The world is currently passing through a genuine technological revolution of historic proportions but those who don’t become early adopters will miss out on "the transformational potential" of this moment, says Futurist lifestyles editor David Pearce Snyder.

"This is the real McCoy - 50-60 years from now whole history chips will be devoted to this time discussing how each major country of the world either successfully or unsuccessfully exploited this moment," says Mr Pearce Snyder, in Auckland, New Zealand for the Ninth International Conference on Thinking.

He said there was a need for urgent rethinking of our education systems still essentially training people for the industrial age, which is now over.

A revolution in learning needed to occur to make the most of the information revolution. Mr Pearce Snyder said in the industrial age people were mostly employed as extensions to physical machinery. "In the information age we’re all going to be using knowledge to do our jobs better. The fact is that 70 per cent of the value added in the productive process comes from the information input –knowledge, design, skill, research, analysis."

He said only about 30 per cent of the population can learn effectively in a passive auditory mode listening to a speaker- about 70 per cent learn faster in an active applied setting.

"The classroom only imparts real learning mastery to about one third of the graduating students. That was fine for the industrial age but now everyone is going to need those high value skills. People learn faster by doing. Apprenticeship, internship, mentoring, community projects, teamwork, project assignments, team teaching and active learning is essential and has been shown to be so in the most successful innovative schools in the US and Europe."

Everyone will use computers not just managers, executives and technicians. "Every worker will be using a computer; factory workers, farmers, taxi drivers, and not just for important decisions but for day to day tasks."

We’ll also see the rapid emergence of cyberaids which work with these digital devices. "they’ll interact with best practice systems that tell us the best way to do our job this will accelerate the rate at which people can move from one job to another and become masterful at it."

He says nations must prepare their citizens to be computer competent. This will become easier as computers become more conversational and develop their own personalities. "Within seven years we’ll be chatting with our computers which will give us answers and suggestions. We’ll ask them to find for example, all the information on the internet with regard to yogurt. Instead of having to sit down at the keyboard and use search engines a smart cyberaid will go get it and then ask us what we want to do with it."

Over the next 5-10 years the majority of people would have personal digital appliances combining the features of a cellphone and interactive pager with wireless connections to the internet and even a digital camera.