Tips for Time Travelers

Futuristic technologies (which frighten most people) are a delight to Peter Cochrane, an internatinal speaker with Business Week's Executive Programs, and head of Research at British Telecommunications. Human cloning, identification chips implanted under the skin, digitally enhanced brains, and machines that can think--these are things which he not only believes will occur in the near future; Cochrane actually embraces these scary, science-fiction notions as natural extensions of human development. While he remains an unbashed optimist about the future of technology, he is fully cognizant about the jarring nature of rapid technology, he is fully cognizant about the jarring nature of rapid technological change, both to individuals and to societies. As little as 30 years ago, he points out, an individual would meet and communicate with only 3,000 people in their lifetime. Now, we can do so in a matter of weeks or days.