When I was a newspaper journalist back in the early 90s, if I was out on a story, I used to have to virtually fight with people on the street who were hogging public telephones in order to phone urgent copy through to the newsdesk, where it was transcribed by highly-trained typists as it was being dictated down the phone line.

News photographers had to risk their lives (and mine!) driving at high speeds through busy traffic to get the pictures back in time to be developed in order to make the daily deadlines.

We trained on manual (occasionally, electric) typewriters and any half-decent journalist would still rely on high-speed shorthand skills rather than any technology.

Newspaper pages were still manually cut and pasted together (using glue) on large boards and then turned into huge metal plates to be couriered-off rapidly to go for printing.

In 20 years, it seems like the vast majority of people in the Western World have mobile phones, digital cameras, internet access (the Internet was just a techie playground back then). And there's also the blogging / micro-blogging phenomenon (that has turned virtually everyone into reporters) and a massive out-of-nowhere computer hardware/software industry that has made multi-millionaires out of many, many people.

Now virtually every business has email access and a web presence of some kind. The majority of people use computers on a daily basis. And the physical-letter-based postal services are struggling to survive because so many people prefer electronic communication to paper-based communication.

Daily life in the Western World, at least, is barely recognizable from 20-30 years ago...and it feels like we are just at the beginning of what is to come.

And you don't think this is revolutionary? :)

I think we have leapt forward, both in practical applications and new scientific theory.

I saw a programme the other night about the perimeter institute in Canada. It houses a bunch of very intelligent scientists who amongst other things are studying and theorising about the big bang theory. I was bought up with this theory and it was for many years a scientific doctrine. Now the majority of the scientists at this institute either don't believe in big bang or are of the opinion there was something existing before this.

As a rather non-scientific person i was amazed at how the theory has changed so much since i was in the education system. There now talking big bounce not big bang.

I think we are taking great leaps forward. But is the science keeping pace with religious/metaphysical thought? I think they're both moving forward.

The world is now closely linked because of the internet. Imagine all of us on this website communicating with each other and we have never met in persons but we all share a common interest and we are participating in each others spiritual development. These are huge breakthroughs.

What makes you think we haven't have revelutionary breakthroughs? Much of the technology is supressed by the governments, Then slowly technology is released.