THIS TECHNOLOGY CREATED EMPIRES 

Lisbon, Portugal. Recently, while striding through the sands of time on the same beaches from whence King Henry the Navigator's famed captains Vasca de Gama, Magellan and other Portuguese explorers left to open two-thirds of the globe to the Western World, I found myself wondering, what allowed this small band of men, from this equally small country, (one-quarter the size of Spain), to lead the world in the 15th century?

From these shores of the Iberian peninsula, great explorers sailed into unknown territories, building up in less than one century a Portugese Empire that stretched from Angola, Mozambique and half a dozen smaller areas in Africa to Goa in India, Macau in China and half a dozen other locations inbetween. Their travels brought them slaves, lumber and spices, agricultural and mineral resources from Africa, fabrics and other treasures that had been transported overland along the Silk Road from China to India. Later on they gathered other exotica direct from the Orient.

How could they do this? What gave them such an advantage? An advantage enabling them, in a mere 80 years, to become the dominant economic power in Europe and for a time the greatest maritime country in the world. Subsequently, the oldest colonial empire in the world).

The astrolabe, forerunner of the sextant, used by those earlier mariners to calculate their latitude by measuring the altitude, at high noon, of the sun. Such calculations, carried out daily, provided a track of their voyage en route. Thus they knew their daily location in the uncharted world, although not always certain of where they were headed. This same instrument guided Columbus to America.

Another new age of discovery is about to begin. One not concerned with physical exploration of our planet but one which will plow through those waves of information now enveloping our environment, in ways as strange and intimidating as that faced by those daring navigators of the past. They were forced to sail uncharted waters and open new routes utilizing just about the only new technology they had -- the astrolabe. In so doing they revealed a facinating yet dangerous earlier age for the western world. Our warriors of the waves are the knowledge navigators of the future.

Just as the Portuguese navigators of the past utilized the astrolabe the latest technology of their day so we are using the computer to navigate through sands of silicon to find new territories, not of planetary real estate, but the vast new territories of the mind.

The journey is already well underway. More has been discovered about the human mind during the past decade than during all the previously recorded history of man. We will have many useful new tools for the voyages to follow. May we do as well.

The future is a sea, even more uncharted than that faced by the early Portuguese navigators during their Age of Discoveries. Today the skills of the past can no longer help us as we sail on this new, unchartered sea of information. We must take even bolder steps in unknown directions.

If we do not we shall find ourselves victims of an ancient Chinese proverb: "If we do not change direction we will end up where we are now headed".

Even a corpse can float downstream!

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