A British-based think-tank this week sent three postcards from the future, snapshots of what a post-technological society might be like in the year 2015, including the grim prospect of a global rat race where only the strongest rats survive.

In the first of its scenarios the Royal Institute of International Affairs envisages a world of starkly accelerating change which perpetually threatens to spin out of control. Commercial advantage has become a scarce commodity. Specialisation is downgraded as there are numerous ways to achieve the same end.

The second thesis promises a kinder, gentler, future, recognising that too much innovation is as bad as too little. Here, governments are likened to the owner of a shopping mall, producing the best environment for individual enterprises and thereby generating higher rents.

The final and most grim perspective, envisages the industrial world plunged into a period of protracted social instability by the inexorable march of technology, with generations never having been wage earners. Some might argue that elements of all these prophetic postcards from the edge are already in place.