Human beings have existed for thousands of years, yet the vast majority of technological advances that have improved daily life have taken place in the last 100 years. Why is this so? The stimulus for these advances has largely been from progress in transportation and communication, allowing innovation and ideas to be transmitted from place to place and person to person with increasing ease and decreasing time.1 Technological progress in communication has been accelerating over the last 20 years and now permits virtually instantaneous transfer of voice, text, and images from almost any location on earth to another.