Specifically, an unstoppable wedge will be driven through the world. Not the physical globe, but the teeming billions of people who inhabit the earth.

For one thing, whole populations of countries will change drastically, and economies with them. AIDS is one factor. In some African nations, losses as high as 25% of all adults may occur in the next few years...and the death toll is rising. HIV infection was up 10% in one year from 1997 to 1998, and is rising faster and faster. And it's not just Africa -- 95% of all HIV-infected people live in the developed world. But it's just begun to spread seriously in South and East Asia.

And have you heard that AIDS has been "cured?" Wrong.

While there was some success in the U.S. with the drug "cocktails" that were treating AIDS, the Center for Disease Control has reported that the rate of decline of deaths is dropping. People still aren't getting tested or treated, people who are getting treated are having trouble with the complicated dosages. Drug-resistant strains of the virus are emerging.

There is no cure in the foreseeable future.

China and India -- home of over 2 billion people -- are now at serious risk. A recent survey of randomly selected households in rural Tamil Nadu in India found that 2.1% of the adult population living in the countryside had HIV. It's not just in the "sin centers" of the cities...the epidemic is already out of control in many rural areas to which infected "sin workers" return once they're too sick to work.

In Eastern Europe and Central Asia, the rates are rising also. In the Russian federation, where syphilis rates are up 2,600% in a decade, AIDS will follow close behind.

In Africa, the illness and death of large segments of the working population will cripple the economic output. A preview of things to come: in Tanzania and Zambia, large companies have reported that AIDS-related illnesses and deaths cost more than their total profits for the year.

What will split up the world even more -- in developed and developing nations -- will be the technological divide. Those in the sphere of the new "Information Age" industries and economies will prosper. Those that aren't will be left behind. It's as simple as that. A few craftsmen, artists and musicians will survive. Some service industries will scrape by. But not prosper...

But almost all manufacturing, information processing, entertainment -- and even professional services -- will be tended by those who can perform in an advanced and advancing technological state.

For those who fall too far behind, there will be no catching up. The Information Age moves too fast.

Microsoft money transforms Seattle... Mexican border towns boom with new business taking advantage of trade loopholes... Taiwan and Singapore prosper... but Mexico City and Rio de Janeiro sink into abject poverty... and the Sub-Saharan African countries face disaster.

More and more... faster and faster... the world will divide into two very different parts -- the haves and the have-nots... those who make the leap into the economy of the future and profit. And those who are left behind, trapped in dying geographical pockets and economies.

Nations will collapse as small, advanced areas seek to break away from large, backward areas that drag them down. Canada is fracturing... Indonesia -- a huge country -- is already embroiled in a violent civil war.

Homes and cars that think for you... medicine you can't believe (real obesity cures, cancer cures, and more). And opportunities for the average person to make a substantial fortune in their lifetime.

On the other hand, there will be billions of homeless... the wretched of the earth... with little food... little water... almost no medicine... and the worst standard of living imaginable.

If you're reading this you're probably in the successful areas right now. (Provided that Y2K was just about as remarkable an event as the DOW 10K in 1999...)

But you must be careful. Future survival--and great success--depend on being more alert, more vigilant, and more informed than ever before.

And that's what this book is about.

Success demands new rules and attitudes today. The old ways are dead and gone... the elephant graveyards of working, investing, and thinking.

There are new ways of getting information. Gateways to the knowledge you'll need to prosper. This is the promise of the future. And this is what you'll read about in the pages that follow.

Please read on...