Anthropo‐Technology

If the 20th Century was the century of physics, the 21st Century is the century of cybernetics, biology and ecology. Technological advance has both crossed new frontiers and discovered old limits. Nobel laureate Ilya Prigogine broke new ground with his understanding that nature, including its human component, seeks to establish order out of chaos by “self‐organizing,” not only according to pre‐determined laws, but through random creative choices as well that are responsible for the endless novelty and potentiality of being. The technologically‐armed purposive role of humans in the Anthropocentric Age thus takes on a new significance: “What we do today depends on our image of the future rather than the future depending on what we do today” as Prigogine puts it. “The equations of the future are written in our actions as well as in nature. Time becomes construction.” Nowhere is this truer than in the new science of genomics, which touches the soul, and in the effort to preserve the ecological balance that has enabled humanity to flourish within the narrow band of earth's livable climate. In this section we bring together leading thinkers, scientists and technologists of our age to address these issues of mankind's fate.     

ADMINISTRATIVE REFORM – GENERAL PRINCIPLES AND THE AUSTRALIAN EXPERIENCE

Failure to understand the political nature of administrative reform and to develop a political strategy to overcome resistance lies behind the failure of many reform attempts. The prerequisites of reform include political will, time, resources, an ongoing institution promoting change, and a strategy which concentrates on the implementation stage when resistance is strongest. Such a strategy must use the principal levers of change, including legislation, which directly affect administrative behaviour. In Australia in the 1970s administrative reform proceeded only slowly with the exception of changes in some States and the introduction of a new body of Federal administrative law. A better reform strategy in the past two years has resulted in extensive legislative change at the Federal level including greater ministerial control over certain senior appointments, open public competition for the top one per cent of civil service jobs, affirmative action and industrial democracy. There has thus been a further shift towards a unique Australian model of public administration.