however, I will make no further apologies. It has become almost a cliché that education is the most important investment any of us - and our governments - can ever make. Perhaps not all of us recognise this fact, but many governments do. Remember Tony Blair's 1997 election slogan of 'education, education, education'. Of course, like many political statements made in sound-bites, the subsequent reality has been rather different. No government has yet taken action on the most important element typically promised, that of Life-Long-Learning (LLL); though community colleges in the US have quietly embraced parts of this!. But at least it is now generally recognised that education is very important.

Beyond the Blackboard…many of us, especially older members of the population, still tend to think of it as taking place in a classroom, dominated by a teacher aided only by a chalkboard; or, more recently, by the 'overheard projector'. No doubt this was the experience of many of you too when you were children. Well - despite some unpleasant memories - that may have been a very effective form of education. Indeed, communicating one-on-one, face-to-face, with a really good teacher can be one of the most productive experiences in life. But, faced with resourcing shortages which preclude such rich pupil-teacher relationships, it is already changing. Schools now expose their pupils to many other approaches - not least those aided by computers.

• How were you taught at school? What impact has this had on your willingness to continue education now?

Learning can take many other forms, and still be effective. It can be from books. Hopefully you will learn something from this one! In any case, many people learn vast amounts of information from books. Sometimes what they learn in this way changes their whole life. Indeed, in a more specialised form, that is how we, at the Open University, have managed to teach literally millions of students. We carefully encapsulate our ideas, as teachers of various topics, in written form. It is a more specialised form, since the books we produce are designed to be 'learning experiences' - with very specific objectives - rather than general texts about the subject. Thus, the material is very carefully structured, and is interspersed with exercises so the students can test their understanding. In this respect we try to work more like the classroom teacher rather than the typical author. As a result, we find that interaction with the computer, which is now penetrating our work ever more extensively as it is the teaching in other institutions, is just an extension of what we are already doing naturally. It simply offers a greater degree of interaction - moving our position closer to the teacher and away from the author, exactly as we would wish.

Ultimately, the computer itself may become the teacher, as it already does with CAI (Computer Aided Instruction) in some areas where procedural training is well understood - and easily transferred to the computer. Computer programming itself is one of these areas, since the rules of programming are very clear and easy to teach. I have even seen it applied equally well to wheel-tapping, for those railway workers who literally spend their lives tapping the wheels of trains to see if they are safe!

Experience…but then there is also a whole range of experiences you can learn from. If you can manage to look at the world through the enquiring eyes of a child for the whole of your life, you will be richly educated indeed. You will learn every day from every experience. The 'university of life' is usually given as an excuse by those who choose to remain ignorant, but for those who genuinely wish to learn it can be the richest source of all. In that practical context, the most important learning experiences, for most people, come from the box in the corner - from our ever-present television. If nothing else, in your adult lives you are likely to absorb literally thousands of times as much knowledge through this source than from any formal educational experiences. Even if you only watch soap-operas on television, you will still experience more in a month than your ancestors, just a century ago, experienced in their whole lives. Maybe, with luck, you will even absorb some of this knowledge and expand your repertoire of skills and even your use of language. If you do, as most people do, watch documentaries as well, then - whether you like it or not - you will gradually become ever better educated. From that much maligned box of modern communications technology, you will almost certainly learn more than from any formal source of education!

Educational Entertainment or Entertaining Education

Maybe I have just ruined your enjoyment of television programmes, and of documentaries in particular. You hadn't realised they were covertly educating you, where all you wanted was entertainment. But, you see, the best and most memorable education is also entertaining. It is so much fun that you scarcely realise it is happening. The more you are involved in the subject, albeit even as emotional involvement in light entertainment, the better the education works. I am certain you will clearly remember, from your schooldays, just how difficult it was to learn from a boring teacher. Pain is never as good for your soul as some claim, especially when the aim is to educate you. On the other hand, if you enjoy something so much that you get fascinated by the subject, you will never forget that learning.

I would, however, avoid the old cliché about the 'university of life'. There may have been an element of truth in this phrase generations ago, when personal experience represented even more of an individual's understanding of the world. But those times have long since gone and most our knowledge of a much wider world now comes through the eyes of others. This phrase is, today, clutched at only by those who are too lazy, or bigoted, to do anything about their ignorance. Experience now is only truly meaningful if it is set in the context of learning - ideally, perhaps, from a real university.

LLL

I will, instead, concentrate on the vexed problem of Life-Long-Learning (LLL). The main challenge here is, quite simply, that most educational systems still assume that learning is the exclusive province of the young. It finishes on the day when your last formal course finishes. Once you have reached the stage, when you are handed your final leaving certificate, you can put the whole painful process behind you. In this context, education can become almost like a prison sentence. One might almost expect to receive remission for good behaviour - and that too often is the model! But, as you might expect me to say, education should be more, much more, than that. Most important of all, it is definitely not just for the young. Whether we like it or not, we - even the most determinedly ignorant of us - keep learning throughout our lives. The difference is that for most of our lives we do this chaotically, by default, instead of in an organised fashion.

Learning…perhaps it is better, at this stage, to talk about it from the opposite - more fundamental - direction, in terms of 'learning'. Education can sometimes imply that we, the educators, are force-feeding our students - and that too often may also be the case. Learning, on the other hand, is what they receive and, hopefully, as well as being a staple of life it also becomes one of its great enjoyments. Indeed, my advice would be that, if you don't enjoy what you are learning, then find something else which you will enjoy.

Qualifications…on the other hand, one of the other problems of our educational systems is that they are still largely related to 'professional' qualifications. Even the first degree has now typically become a training for our first job. We are required to learn - often simply by rote - a vast array of increasingly irrelevant facts. We painfully force ourselves through this process, and through the exams which test us on those facts. For we need the bit of paper which shows that we are genuine professionals; graduates of the education machines. But that is probably the worst possible learning process that you could imagine. For the learning experience itself should, almost independently of the subjects you are learning, become an end in itself. Above all, it should be a rewarding process, which opens you up to the wonders of the world of learning. And there are great wonders there.

Indeed, far too many people, having got their 'leaving certificate' especially if this is a degree at the tender age of twenty years, consider that they have already done all that is necessary for a comfortable life thereafter. They are devastated when, in later decades, the world - changed and still changing - overtakes them. With Life-Long-Learning you move along with the rest of the world and are not flattened by it as if races past you. But, in any case, it should be great fun!

• How have you learned about your hobbies and interests? What was different about that learning? Why?

Libraries…at its simplest level, the world of on-going life-long learning may just revolve around what is available in your local library; still probably the best source of such material. If you have a good library near to hand, count yourself lucky. Through it you can explore the whole world and beyond. These days, of course, this is a process which has been opened up - and vastly extended - by the many new media available. The literally hundreds of digital cable channels which are becoming available don't just offer block-buster films, but give you access - if you hunt through them - to channels full of fascinating information. You will soon be able to view documentaries all day. You will even be able to share graduate education programmes, without having to take the exams which send fear into the hearts of most learners. My own Open University, at last truly living up to its name, is making many elements of its programmes available in this way.

Internet Education

More directly, you will eventually be able to use the Internet to tailor learning programmes to meet your specific needs. These may revolve around research in high-energy physics, which is already catered for, or leek-growing, which as yet probably is not but undoubtedly soon will be! The problem is that all of these are as yet in their infancy. But they will soon mature. It will take only a few years for them to be available to all of us - and in forms which we can use without any special preparation. It took centuries for the library books to be literally unchained from their shelves; but it may only take months for much the same to happen to educational programmes.

• Have you looked to see what learning programmes, in the subjects you want, are available over the Internet?

In the context of the e-Revolution, though, it has to be admitted that the current problems of learning through the Internet are - to educators at least - legendary. Not least, as I have already mentioned a number of times, just finding the information you want is a nightmare. There are literally billions of facts already there, but the information is of no use to you if you can't find it. To date the so-called 'search-engines' have so far proved to be very crude devices. I can't even find some of my own web-sites using them - so what chance has anybody else got!

Beyond that, there is no real independent validation of the accuracy - or usefulness - of the material you do find. Anyone, no matter how ignorant or deranged, can put material on the web and claim authenticity for it. The Web may represent a fundamental advance in democratic rights, when it judges us all equal and our ideas as equally valuable without recourse to our status. But this is no use if you are a learner who does not have the skills to judge between world-class and paranoid ideas. It is, thus, difficult to know exactly what trust to put in the material unfolding on your PC screen.

Above all, however, beware the pitfall, which many - including the experts - have fallen into: 'because it is on the computer it must be right'. No way! It is more likely to be wrong, and it is up to you to use your own judgement to determine whether or not it really is right.

Open Minds…so, Life-Long-Learning doesn't have to be like school. It can just be maintaining an open mind and constantly searching out truths; constantly raiding the shelves of the libraries - electronic or otherwise. This is not just a pious hope. Some of the most learned people I have met have never even been to university. But they have plagued their local librarians to get them books on every aspect of the human experience. Indeed, research has shown that, given the resources, often the best learners are the old and the unemployed; simply because they have the time available and little else to fill it!

Formal LLL

Let's now move on to the more formalised aspects of Life-Long-Learning; and the first thing which should be said is that, with few exceptions, this doesn't yet exist! Unfortunately, so far it only inhabits the minds, or at least the dreams, of governments and educationalists. The number of official reports - my own included - which talk about LLL, and eulogise about it, is legendary. The terrible thing is that, while those documents are correct in their conclusions - Life-Long-Learning really is essential if you are to continue to survive as a cultured and productive member of society - the resources to meet this demand are simply not being provided. When I have cornered the eminent authors of some of the most influential of these reports they have sheepishly confirmed this; offering the apology that their political masters in the establishment had steadfastly ignored their demands for suitable resourcing!

CPD…one form of LLL is provided, and that is Continuing Professional Development (CPD). In this way, some of the professions, at least, do maintain the process of education for their members. This is advisable for accountants and lawyers, who need to understand the latest developments in case-law. It is essential for our doctors, for who would want to be treated by someone who only knew the medicine of earlier decades. Surely, though, it should be just as necessary for the rest of us! On the other hand, CPD is still not education, it is training. For what they are doing is updating their current skills - which they use in their daily work. Whilst this may be, literally, a matter of life and death for some professionals, I am not convinced that it continues to develop the whole person as LLL should do.

• Have you, or any of your friends, had to undertake any CPD? How well did it work?

Commercial Offerings…elsewhere there are many courses run, at different levels, by commercial providers. These will teach you, for a fee - often an extortionate one - other aspects of professional development. In addition, those in the public sector, typically local colleges, will also teach you another whole range of subjects - from the hieroglyphs of ancient Egypt to modern French cuisine - this time at much more affordable prices. I would argue that it is probably the latter group which will prove more useful to you. Indeed, the usefulness often seems to be in inverse proportion to the price! None of these, however, equate to anything approaching a public commitment to, and especially public access to, LLL for the majority of the us. This is a lamentable failing on behalf of governments who need to match their high-flown sound-bites about LLL with suitable resources.

Personal LLL

So, in the absence of provision by the state, how can you possibly continue your own Life-Long-Learning. As I have already indicated, if you do continue it will offer great benefits. Not least it will offer you significant advantages over your 'competitors' in the workplace, as well as enrich your private life and expand your horizons. So, how do you do this?

I have already indicated some approaches which are available to almost everyone. You can use libraries, or attend courses at your local colleges. But there are other ways. Not the least of these is simply taking quality newspapers and news-journals - along with their electronic equivalents - which analyse the subjects behind the news in considerable depth. Then there are all the other journals, covering all the topics known to civilisation - from art to zoo-keeping. These can, together, keep you abreast of developments in society and in the subjects which fascinate you. Above all, as I have already suggested, the greatest educator is going to remain - for the foreseeable future - television, especially as it adds on specialist channels by the hundred. You may view this statement with distaste, for was not television supposed to destroy our culture by lowering standards all round? But we don't all have to exist on a strict diet of soaps, game-shows and Oprah! We can all learn from the wider range of offerings - and even the questions on game-shows can sometimes teach us strange facts! At their best, television documentaries may be far better, in terms of education as well as entertainment, than many university offerings! The impact of their 'real-life' films can sometimes bring home important truths more effectively than a dozen earnest lectures.

• Have you ever considered planning your 'educational activities' - such as viewing television - to create your own LLL programme? Why not?

Active Learning…on all these fronts , the most important advice is to be an active learner; by reading books and even in choosing your television viewing. You must participate. You have to fully commit yourself to the necessary learning processes. This means understanding, as well as enjoying, the material which is put before you. But if you do that, the process alone will be enough to keep your learning experience alive. My mother, now well into her eighties, is still a cross-word addict. But this is not just as a peculiar form of intellectual perversion, but because it is her way of keeping her mind active. And it has, her mind is just as active as it ever has been.

Edutainment

Returning to education in general, I would now like to look at some of the developments which we, at the Open University, are forecasting. Perhaps the most important development we expect to happen is that of significantly increasing amounts of 'informal' education - much of it in the form we now call mass edutainment. As with most forecasts of the future, this development is not happening as fast as we expected it to. The nearest we get to it at the moment are the computer games which seem to take over the lives of our teenagers. The quality of presentation which is being achieved in these games, in terms of technical performance, indicates what might be to come.

What we expect to see eventually is the development of interactive computer programmes, with very high quality pictures, which go far beyond the documentary to 'personally' - interactively - teach you a subject. They will be electronic teachers, in the best sense. The point about such software is that it will require considerable capital investment. Indeed, the best current analogy is that of feature films. Thus, such edutainment programmes, to be really effective, will cost tens of millions of dollars but will sell for just a few tens of dollars a copy. Hence, these will have to sell by the millions - exactly as movies do - to make their money back. In addition, their production - focusing on video footage more than software - will largely take place on sound stages or on location, as do Hollywood blockbusters now! Of course, the enormous scale of investment needed means that they will be the province of large multinationals - Disney and Microsoft - not of local colleges, indeed not of any educational institutions, not even those as large as the Open University.

• If it looked interesting, would you 'rent' an interactive (computerised) education module instead of a videotape of the latest Hollywood blockbuster?

Education for the Masses…eventually, in this way, the most popular subjects, from accountancy to art, will be available in this form - pumped down the wire to your home. Because of their genuinely personal (computerised) tuition and their sheer convenience, they will become the offering of choice for most people. When all of this comes about it will offer a major step forward in education and a massive challenge to the existing providers. It will dramatically expand the horizon of education as a whole, making it more accessible to many millions, and it will do that mainly because the entertainment element makes it approachable at all levels!

Indeed, most education will soon have to be an entertaining process. Fail to entertain and - exactly as with any feature film now - you will be dead in the water. As I have already indicated, many of the existing programmes on television are - apart from the interactive element - edging into this area; entertainment with educational values. Edutainment will just take this further - albeit much further and much more fulfilling for the participant - as the new century progresses.

Filmed Lectures…in the beginning it may well look like a combination of television programme with computer game. But that would be to miss the point, for it will allow the individual to employ the best possible (computerised) teachers for a wide range of subjects. On the other hand, simply filming lectures - even by the most eminent gurus as is proposed by some institutions - is bound to be a poor second best and certainly won't be interactive. So, instead of waiting for the next block-buster at your local cinema, you may well find yourself waiting just as eagerly for the next blockbuster edutainment package to come down the wire to you. A new art-form will have been born!

Having said all of that, and tantalised you beyond reasonable measure, there actually is little sign yet that such packages are being developed yet. It has to be admitted, indeed, that progress to date, largely restricted to CDROMs rather than the web, seems to be confined to dumping existing textbooks onto them - which doesn't do much for either!

Club Membership

At the other extreme, what we believe we will also see is the more traditional institutions, the universities say, capitalising on what they have always offered - membership of an exclusive club. These learned institutions have always liked to see their alumni as elites, but that membership will now become the foundation for life-long clubs. These fraternities will embrace the principle of life-long-learning, but will also offer - like many other exclusive clubs and societies - a network of contacts for furthering one's career. This may appear dangerously elitist, since it maintains the web of contacts on which the establishment depends, but - by the time it comes about - more than half the young (and perhaps as many as the three quarters who already reach this stage in Finland) will reasonably expect to earn a degree which rewards them with entrance into this clubland. There will still be those who are excluded, but at least the establishment will then no longer be such a small elite.

• Are you one of the alumni of an educational institution - a university say? What does membership currently do for you? What should it do for you; not least in terms of supporting the LLL you need?

Then reform it to meet your needs! The worst faults of the establishment come about not because it is an elite, but because it is a foolish elite which has no connection with the masses it is supposed to rule. If we can infiltrate the masses into its ranks we may yet save it, and ourselves, from the bloodiest forms of revolution.

Holistic Education…earlier on I emphasised the holistic nature of learning. I think the widespread recognition of this is one important factor which will emerge in the near future - and shape it. It is arguable, as I have already argued, that even school level education, followed by university education, has in the past been oriented towards training people for the job market - rather than to fulfil their own lives. Indeed, in recent decades this aspect has come to the fore - with potential employers demanding that school-leavers meet their own most immediate needs. This a very short-sighted view. Those self-same employers will be back in a few years just as stridently demanding that their employees are educated (in truth, trained) to meet the changed requirements of that time. Why do such employers seem to think that the world of education should be at their beck and call?

One of the good things we believe will emerge over the coming decades is, therefore, that life-long-learning will not focus on the current job and will shift the emphasis of all education from skills training for work to genuine education for the whole, well-rounded person. That will be good for the individual, for the nation and - no doubt to their surprise - for the employers. Where skills last maybe a decade, education is for life.

Fulfil Your Potential

From your own point of view, such Life-Long-Learning will increasingly allow you to fulfil your own true potential. So, once more, I come back to that all important word from the beginning of the book: fulfilment. This will be as much about your interests outside of work as in it - though work itself will need to be more fulfilling or you will move to where it is. Whether your interest is in ancient Rome or in silent films, there is no reason that your real interests should not form the focus for a major part of your life. And they may indeed help your performance in the workplace as well. Any form of education which develops your intellect will enhance your performance overall. But I return to the key point, whatever other benefits it brings, it must above all be about fulfilment. Nothing can be more fulfilling than becoming ever more expert in the things that really interest you. You have only to see people's eyes light up when they start to describe their favourite hobbies, their passions in life, to see how much this means to them.

Managing Personal Progress…as everyone now knows, the technology that will be central to the new teaching roles will be that emerging from the e-Revolution: that of information and communications technology. But what is less well understood is that the management of our educational progress should be the most important contribution IT will make. The heart of this process might therefore be maintenance of a 'master-file' on the each of us, that will enable our teachers to track our (life-long) progress to ensure they we really do fulfil our potential. Although some will, inevitably, worry about the invasion of our privacy - even though there is no reason that this process should not be entirely voluntary - this ability to deal with each of us as an individual, and not as the contents of a pigeonhole, may be the single greatest contribution to both equality and freedom that society can at last make.

Investment in Education… is, like motherhood, an icon before which every politician genuflects. Unfortunately that is usually the limit of their active interest. But education should be seen by all of us as the true investment that it really is. No other investment has a guaranteed working life of more than forty years and is so cost effective. No other investment also shows such great returns, to the vast majority of the population. In the coming knowledge society, the greatest asset of any nation will - more than ever - lie in its educated workers. Don't ask me, ask the national leaders who regularly say as much.

In addition, education, rather than violence, is now the true instrument of change - be it social or technological. It is positively rεvolutionary. Not least, the knowledge society emerging from the e-Revolution will require everyone to be educated to higher levels than ever before. Indeed, if we are to reap the full benefits of the information and communications aspects of that εvolution we must first invest in the necessary education - in new approaches to knowledge not just in basic IT skills - and we cannot start too soon.

Cost Free?…the really good news, which brings the whole affair into the real world since it will not add to the nightmares of our politicians, is that no large capital investments should be required! We already have most of the physical facilities, in our existing system. The new programmes will, to a large extent, simply use up the spare capacity that currently exists. Most educational facilities, and administrative infra-structures, are, by their nature, still under-utilised. It makes sense, surely, to use their capacity to provide the re-education that will be essential to our prosperous future; and the students themselves will fund the additional running costs (as they largely do when they study with the Open University).

Mass Education

Thus, in the Open University, our standard course material is used by literally thousands of students and even the dozens of tutors on each course are provided with extensive teaching aids. It is an approach that really works. After all, we have seen something like this pre-packing revolutionise how we buy our goods from supermarkets. Indeed, supermarkets could not exist without this. Could you imagine them scooping chunks of butter from a slab and wrapping it individually for you, as it used to happen in the days of my youth? Why should teaching remain in the dark ages?

Teach the Teachers…perhaps one reason for the unwillingness by the teachers to adopt the new teaching aids is quite simply a lack of awareness and understanding, maybe even a fear of the unknown. When any new material was developed, during my IBM teaching days, the greatest task was seen to be that of preparing the teachers. The most important course in such a curriculum is the particularly well named 'Teach the Teachers' (TTT). The saying 'physician heal thyself' could just as well read 'teacher teach thyself'!

We have now completed the first part of our journey, towards our own personal εvolution. This part of the book has dealt with the three 'personal' stages:

You should have by now received enough 'pictures' of the potential challenges facing you to be able to 'map' your own most likely future. From the chapter which you have just completed, you should be able to decide which investments - especially in education - you will need to make; in order to achieve that empowerment. With this in place, and with the many other suggestions you have read to help you, your next logical step should indeed be to empower yourself! Good luck with that. It will be one of the most important things you ever do with your life.

This leaves the 'rεvolutionary' element, the last two stages of our progression, and the last two chapters will focus on that:

12. TECHNOLOGICAL REALITIES AND ECONOMIC MYTHS

Before we start on the genuinely rεvolutionary material, however, let us look at background to some of the more influential changes taking place in the wider world. Of these, technological change - especially that associated with the e-Revolution - is the topic which seems to most fascinate writers about the future. Even I don't want to undersell the importance of such changes. They lie beneath, and underpin, many of the subsequent changes in society which have had, and will continue to have, immense impacts on your lives. The only point I would make, and the reason this topic only accounts for part of one chapter in this book, is that these are typically some distance removed from the personal experiences of most individuals. Thus, a change in technology, which itself typically follows some decades behind the necessary scientific discoveries, will precipitate other changes which only slowly trickle through society; until they finally aggregate sufficiently to have a significant impact and we - as consumers - finally notice them. It is how society behaves in response to these stimuli, how society mediates these coming changes, which now really determines the future - and its ultimate impact on us.

Thus, for just one important example, we already have the technology to launch ourselves into space. Indeed, more than three decades ago, the US Apollo programme was due to set up a laboratory on the moon - using the empty third stage of the launch vehicle. That is until Richard Nixon cancelled it - and put our progress in this field back by perhaps half a century. Progress now is almost entirely dependent upon our decisions - and in particular on our leaders' decisions.

VITAL QUESTIONS

• How do you think our lives would have been different if Richard Nixon had not cancelled the later stages of the Apollo Programme?

• In the different field of economics, what would have been the impact on our lives if Nixon had not also wrecked many of the economic institutions which had been set up by the post-war Bretton Woods conference - and which had underpinned global financial strategy for several decades - and in the process unleashed the destabilising forces of the new global financial markets?

Technological Wealth

In practice, the most important cumulative impact on of technology on society and that is the great wealth it creates. I like to sum this up in what is often seen by my audiences as the most contentious statement of all, and that is: ' We now have effectively unlimited resources at our command!'. The truth really is that we can do whatever we want.

No doubt, you will be immediately tempted to challenge that statement, because these 'unlimited' resources are not evenly distributed and even then are too often misused. But the importance of the statement comes in terms of government policy. That policy has for many years been based upon rationing scarce economic necessities - economics is not for nothing called the dismal science.

Classically, the price mechanisms of a market are supposed to be the impartial forces which allocate these scarce resources. You should see, therefore, that the simple statement that resources aren't really limited is truly rεvolutionary in this context, for it undermines not only the cherished theories of most of economics but also the central policies of many governments!

Local Difficulties…even if you have to accept that this statement only applies to the world as a whole, and will operate properly below this level only when the regional distribution inequalities and the inevitable systemic bottlenecks have been be sorted out, it still is a dramatic statement - which should change the views of world leaders. It is intended to do just that! You can see why, on the other hand, our leaders don't talk in these terms. If they did, they would have to face up to a very different world; one in which their confrontational styles, constantly arguing about allocating scarce resources, would be totally out of step. What is worse this would be obvious to their electorates. But, if they won't recognise reality, we will have to bring the debate into the open ourselves!

Political Excuses…even if it does not apply to all situations, most decisions based on 'economic' theory have now become almost irrelevant. The basis for many such decisions should now be social or political, as the rest of this book suggests. Above all, the removal of resource constraints offers the very real opportunity for those governments which are willing to recognise the facts, and to a lesser extent you as an individual, to win control of the future. That is why my previous book, 'Future Revolutions', provided such a detailed map of the future. It was not to suggest that the future was predestined, but was to allow you to plot your own journey through it! So, this is not a trivial or theoretical observation. It is a very real fact about the future. Not merely are we now to be empowered, but our governments should be equally empowered - to do almost all those things we previously thought impossible.

New Potentials

If you are not yet convinced, let me explain further. The fact that most resources are no longer limited comes about for a number of reasons. At one extreme, we are still discovering new reserves of raw materials, especially in terms of energy sources. Despite all the scares, we have something like half a century of oil reserves, a historically high level, even without taking into account the much greater deposits of methane hydrites recently discovered under the oceans. At the other extreme, we are continuously improving our effective use of these resources - not least in agriculture. It is, therefore, not unreasonable to expect that, over the next few decades, these historical tends - some of which have lasted for centuries - will continue. This is the most likely outcome, no matter what the pessimistic Malthusians, those who constantly tell us the end of the world is nigh, might promote in their cataclysmic visions. If, as our own experts expect, we are eventually able to crack the secrets of safe fusion energy then there will be unlimited riches for all of us, until the seas run dry in a few billions of years time! Even if this doesn't happen - given the political will - we already have the technology to tap the boundless energy in space.

So all our futures should be safe. Stop worrying! Indeed, access to all the resources of the solar system, which will be opened up over the next half century, should ensure that none of us ever goes wanting again. Unless, that is, our governments repeat the mistakes of Richard Nixon and cause us to go wanting, due to their incompetent 'management' of our economic systems. Perhaps, it might - indeed - be for political reasons! The greatest loss of life by famine in recent years, in Ethiopia, was caused because its then government - the 'Derg' led by President Mengitsu - quite deliberately used famine as a weapon against its opponents in a vicious civil war! On the other hand, the outcome of a later famine, which was potentially even more devastating, was only 8,000 deaths. This was because the new government - led by Meles Zenawi, who I was advising at the time - managed its resources to save lives rather than destroy them!

Indeed, as I have already suggested, even if we can no longer meet our needs from the resources available on this planet, access to all of the resources of the solar system will help resolve these shortages. This may range from more energy, where solar energy in space is abundant, to minerals from the asteroid belt. Eventually it may also include space itself - for living in space colonies can expand the effective surface area, on which mankind can live, to an almost infinite extent.

Nano-Efficiency…another important aspect is the efficiency with which we now use these resources. We no longer need to throw vast resources at any problem. In particular, nano-technology is now coming of age. We can do at a microscopic level what we previously needed to do at an almost monumental level. As a result, the resources we need to commit to these activities, to these devices, can often be reduced by a factor of a hundred or more. I don't want to spend too much time on the point, but this is not just a matter of improving our use of resources in the shape of the devices themselves, it also means that their subsequent use of all the other resources - especially energy - is reduced. Perhaps much more important, it can at the same time improve the richness of our lives.

VITAL QUESTIONS

• Returning to the previous question, and re-examining the 'reality' of 'scarce' resources, which do you now think might be in genuinely short supply? How might this limit the future of humanity?

Capital

This leads me into my next subject in this discussion of resources: capital. Pre-empting what I will say in the later section on economics, in its more popular guise - as money - capital has, over the years since classical economics emerged as a 'social science', been the source of a totally disproportionate amount of conjecture and of even more misunderstanding. Capital, enshrined in the 'balance sheet' of the corporation, was largely invented as a means of justifying the investment in the new factories needed to supply the Industrial Revolution. But, over the last century or so, its role in the popular mythology - not least as promoted by Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan in the 1980s as the only worthwhile measure of individual worth, has escalated out of all proportion; just as its usefulness in economic theory has plummeted! In the minds of many, perhaps most, of the population money is, in some ways, now more tangible than the goods it will buy. Even in the minds of many economists it often takes precedence over all other economic factors. It has, thus, become the perverse focus for Western civilisation.

Instant Money…the reason it appears here, as a 'technological' resource, is that - since money is an abstract concept - in this current context it should merely be seen as a convenient representation of other resources. It is an effective way of avoiding the inefficiencies of a barter system. As a basic concept, however, it is still just about as unsophisticated as barter, from which it emerged. If you ignore the fevered dealings of the global financial markets, money has absolutely no inherent value. Its only worth lies in what the recipient believes he or she can do with it. It is literally all in our minds! At one extreme this can be simply seen if you ask yourself to what use you might put the dollar bill in your hand, if you couldn't exchange it for something else. At the other extreme, it is demonstrated by the fact that each day more than a trillion dollars is speculated on the global financial markets. This is more than ten times the 'real' money flows which are needed for international trade! In reality, therefore, capital is only created, or destroyed, to match the needs created by the other, tangible, resources and by the psychology of the investors.

Animal Spirits…having determined and planned the availability of the key resources, money will become available to match these. In this context money becomes merely a form of financial shorthand, a summary representation of these other resources. It does not have any value of its own when separated from them. The one proviso is set by the psychology of the investors; of those theoretically providing the money and those practically using the physical resources - rather than chasing the booms and busts of money markets with what Keynes chose to describe as 'animal spirits'. If all the factors appear favourable, and the investors believe success is likely, then the money will be found. Just what are seen to be the key factors varies, depending only upon the perceptions of the investors. Indeed, the whole process is a measure of the beliefs, and degree of self-confidence, of these investors.

Macro-Economics

This is even more true at the macro-economic level. Those who talk about 'balancing our budgets' and 'living within our means' do not truly understand the complex psychology of the macro-economic money markets. No-one can really claim to have a firm grasp of these volatile wraiths, especially now that they are so frequently destabilised by derivatives and hedge funds - which formally bet on future trends. The message, at its simplest, is that if you, and most others, believe a boom is under way then money will, in effect, be created to fuel that boom; and vice versa. The prime duty imposed upon our governments, in this way, is to create the atmosphere of confidence which duly leads to stability in the economy. If our nation cannot provide this confidence then perhaps we need to band together with others, such as we are actually doing in the EU's Eurozone.

VITAL QUESTIONS

• Do you understand any of the economic theory which is regularly bandied about by politicians and the media? Do you really understand how the global financial markets, in whose tender care your pension is placed, work? Do you think that the politicians or media, who create boom and bust on these markets, really understand them either?

• Indeed, do all the eminent economists - even as they receive their Nobel prizes - really understand? Why, therefore, do we have to dance to their discordant tunes?

The last of these questions is, of course, rhetorical. It is, though, an important question for our leaders to ask!

Space

Apart from the developments in ICT - from ecommerce to 'chips in the brain' - which have already been discussed at some length, one other aspect of technology is ultimately going to become very important, not least from the point of view of the individual. That is the colonisation of space. First let me say that this is virtually inevitable, though don't expect to see colonies on Mars until some time after the middle of the 21^st. century. It will take an inordinate length of time to develop the infra-structure to exploit these new frontiers; but that is nothing new. It took almost three centuries before the US settlers felt they could exert their own independence! At least I hope it is inevitable, since if we don't continue to expand our horizons - and that includes expanding our physical limits as well as our intellectual ones - the most likely alternative is that we will regress into some new dark age. It is indeed very likely that humanity will soon, at least in cosmic timescales, make that first leap into the true space. We will inhabit bodies - be they planets or space colonies - beyond the boundaries of the earth. There is no good reason why we should not colonise the rest of the solar system - and the stars beyond that.

As I have already said, the scientific ground work has been done, as has much of the technological work, for us to colonise space. Certainly we are well advanced with space stations - manned space stations that is - circling the earth. The key parts of the first of these - the International Space Station - are already linked up in space, circling the Earth, and contain their first inhabitants! Beyond this, the technology is well in place for colonies on the moon. Indeed, again as I said earlier, had President Nixon not stopped the Apollo programme short, this would have happened in the 1960s. It is true that this would have been a relatively temporary one, but it would have allowed astronauts to spend far more time exploring the moon. Thirty years later that technology has advanced significantly - but as yet our politicians' ambitions still haven't!

The Ultimate Insurance Policy…in any case, space will ultimately offer immense riches for the future of humanity. I've mentioned these already, but just knowing they are there should also help us plan up for the developments of our human cultures here on earth. It will help us plan for the long-term survival of our human cultures. Once we inhabit space, as well as the earth, we can be confident that nothing short of a black hole engulfing the whole solar system could destroy all of humanity. As we all now know, a large meteor, or even the smallest comet, could easily destroy civilisation as we currently know it. But that assumes we are earth-bound. If our civilisation is disseminated throughout the solar system, it could still continue on the other planets and in the space colonies. Surprisingly, this is not an insignificant motivation for most ordinary people - not just the space aficionados - in terms of justifying the exploration of space. It may also be of some importance for the future of your descendants. Some time in the future that fateful impact surely will occur. The uncertainty comes about because it may not be millions of years ahead, it could be as easily be just a few days ahead. If we have an insurance policy against this, as a species, then one great uncertainty is removed from our future - and that should help stabilise all of our futures. Even though you may not personally survive the impact, some members of our precious species will. Hopefully that will offer some extra incentive to build a better future - and, in particular, an incentive to build part of that future across the rest of the solar system.

VITAL QUESTIONS

• Do you think we should assure the future of humanity by creating colonies away from any future disaster which might destroy civilisation on Earth itself?

I said this was a short section on technology - and it was. Of course there are many other technological developments around - you only have to read the daily newspapers to know the many changes which our technology is experiencing - but they are fairly predictable. It can be as much as 30 years, maybe even 50 years, for the technology to develop and become widespread in use, after the initial scientific breakthrough. So it is our own fault if we don't understand what the implications of these many developments already under way are likely to be.

Economics

I now come to another, even shorter, section and one that I believe certainly doesn't justify a separate chapter. After all, as we have already seen, it too is concerned with the use of resources of all types. The topic is simply Economics.

I suppose I should declare interest, because I am a trained economist myself. Yet that doesn't stop me from predicting the imminent demise of economics - at least as the dismal science. Perhaps more accurately, I am predicting the demise of the Neo-Classical School of Economics which has dominated much of thinking over the past couple of centuries. The reason for this is, as I said earlier, there is no longer a genuine scarcity of resources and, in essence, classical economics is all about rationing such scarce resources. If resources aren't scarce, and don't need rationing, much of economic theory - especially the fundamental 'laws of supply and demand' - flies out of the window. Not least, the all-important price mechanism - beloved of most economists - relies entirely upon the presence of informed traders in a free market which is used to ration or distribute scarce resources and this is no longer the case for most transactions.

Irrationality…it is also about rational decisions - rational in terms of economic decisions - based on price alone. Another weakness of economics is, therefore, that it cannot explain the recent trends towards 'irrational' decision-making by consumers - again in economic terms. Once more, when I say 'irrationally' it is because economists are now being forced to see us as economically irrational, in the sense that we are not optimising the monetary value of our purchases as they would predict. Instead we have sufficient money, sufficient resources, to be able to enjoy the basics of life and then go beyond those to buy the luxuries of life; based on what we fancy, where our lifestyle whims take us. This is something economists of the classical school find very difficult to accept. Indeed, in general they abhor it!

Luxuries…are often - in the eyes off classical economists - frivolities. But, as the rest of us already know, if you are going to the theatre you don't decide which play will result in the best monetary benefits, you go because you think it will be an enjoyable experience not a matter of survival. How do you quantify that? The net result is that that we at least need a new form of Economics - and we are working on that. It will be based on the dynamic realities of people's lives, rather than on the sterile equations of theoretical scarcities. At its heart is new macro-economic theory, such as the hypothesis of 'Aggregated Expectations' which - put very simply - says that, in a society where the key decisions are social ones, the world ultimately lives up to what we expect of it. In other words, with poetic justice, we get what we deserve! The book, Future Revolutions, which provides the map of the future, underpinning this book, was the first major work using this new theory.

VITAL QUESTIONS

• Do you trust the judgement of classical economists? Or do you ignore them and develop your own ideas about the future - be they often optimistic or occasionally pessimistic?

The New Micro-Economics

In the context of this chapter, apart from its focus on the dynamic realities of life, it is not clear exactly what the New Economics is going to look like. Even so, it must be the economics of genuinely free choice by the individual. It will not be the dismal economics of forced choices - by the fat-cats - which market pricing actually implies. Again, my answer to classical economics - and to the approach you should adopt to it - is forget it! Do your own thing.

Enjoy your own life, no matter what the government economists tell you. You have every right, and what is more the resources, to do just what you want. Shape your own life. Decide yourself what things you want to buy and what experiences you will enjoy. Don't feel guilty about it. Indeed, get a kick from personally proving all those economists wrong!

Post-modern economics - which is essentially based on the outcomes of economically irrational (though socially understandable) decisions by individuals - is more likely to emerge from the pragmatic deliberations of modern sociology rather than calculated certainties of old-style economics. Indeed, the only firm cement that now binds together the strangely counter-intuitive world of economics is a perversely shared belief in all the ideas which over time the self-same economists have foisted on themselves as much as on a gullible world! So, I repeat, thumb your nose at these doom-laden merchants of scarcity. Don't let them tell you what you can and cannot do!

Economic Beliefs…indeed, as I have already suggested, the most accurate prediction of the outcome of any event can be made from the beliefs of the participants. This is already the basis of our own new macro-economics. We have, though, to ensure that these stated beliefs are their true beliefs, not just those they have been persuaded to adopt. Thus, at a more general level, if the business world believes a boom is under way the organisations which it contains will create one. Or, if the workforce believe that the general level of wage settlements is of a given order, they will normally settle for close to that.

To influence the outcome, therefore, we must now guide the beliefs of the participants. Fortunately, as I am also an author in the field of marketing, I can assure you that there are a great many useful devices available for manipulating such beliefs. These range from the subtle promotion available to the marketing professional, such as myself, to the use of immense political powers at the national and international level available to popular governments, which I have also helped deploy.

VITAL QUESTIONS

• Do you believe that governments, or their central banks, are usually right in their economic predictions? Why, or why not? What would make their predictions more predictable?

Believability

The essential corollary is that supporters of a given course of action should ensure that, in the first instance, the proposed action is believable, and then promote it so that it is actually believed. Then, and only then, it may happen. One implication for government is that it governs only by a mandate that must be continuously renewed. This does not automatically extend, unlike their term of office, for up to five years. Government must, therefore, produce plans which are clearly believable, and must use all the resources necessary to ensure that belief is achieved. In political theory, this is known as 'legitimation'. For a government to be legitimate, in the eyes of its electorate, it must justify that legitimacy on enough of its pet projects to shift the overall balance of legitimacy in its favour. More particularly, if the electorate accepts, and supports, a plan then it will work. Unfortunately the converse is also-true. If the public, or even the relevant section of it, do not believe in a plan then it is doomed. The process is most obvious at the extremes. A government that appears insecure and that everyone expects to fall will do just that. On the other hand in a time of war government can call upon its citizens to achieve 'miracles'. In terms of conventional economic theory the outcome in such situations is indeed often nothing less than miraculous.

The moral is that any government must earn the respect, support and belief it needs as a mandate for each of its actions, and it must earn them anew each day.

The lessons of this chapter should have been easy to follow. In the case of technological change, despite all that other futurists have to say about it, you can simply ignore this in your calculations about your own future! In the case of economics, you must ignore all that the economists say!

13. POWER AND POLITICS

Now we reach the end of our search for 'personal εvolution': participating in, and leading, the new rεvolution. This is an even shorter chapter, but it may be by far the most important for those amongst you who might aspire to be activists!

Marx…starting with some of the ideas we hinted at in the last chapter, how do we first ensure a fair distribution? Karl Marx, and Lenin after him, suggested that the proletariat - that's us - should storm of the citadels of power, much as the Russian masses eventually did storm the Winter Palace. I suspect that is no longer on the cards and not just because Marxism is out of fashion; for he was a philosopher rather than a revolutionary and many of his other musings can still stimulate useful ideas. But there hasn't been a violent revolution for a long time. Even the toppling of Communism itself was almost an accident - and certainly was not violent. Indeed, those sitting in the Kremlin didn't realise it was happening until they saw the scenes at the Berlin Wall on their own televisions! Based on these recent precedents, I don't believe that we are likely see many more such violent overthrows of capitalist governments.

In the days when people were starving and oppressed - and had almost nothing to lose - they were willing to risk their lives by literally storming barricades. As I have said a number of times, sitting in our modern comfortable homes, such actions seem very much less likely. We are no longer willing to abandon those homes and go out in the cold - to risk our lives by physically assaulting the state. We now have so very much to lose and remarkably little to gain personally - the very reverse of previous revolutionaries.

Quiet εvolutions

On the other hand, perhaps these days successful εvolutions need no longer be quite so bloody, quite so violent. If we can still genuinely still operate, somehow or other, as the mass of the people, then the establishment eventually will have to recognise our demands. εvolutions have now become quiet affairs - as establishments bow to the inevitable. For me, the most poignant feature of the 1980s was not the crowds dancing on top of the Berlin Wall - though that had an immense emotional appeal for all of us. Instead it was that fraction of a second when varying emotions floated across dictator Ciaucesco's face, as he addressed what was supposed to be a tame audience. Suddenly, everything went terribly wrong. In that fleeting moment, as the boos started to drown out the orchestrated cheers, you could see his realisation that death literally faced him - as indeed it did soon afterwards.

The result is that we must all now find some means of participating in these quieter revolutions. We must learn to say boo! However, it is paradoxical that as we are given greater individual power, the greatest power we can need to gain, in order to destabilise governments we disapprove of, is still as a mass. Only in this way, we can go further - to even overthrow governments. We certainly can force them to adopt policies which we as a mass favour.

I suppose, in this context, my initial advice is simply to become politically aware. On the other hand, that no longer means joining a political party. Across the globe those are rapidly going the way of the dodo.

Despotism…indeed, the first fact of modern life, which must be faced up to by any incoming government, is that it is no longer possible to rule by simple dictat. Our new society is far too complex for a single person, be he a despotic monarch or a democratically elected first-minister, to direct all the multifarious activities of the government machine itself. It is not even possible for a cabinet, be it composed of the wisest polymaths, to definitively order all that comes within its prerogative. It is certainly impossible for them to regulate that great portion of society's activities that lie outside the public sector. Regrettably most politicians, especially those with presidential ambitions, still choose to remain oblivious to this fact of life. They have a touching faith that their own particular solution will enable them to regain a firm grasp on the tiller of the ship of state. The misfortune of others, who over the years have found the task to be impossible, only serves to prove to the politician the desperate need for his own unique panacea.

Effective Government…the first prerequisite for genuinely effective government is, therefore, quite simply a recognition of the very real limitations that constrain the power of the executive. The second is to appreciate where the new balance of power lies, and to develop the means of bringing this under the influence of government; so that it may once more govern.

Consumer Power

Effective popularism means that account must be taken of the wishes of the masses - you and I - so don't limit yourself to the narrow focus of traditional party. As a political animal which I suggest you become, your proactive goal should be to influence political events in the direction that you want. This may be quite simply, for example, by registering your vote in the national elections and perhaps using that vote tactically, to create the greatest impact. Or, in another direction, you may want to take part in consumerist action. When you're buying your supplies in a supermarket you can choose the products of off the organisations whose behaviour you approve of. You can avoid those, say, of the fat cats of whom you disapprove. If they run organisations which, as a result of your boycotting their products, make a loss, their position will be made untenable. If even a few of us boycott Rupert Murdoch's newspapers his profits will soon disappear, and with them his power over our leaders. If we buy alternatives to Bill Gates' money-spinners, if we use one of the other packages of office software which is just as good (and probably less bug-ridden), his monopoly will be destroyed. It won't hurt us. We can still continue to use Windows, since he runs this as a loss leader.

VITAL QUESTIONS

• Do you vote tactically to maximise the impact your vote has? Why not?

• Do you use your buying power to send messages to the corporations whose policies you disapprove of?

Complain…regardless of who is getting the profit, though, you must complain when things go wrong - which they too often do. If nothing else, make certain you empower yourself when faced with poor products and, in particular, with poor service. You have every right to expect near perfection, especially when you are paying for it. So complain when you don't get it. Insist that you get what you are paying for. In fact this will help the supplier as well. If they are failing to give you what you want then they need to know this, so they can rectify matters not just for you but for the thousands of others like you. In so doing you will have made the first small step towards your εvolutionary freedom.

If you don't get satisfaction immediately then write to the managing director of the company by name. A telephone call to the head office will find this out. If you still don't get satisfaction then make life miserable for the management. Write more letters, you will probably have the time for this hobby but they won't! If you are really angry, and determined, buy a share and attend their annual meeting. In Japan the gangsters have a nice line in blackmail, where they threaten to disrupt annual meetings. Here, though, just go nuclear at their AGM without warning, the media will love it! It is a good introduction to personal εvolution. You will soon be ready to take on the politicians and the establishment!.

Single Issue Groups

Above all join a single issue group, since these are becoming the new political forces in the land. You can support them just by giving them a moral support, or by signing petitions, or maybe by attending their meetings, or by writing letters to your representatives in government. Maybe you can even go on demonstrations with them. In recent years governments have become not just aware of but sensitive to the impact of demonstrations that can involve thousands, and sometimes hundreds of thousands, of people.

The really satisfying aspect of the new single issue politics is that you only have to make such a high profile commitments to the few issues that you believe really justify it. The problem previously was that you had to make a commitment not just to the things you agreed with but to any number of things you might have disagreed with - in order to support the compendium of policies put forward by the traditional parties. Now you can single-out, with scalpel like precision, just those issues you want to have an impact on and are willing to take action on.

VITAL QUESTIONS

• Are you a member of any single issue group? If not, why not?

• Which group(s) do you think might deserve your support? Why aren't you giving them your support?

Activism…and you can work at whatever level you want. You can even become an activist. You'll be surprised just how influential you can become as such an activist! As just one indication of this, as a 19 year old student I personally set in motion the train of events which resulted in South Africa being expelled from the Commonwealth. This was something which eventually led, albeit many years later, to that country becoming a genuine democracy. Even though this was only the almost accidental result of my being the right person in the right place at the right time, I am proud of what I achieved. But the key point about it in this context is that it was started by me, almost alone, as a very young individual activist. In the same way, if you too participate, you may also be able to have such influence.

The key to this is that there are remarkably few activists. You can therefore have a disproportionate effect on events, if you choose to be one of those who do participate. Your power leverage goes up many times if you do so. What is more it is remarkably easy to become one. As there are so few of us, most organisations are desperately short of activists. They will welcome you with open arms. If you play your cards right, and show yourself to be a worthwhile member of the group, you will steadily gain real power within that organisation. Now, I am not suggesting that power is a motive which is honourable, or should be sought for its own sake by most people, but if you really do want to shape your environment - shape the world about you - then there is no better way of doing it than gaining power as an activist. And, as long as you are true to your own principles, you can count yourself an honourable rεvolutionary!

VITAL QUESTIONS

• Are you an activists for any cause, even if it only promoting the interests of your local first grade school? Why not?

Local Issues

One disparity in aims that should be recognised early, however, is that between national and local government. The needs of each of these is so much at variance with those of the other that they cannot, if they are each to be effective, be saddled with identical philosophies. On the other hand, if you start with local issues, beware the dangers of entrapment. You may spend the rest of your life fighting these. This may be the limit of your ambitions, and serving your local community is indeed an honourable role in itself. But, if you wish, you can almost as easily influence national or international governments - and achieve even greater advances for your chosen constituency.

VITAL QUESTIONS

• Have you ever been involved in local politics? Why not? Are there any local issues which might persuade you to get involved?

Demonstrations…once you have become an activist, and you come up against government - local, national or international - which ignores a popular opinion, then you are entitled to go further and demonstrate your opposition. Indeed it is arguably your duty to go much further. Thus, not merely might you join a demonstration but you could actually help to organise one. Short of outright terrorism, which is so extreme an option that few would even consider it, this is the most powerful way of bringing home to governments the dangers of the course they are embarking upon. Like almost all forms of protest, the real target is several stages removed. Your demonstration should really be designed for the media who will convey the message to the real intended recipients. Through them you can influence public opinion and then, eventually the members of the establishment, the politicians, who are your ultimate targets.

• Have you ever helped organise one? Would you be willing to do so if you felt sufficiently strongly about an issue?

Street Theatre

Your demonstration has, therefore, to be designed as a piece of theatre! Above all, it has to seem to have a cast of thousands. This is difficult to achieve, but there are various illusions which help. I helped organise one especially effective demonstration against a foreign leader, who had foolishly tried to avoid any problems by arriving at his hotel in the middle of the night. In the event, just a hundred demonstrators were made to look like thousands. Each of us held not one flaming torch but two, one in each hand, so that the whole of the long street was a sea of flame. The media, used to seeing no more than one torch per five demonstrators, then overestimated the number of demonstrators by a factor of ten - exactly as we had planned they would! The fact that this was in the early hours, when there should have been nobody there, added to the impact - as did the dozens of TV lights from the news crews. It was a triumph, a real theatrical blockbuster which won the lead headline on the front page of every national paper.

On the more local scale, I have - with the full approval of the police - used a small convoy of cars to create massive traffic jams. I achieved this impact just by separating them in such a way that, running very slowly, they interfered with the natural flow of traffic in a way the police never expected. We followed that, the following week, with front-page headlines that we would not be demonstrating that week. When you can capture the headlines with a pledge to do nothing, you are really motoring!

Location, Location, Location…it is a tragedy when deprived communities riot in frustration, perhaps as a means of bringing attention to their grievances, but the buildings they burn down are usually those only of the local community itself. Regrettably, as they soon find out, governments do not worry about such damage to the slums. Having created the conditions of deprivation, politicians are not likely to worry about anything that makes them even harsher. They will quite simply turn their backs on you. The few successful riots, and I think in particular of the anti-capitalist demonstrations in Seattle and Genoa and before that the more spontaneous one in Central London against the then Conservative government's poll tax, have taken place in the commercial centres of cities. When that happens government really takes notice; and, for instance, at that time the poll tax was very rapidly abandoned. So if you are going to light the blue touch paper, make certain you light it in the right place. Don't burn down the slums where the riot starts. Make certain that any demonstration is moved the mile or so to the commercial centre, where its impact will really hurt the government and the establishment - then you are likely to achieve the impact you want.

Reasonable Force…it is important, though, to make certain that not a single life is lost or even any injury caused. The population will never forgive you if you injure innocents - or even the military - and you would probably never forgive yourself. People's lives are sacred to the electorate, whereas property is now disposable. Fortunately, it is the other way round for the establishment. It puts property, its property that is, way ahead of the lives of us members of the countless masses. So hit the members of the establishment hard where it hurts them most - in their wallet - without damaging your own popularity.

Lost Causes

Whatever your level of 'positive action', you are wasting your time - maybe your life and those of bystanders - if you pursue lost causes. So, your first action always should be to examine your chances of success. You should never forget that you might be able to win against seemingly hopeless odds, especially if you have a burning conviction in your cause - as did the North Vietnamese against the might of America. But, even then, you should pause to consider whether it really will be worth the price you, and especially everyone else, will have to pay!

The interesting thing, though, is that - outside of the few remaining countries where oppression still exists - I don't think escalation beyond the 'civil' stage described above is any longer necessary. Most governments, including even those authoritarian governments who would previously have thought themselves invulnerable, are now so sensitive to public opinion that real guerrilla warfare is becoming an unnecessary extension of the political process. Clausevitz famously said the war was extension of politics by other means. But these days those other means are rarely needed. Despite the horrendous events in New York, around the world, from Northern Ireland to the Middle East, the guerrilla armies are finding it more profitable to convert themselves into political forces. It is to those very civil activists, you may be one of them, that the power now passes.

Political Parties

Returning to less revolutionary activities, and to the wider political scene, no narrowly based party, committed to serving purely sectional interests and enslaved by historical dogma, can hope to make the quantum leap to this future - as the traditional political parties are already finding. It is possible that a coalition might just provide a framework within which the newly emerging single interest groups could effectively work. At present they have difficulty in involving themselves in the political process because of the narrowness of their objectives. Yet such involvement is essential if they are to guarantee their long-term success.

Positive Non-action…returning, though, even closer to home, and assuming that you don't want to be an activist, then what should you do? Well the first thing to understand is what power is about. What is the establishment trying to do? In particular, you need to understand what they are trying to manipulate you to do for them. The best advantage the establishment can ever have is an ignorant population and, especially, ignorant electorates. And, of course, one way of maintaining a population in ignorance is to have friends who control large sections of the media.

So if you want to gain personal power, and avoid being controlled by the establishment, then the first thing you must do is put yourself in the position whereby you have a genuine understanding of what is really going on. That may well mean that you simply don't read some of the popular newspapers that are trying to get inside your head and manipulate your opinions. They want you to think the way their political masters do. So don't invite them into your head!

Misinformation…our life is littered with misconceptions arising from such misinformation. I do not intend provide a tedious catalogue of these, for one has only to turn on the television to see statesmen, from different parties and different countries, eternally bickering over the facts that separate them. Yet the facts must inevitably be the same, it is only their different interpretation by the opposing parties that causes the conflict.

The corruption, of such data can occur in two places. It can be generated by the medium distributing the information, or it can be in the eye of the beholder. Usually it is present in both. There is now a major industry manufacturing corrupt data to reinforce our prejudices. All the public media, particularly the daily press, present their news and so-called facts from a highly specific viewpoint. The political parties, together with many quasi-political pressure-groups which now operate in the same manner, ever more blatantly incite us to take an ever narrower view.

VITAL QUESTIONS

• Do you believe, without question, all the news reported in the media you read or watch? What elements are you sceptical about? Why?

Shape Your World

At the end of the day, however, if you want a world that is best suited to your own ambitions then you have to create it - at least by your influence on the political processes, organising the rεvolutionary element of personal εvolution. As we have already seen the best way is to become involved as an activist. But, as I also said earlier, at a lower level you can sign petitions or just develop a cynical attitude of mind in private towards your leaders. Or, going further, you can show positive support - in public - towards the individuals who make up your group.

But you have to recognise that in modern society, despite the empowerment or of the individual, decision-making still comes to those individuals who aggregate together in such groups - be they pressure groups or political groups. The empowerment here usually still doesn't allow you to do anything individually to influence events. But it does allow you the freedom to join any single issue group you would like to support without being constrained - as was often the case in the past - to just the few that your political masters might want you to support.

Vote…I guess, though, at the end of the day the electoral process still offers way whereby you can have the most impact. I would suspect that you are likely to be - as most of us are now - a floating voter. If you are a confirmed supporter of one of the old political parties, what on earth are you doing reading this book? But being such a floating voter is now a very powerful position to be in. If just a few thousand such voters in Florida had done so, Al Gore would have been President. The parties have long depended upon voters who would support them whatever, often no matter how outrageous their party's policies. Now most of us actually take our decisions more rationally, on the basis of what we think is best for ourselves and for society. That is a quantum leap in the power we can already deploy!

Indeed, I would suggest that, to gain the greatest power for yourself, you should ultimately use such voting power tactically; rather than just as a result of a rational examination of the issues. By all means do undertake such a rational examination; though typically, in national elections, this may be quite difficult because there can be so many issues, and so many shades of grey, between the various parties courting your vote. There is usually no easy answer. No, by tactical voting what I mean is that you should vote use your vote you have locally to sway the outcome nationally. It may even make sense to vote for your second choice, if in so doing you can avoid your opponents winning because the vote is split between parties.

VITAL QUESTIONS

• Do you always vote; in local as well as national elections? If not, why not? Do you ever vote tactically? Why not?

Respectable Politicians

And, as a basic principle we haven't seen applied in many years, perhaps you should also encourage the politicians you are voting in to power to take personal responsibility. So, when you are voting, punish the politicians - or the political parties - who behave badly. Reward those, in particular, who behave in an honourable and honest fashion. If you do this, you may help us get the government we need rather than that we deserve. And I think we need to go further than just punishing in the ballot box, because the party politicians will always find some excuse for that. Currently, the classic excuse for failure by political parties is not that their policies are wrong, but that the message they have given to the media has failed to get through. The really do think we are fools don't they!

Legitimacy…on the other hand, there are many other groups where the leadership is just as remote from members, and many others where it is not even clear who are the members. In some cases it is not impossible that a pressure group is being manipulated by commercial, or political, interests for their own gain. Indeed, the great majority of pressure groups are dominated by small committees. These are usually elected by a small minority of members, since even amongst the activists only a relatively few members are attracted by the guaranteed boredom of the general meeting. In this way, the 'leaders' are frequently self-chosen, election going to those few altruists who are willing to do unpaid work.

Most members of the general public would be appalled by the panic that grips most such organisations when faced with the annual chore of filling the committee places, and a total dearth of suitable candidates. I have seen this happen to literally dozens of such organisations. Further, even within such committees, policies are then typically chosen by the handful of activists who are willing to work for the chosen goals. It is, accordingly, possible, by Machiavellian plotting, to foist almost any policy onto some committees; as long as it doesn't have an adverse impact on what the other activists want. You can, therefore, see why I suggested you might like to consider being such an activist. It can be a license to write your future, in the largest possible letters, across society!

Fair Representation

If you are not one of those who wants to use the political systems to impose your own prejudices, how then do you ensure that representation is fair, and truly representative of all our wishes? It seems an impossible task, but it can be quite simple. In practice, the only requirement is that the representatives, chosen by whatever process, must genuinely want to represent us.

Positively Representing Opinion…at the other end of the spectrum, if you are actively involved in public life and can avoid the blinkers placed upon you by membership of a political parties, it is relatively easy to become aware of the groundswell of public opinion; from reading the local newspapers, attending meetings, and simply meeting 'constituents'. If there is doubt, and there often is, then your own 'committee', assuming it is reasonably representative of the membership, should be able to report a cross section of the views presented to them by their contacts.

Public Meetings…occasionally some room for doubt will remain, but even this can be easily resolved by a more detailed canvass of public opinion; either by public meetings or a survey. Those issues that remain cloudy even after this stage probably simply are unclear to the populace at large. The Residents Association which I represented, and which was one of the most successful in the country, had such a progression built into its constitution. As a result we were never in doubt as to what public opinion would have us do. In this way there really can be no excuse for ignoring public opinion, unless as a deliberate act. Our only problem lay in those issues where we decided it was necessary, in the short term, to go against the expressed wishes of our 'electorate', in order to achieve long term goals. But even when we did this we were still fully aware of the unpopularity of the decisions we were taking, and had to be prepared to justify them by the ultimate long term benefits. Thus, representation can be an accurate reflection of a community's wishes, if you are a member of a group that fully recognises its duty to represent the whole electorate.

Personal Agendas…unfortunately, many representatives have promoted themselves to 'public office' in order to further their own unique views, and occasionally their own ends. Almost as many activists are motivated by very personal agendas - even if these just represent their own distorted view of what constitutes the public good. Even if their own avowed motives are of the highest, they may still not reflect those of their membership.

How to control these potentially dominant activists has always been a difficult question. They cannot be legislated against, since there is rarely any direct evidence that they are unrepresentative, and, in any case, these individuals are usually the 'backbone' of the organisation. Without them it would collapse, to the detriment of all representation. Perhaps the best hope, therefore, is to encourage wider participation in such pressure groups. You may have already realised that this is the hidden agenda behind my own frequent recommendations that you join them! If it becomes a desirable activity, and in reality it is quite enjoyable, then more of the electorate may be encouraged to become involved. Most of these will probably not become activists in their own right, but at least the increased numbers should help to curb the grosser excesses of their more enthusiastic fellows and a few more may filter through to share the management roles!

VITAL QUESTIONS

• How well do pressure groups, for example those which work in your local community, represent your views? Why don't you get involved to ensure that they do?

Community Politics

In fact, I have personally experienced a similar situation; albeit in local government. Following a great deal of bipartisan work together, led by the 'independent' Residents Association Councillors, the members of the party-dominated council of which I was a member in effect chose to work as such a multi-party coalition. The gradual progress from sterile debate, parading dogma, to sensible discussion, where there was a definite intent to work out the best decision, was enlightening. The end result was that decisions were, I believe, much better taken; and the councillors themselves clearly felt some pride in their own contribution to these debates. I see no reason why national government should be any less successful. In any case, such reasoned debate will, hopefully, banish the dreadful partisan buffoonery that often infects the current debates; and replace the poisonous atmosphere which sometimes, as in the case of the US congress during the impeachment hearings and the subsequent Presidential Election, debilitates government in general .

Referenda…going further still, there is no good reason why the discussion should not be widened to those of us in the whole population. The use of referenda on important issues should be a valuable weapon in our arsenal of democracy. Thus, for many decades, every citizen of Switzerland has had the right to call a referendum on any subject they might wish. The only requirement is that they need collect 7,000 signatures on a petition about a local issue; or 70,000 for one on a national issue. This means that referenda are not used frivolously. Even so, something like 20 or 30 issues a year are tested, in three or four composite referenda. One great advantage, for democracy, is that it is much more difficult to collect 70,000 signatures than to find someone ready to pay millions to force their ideas on an unwilling populus. Even if larger countries claim they cannot afford the high cost, modern market research techniques, suitably safeguarded, would provide a useful substitute. And it would enhance parliamentary democracy, and god knows it needs enhancing!

Community Councils…even so, it is at community level that most of us will probably be involved. The main debate at this level will be likely to be over purely parochial events. The parish council has always been a valuable device, regrettably missing in most conurbations, for uniting small communities. However, there is no fundamental reason why this local involvement should not be incorporated within a national framework, so that the individual can feel that he or she is also making a contribution to the national plan. One of my favourite memories of Ethiopia, which has committed itself further to direct democracy than most other nations, was of a village council sitting in the dust of the village's main street earnestly debating national issues in public. What is more, their views, along with those of many thousands of other villages, really were incorporated into national plans - as I recognised from my own involvement in those national plans. More important still, those many thousands of 'councillors' knew this was the case, as did the other villagers watching them at work in the dust of that main street. Now that is legitimation on the grand scale! If such a supposedly backward country can do this why can't the rest of us?

More generally, the forum for this discussion could be a 'community council', based upon a clearly recognisable local community. My own experience of residents associations, in the much more sophisticated society in the United Kingdom, has also shown that, to be effective, such organisations have to bring together individuals who share a very clear common identity. In these circumstance, this was usually based upon a definable, and distinct, geographic location. Artificial groupings - including political parties - do not seem to evince the same natural response, and accordingly do not work as well at this level.

In conclusion, of this final chapter on political power, may I gently apologise for the number of times I seem to have drifted off into suggestions as to how government might govern better. Very few of us will be in a position to personally introduce such changes. But that is exactly why I have suggested you join with others to exert such influence.

But, above all, be aware of how much power you already hold - and how much more you can accumulate by working with suitable groups. Use that power to create your own personal εvolution and change the world to accommodate it!

So we have now completed our journey through all the stages of personal εvolution:

Hopefully this book has provided you with the tools to go just as far as you want through this progression. I obviously hope you will go on, further, to join the many activists already creating the rεvolution.

But, even if you only go as far as creating your own personal εvolution in full, achieving your own empowerment, you will still have made your own personal contribution. If we all do even that much, εvolution will soon succeed. The best of luck with your progress towards true fulfilment, whatever choices you make.