COLONIZATION OF THE THIRD MILLENNIUM 

About 150 years ago the colonization of North America began in earnest. During the following 10 decades a wave of immigration, unknown in scope to any period in human history, swept across America. In the main the immigrants were ordinary people, generally unskilled, with little formal education and basically unprepared for the arduous life they had chosen (based on very little information) in the forests of the New World... a world that had none of the few comforts of European town life.

But the new settlers had one tremendous advantage. They had the right attitude. They were open to change, wanted a new life and generally relished adventure. With that outlook ordinary people learned unknown skills and achieved extraordinary accomplishments. To some degree it is still happening today with the Vietnamese boat people and other recent immigrants.

After the present high standards reached by the 1970s and 1980s plateaued, we became static. Schools regurgitated what the past had taught us and failed to introduce us to the fringes of the new "jungle" we were about to enter. We failed to observe the waves of change lapping on new shores.

Today as we prepare to enter, and "colonize" the third millennium, another monumental task faces us. We must cast off the teachings of the past, just as our forebearers cast off, perhaps more willingly, what they had been taught in their previous homeland. We too, perhaps unknowingly, are about to migrate into another world. It will be even more bizarre than that viewed by the Pilgrims when they landed at Plymouth Rock and faced painted Indians, unknown wild animals, boreal forests, unforeseen distances and wilderness extremes of temperature and terrain.

With new information being filtered and refined into new knowledge at the rate of 100 percent every 18 months and accelerating, it is much easier to accept the fact that everything we now know will be obsolete by Christmas of next year. With a clean slate, it is easier to learn the new. In fact, it is far easier to learn the new than be taught the past.

When I joined the Royal Canadian Air Force in 1940, wartime demands on aircraft mechanics and flight engineers was overwhelming. First of all, the few instructors available were still learning about the new airplanes and engines they been introduced to only a few weeks previously. We all learned together. There is nothing to teach when all is new.

Within mere months thousands of young airmen were able to take apart and put back together again a sophisticated airplane they hadn't even known about 90 days earlier. We had the right attitude. Learning was an adventure. Amazingly, the planes continued to fly and function, with very few embarrassing incidents. What we learned then in months has been stretched to a "course" with a high-flying title that is "taught", and now goes on for years.

Even with todays much higher requirements, a student should be able to get through high school in four months not four years! With the attitude that you can do it -- you usually can.

As we enter the foothills of the third millennium, forests and painted natives will change into the unfamiliar landscapes of virtual reality. We will learn, not be taught, how to create anything our imagination dictates, how to direct voice and sound to near and distant locations through what might be termed electronic ventriloquism. Bio-technology will allow (and has actually already started) the creation of living chimera, living organisms that combine parts from two, several or many organisms in one living creature. It will not stop at bacteria, plants or animals.

New and startling developments, inventions and innovations in fields never previously contemplated will change the way we think, work, play and love.

Much like the forests, fields and streams of the New World changed the thinking, working, playing and loving of those immigrants from urban Europe.

The process generally remains the same. Only the attitude today is different. We either change to meet the demands of new times or we vanish to be replaced by others more open to adventure.

As this bulldozer of change rolls over our planet one has a choice: to become part of the bulldozer or part of the road.

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