Introduction

Abstract

Technological change is transforming economic, political and social life on the eve of the new millennium, at the same time as European integration is entering a new and uncertain phase. The claim that technology, and the science that underpins it, ‘is not just the stage manager, but the playwright in the story of our century’ is not simply a platitude (May 1995: i). Profound changes have been unleashed by the development of the cotton gin, automobile and silicon chip. We lack solid counterfactuals, but a good argument can be made that the accelerating pace of technological change in the late 1990s makes it a more important determinant of the way in which economies, polities and societies are organised than ever before.