The exponential growth of knowledge has challenged the traditional view of life as comprising three stages; education, work, and retirement. As knowledge acquired in the early years of life becomes obsolete at an accelerating pace, the concept of continuing lifelong learning has acquired greater significance. Educators emphasise the importance of continuing education and training as being pivotal in the process of adaptation to change in modern life.

The emergence of the information society, resulting from advances in information and telecommunications technologies, has led to a new industrial revolution as far-reaching as the previous one. We are witnessing an "information revolution". The past two millennia can be thought of as comprising what Georgetown Professor Martin Irvine has called the First Information Age, configured around the book as the standard technology for recording and distributing information. We are now entering a Second Information Age configured around electronic storage and transmission of information. The virtually limitless access to new knowledge available through modern technology, the low cost of disseminating this knowledge, and the readiness with which this knowledge can be up-dated, combine to give us the key to providing continuing, lifelong learning which, because of the ease and low cost of dissemination, need not lead to new forms of social exclusion. "The International Journal of Educational Technology" aims to follow the development of the most significant educational technologies of this "Second Information Age."

Dr. Roger Hacker, University of Western Australia
Dr. James A. Levin, University of Illinois