MILLENNIUM ESSAY CONTEST ENTRIES; LOOKING FORWARD: TAKING CHARGE OF OUR OWN FATE

Never before have we had the ability to determine our own fates as we will in the new millennium. Never before have the forces of technology, the economy, and peace come together as they can and will as the century changes.

In the last decade alone, technology has changed the world in ways few could have imagined 1,000 or even 100 years ago. Through computer technology, jobs that took hundreds of hours just decades ago can now be completed in mere seconds. Through the Internet, the smallest schools in America now have access to the same facilities as the most prestigious universities. Learning, communicating, and working can all be done better and more efficiently than ever before.

We also begin the new millennium with a sense of economic well-being that few nations have ever experienced. Unemployment is low. Inflation is low. Wealth that once took lifetimes to acquire can now be achieved in years, sometimes days.

Though we have faced conflict around the world, we also enter the new millennium with a feeling that world peace is now within our reach. Peace accords in Northern Ireland and the Middle East are struggling but surviving. In the Balkans, ethnic conflicts centuries old are beginning to falter. The United States is adapting to a new world, attempting to help bring peace to areas no one thought would ever find it.

At the same time we enjoy our many blessings, we must strengthen our resolve to protect and marshal the forces that bring them. We must not allow the economy to leave anyone behind. We must reach out to those who have yet to benefit from its generosity. Even as we concentrate on making greater advances in technology, we cannot let technology become a barrier between people and their potential. We cannot become a nation of technology haves and have-nots. We must not let slip our tenuous grasp on peace. As Russia's conflict in Chechnya shows, the end of the Cold War does not mean the end of strife.

The forces of technology, the economy, and peace give us the potential to truly change our lives and our world. They give us the power to become that which we have always dreamed we could be as a nation. If we can ensure that these forces continue to work with us rather than against us, the new millennium will some day be regarded as one of the greatest times in not only American, but human history.