One of my daring predictions is that we are on the threshold of the post-human era. I fully expect that either by means of information technology or biotechnology, and likely some combination of the two, the next decade will see an enhanced human being who apprehends reality in a manner far differently than our cleverest people today. This post-human, meaning an individual or individuals clever by way of enhancement than the cleverest of us, will usher in a class system of a sort different than anything we have yet seen in our history. I don't believe this is all sinister; no, I suspect that it could provide genuine benefits for humanity.

But I know many, many people are uncomfortable with such thinking for reasons legal, religious, or ethical.

It will be an era where our understanding of legal tender will expand beyond currencies to credits, and frequent flyer miles, electronic bartering systems and corporate credits in other forms will be as ubiquitous as what we now call "money" and used for things other than they are intended today. You will use your smart card to log credits from all of these forms of legal tender to cover purchases of everything from food to mortgages. We are already moving toward this consensus. This is frightening central bankers, as well it should.

A by-product of this Information Age we are recording in these pages is the modification and expansion of "how it's always been done." Try as we might to put the brakes on this modification of our lives, the blessings and curses are already streaming out of the box.

A major conflict to be resolved in the next decade will be how we in the West adjust to a world where Anglophone dominance goes on the wane. As more of international transactions begin to be processed in Chinese, Hindi, and Spanish, an adjustment of how we interact in the world economy and as global citizens will also have to take place. Most of all, I believe, we will be required to adjust our attitudes toward and relationship with the Chinese. That's an awesome challenge.

The greatest challenge, because of the dominant position of the country over the last few decades and its relatively isolationist worldview, will be for the United States. The ego-bruising realization that everyone does not want to be like us will be hard to swallow.

I do not mean to imply for an instant that this challenge will manifest itself in an either/or nature. It will much more complex than that. But in the final analysis, individuals will be challenged to determine how the essence of their hierarchical or cooperative lives will be defined. Nationalism as we know it is a relatively recent historical phenomenon. The information age, by its very nature, challenges the continued efficacy of the notion of nationalism. The strains are being felt. Though nationalism has been politically effective for two centuries, other allegiances have continued to make their power felt, especially ethnic and racial allegiances. This, too, is being changed.

Advances in communcations and transportation technologies, even if we discount the revolution of information technology, have made the definition "citizen of the world" less a romantic notion and more one embraced by our corporate citizens and ourselves. It only follows that the next step in this evolution is toward a defintion based on corporate or interest allegiance. The mere fact that we have added "corporate culture" to our lexicon is evidence of this shift in perception.