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Remote from the wreckage of Afghanistan and the recent Pakistan‐incubated Taliban frenzy, calm and confident North Africa’s Tunisia – also a Muslim state – looks optimistically to a future of innovation and accomplishment. Embarking on its tenth development plan, priorities include near‐full employment, improved education and the further emancipation of women.

During a single, dynamic year of the nineteenth century, politics, economics, culture and technology shifted sharply throughout disparate regions of the world. Some of these changes were culminating events, some sudden and swift, others would need time to take total effect – but all would be innovative, if not revolutionary. Is there plan or order among such historic inflection points, and what roles do care and precaution play in the process?

Speculation, hypothesizing and imagination are the dreamer’s tools. Advanced research and novel technology for the military often profit from what are sometimes unstructured approaches to invention. Once that reality materializes, it may be stranger than the phantasma of the most unleashed of minds.

Military planning has various authors. The kings and emperors of old decided on whom to make war, where and when, with what, and for how long. The British Empire was built on economic push and domination abroad via a strong fleet. When Prussia united Germany in the nineteenth century, the planning task became that of the army's general staff. After Marxism‐Leninism gripped Russia in the twentieth century, plans and strategy emerged from the fountain‐head of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, but were entrusted to the generals for execution. In twenty‐first century USA there is a formalized structure for defence projection, yet parties outside the government may have an unusual voice in military planning.

What does living mean today? This was the theme explored at Archilab 2001, an international working laboratory for young architects. The expo illustrated that architects are taking account of global warming and the need for sustainable development as well as integrating consumers’ concerns not only for flexibility in new lifestyles but also for utility and comfort.

A small part of the budget of the Human Genome Project was reserved for the study of the social, legal and ethical questions raised by personal genetic profiles. Answers may be slow in coming, but around the world public concern increasingly drives the legislative agenda. There is now a pressing need to agree international standards on this most inalienable of human rights.