There are many mobile phones in Portugal. Videophone (telephone with coloured picture transmission) has already been introduced. Classical disks have been replaced by laser disks and you can already buy laser cassettes. Microprocessors are very common nowadays in offices, like pens were some decades ago, and their increasing usefullness is amazing. The telefax in black and white is ordinary, and the coloured one is coming soon. Pocket computers are replacing traditional memo-books. TV wall-screens (2x3 metres) will be commercialized soon.
 
At the end of the last decade of the second millenium, it is predicted that this fantastic technological evolution that has characterized the 20th century will continue. It seems logical that Man will be able to find the cure to cancer, diabetes and hypertension, although some new (or less known) diseases might arise or develop, as has recently happened with AIDS. The deep knowledge about the oceans seems to be calling Man’s attention. He might spend more money in its research and sooner or later it may become fashionable to eat seaweed. Computer science is extraordinarily developed in the United States and in Europe. It will certainly grow and be established on the other continents.
 
Means of transportation will surely evolve. Who can forget the picture of the man with a knapsack “flying” over the Olympic stadium in Los Angeles? And who didn’t think that some day we would be able to “fly” with one of those things from home to the office?
 
Economically developed countries seem to be willing to go on exploring the Universe, trying to make their ships land on other planets and trying to create conditions that will enable Man to live outside “his” own planet. This situation can somehow be compared to the one lived centuries ago by navigators from Portugal, Spain, Holland, etc. It won’t be surprising if the astronauts overcome new obstacles and establish some orbital stations, right before the end of this century.
 
Evolution is taking place, faster in certain areas, slower in others. There is an area in which humankind is not trying so hard to deepen its knowlege: Man. It’s true that we know the human body pretty well, but the nervous system is still much ignored, and it is clear that many scientists find it very difficult to explain certain psychic phenomena, allowing mysticism, charlatanism, superstition and irrationality to take place. However, the time we are entering may be favourable to the development of some young sciences, like neuropsychology, psychophysiology, parapsychology, etc.
Isn’t it the university’s part – more than any other institution – to research, without any prejudice, these daily phenomena, some of which have been described for centuries, or even for a million years? Several American, European and Asian universities are working in this field with an understandable discretion. Probably in the next decade some of the results from this investigation will be known by the public. And it won’t be a surprise if the scientific demonstration of certain phenomena causes some changes in the human behaviour, giving the first place to thought, intelligence and logic. Besides this will be according to our evolutive course.
 
Knowing himself better, Man will be able to add to his fantastic technological evolution the appropriate moral and spiritual evolution.
 
Thus, it may be possible for Man to start the third millenium without so many material worries, and with a social organization whose responsabilities, obligations, duties and benefits will be more balanced. This will allow him to give more importance and therefore spend more time with the planning and materialization of his spiritual aims, as well as with the appropriate framing of the different age groups, from childhood to third age (by that time perhaps also to the fourth).
 
The century of lights (material) might be replaced by the century of spiritual knowledge or century of the Light. 
 

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