Every generation thinks it is going through great changes, and ours is not so different. Albert Camus said it long before: "Each generation, no doubt, believes itself destined to remake the world. My generation knows, however, that it will not remake it. But its task is perhaps greater. In 1899, Charles Holland Duell I, Commissioner of the US Patent Office, recommended the closure of the office on the grounds that "everything that 'had' to be invented 'had' been invented". While we believe that information and communication technologies will undoubtedly continue to transform our lives, previous generations thought that aviation, electricity or steam would transform theirs: they were quite right.