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An evolutionary perspective is applied to speculations on the nature of social and cultural changes expected to occur during the next millennium. Since the nature of human societies is determined by a combination of biological and socio-cultural processes combined with patterns of interaction with the environment, the preservation of both genetic and socio-cultural diversity is seen as a salient aspect of the evolutionary process.

The outbreak of Ebola in Zaire and the AIDS virus has created a crisis for the human race. More dangerous diseases may appear due to the changing lifestyles of man, technological advancement and the sexual revolution taking place., The recent spate of books, articles, and even movies threatening a future of plagues and pestilence would seemingly indicate that the human race is on the verge of being extinguished [...]

The growing number of human beings and the industrial lifestyles that they have embraced have combined to overwhelm the natural systems that sustain all life on Earth. Just as the process of natural selection forges a relationship between the constraints of nature and the human genome, a similar process, sociocultural evolution, links nature and a 'sociocultural genome'. The dominant sociocultural genome, the product of industrial evolution, now contains much defective information that must be winnowed out through a long-term social genome project. Sustainability, in this context, is seen as a process of analysing and remedying the deficiencies within the social genome so that equilibrium can be restored between human demands for environmental services and the capability of the environment to provide them. New ways of approaching efficiency are suggested as guidelines for an ongoing process of social transformation leading to development of more sustainable future societies. (Reprinted by permission of the publisher.)