TY - JOUR AB - The paper will first discuss certain sociocultural trends such as population growth, increased life expectancy, the labour force and education, and look at how these are affecting society as a whole. Such trends are linked with the global economy and the industrial sector as well as the environment. The consequences of such trends are a number of problems which face the world in the future, particularly in developing countries. These problems include overpopulation, levelling off of food supplies, diseases, natural resources depletion, and conflicts and clashes in areas where immigration and cultural differences exist. Such problems are discussed together with their implications. Some ideas are then given on how these future difficulties might be overcome; and it is clear that information will have an enormous role to play in this respect. Topics covered comprise global awareness (for example of the environment, birth control, women's rights, healthcare) through education and information; frontierless transactions; global information access, dissemination, communication and transfer of knowledge; knowledge build‐up and transfer through CDROM archiving of latent skills and know‐how; and the like. VL - 13 IS - 4 SN - 0264-0473 DO - 10.1108/eb045373 UR - https://doi.org/10.1108/eb045373 AU - Raitt David PY - 1995 Y1 - 1995/01/01 TI - The world to come: what we can do now T2 - The Electronic Library PB - MCB UP Ltd SP - 269 EP - 278 Y2 - 2024/04/26 ER -