ABSTRACT

An underlying premise in Toffler's book FUTURE SHOCK" was that the rate of technological change was creating serious cultural shocks in individuals. In the Safety field, safety technology is changing at an accelerating rate. This paper discusses those changes and their impact on the practice of Safety in the future. Safety professionals are knowledge workers. Their technological knowledge base is burgeoning. For years, Safety used technology borrowed from other fields. Today, that borrowed technology is rapidly being supplanted by analytical, predictive and integrating technological innovations coming out of the Safety field itself. Now Safety's technology is flowing into other fields. That new technology is also spawning new public demands of Safety professionals and what they must deliver. This situation offers unprecedented opportunities to the Safety profession. As the change from an industrial based society to an information based society gains momentum, what will our reaction be? Will we make the changes work for us, or will we become victims of change?