One is supply and demand: if the oil price rises high enough, people will think twice about jumping in the car (though they haven't yet noticeably begun to do so) Another is the imposition of measures such as road-pricing. But these are merely a crude beginning.The OST sees intelligent infrastructures as the key to avoiding this impasse. Almost all the world's computing power, it points out, is already embedded in the objects around us A typical car today contains at least 20 microprocessors. The next step will be to link all these to the internet, with all the possibilities this raises for prediction and control.It won't be long before your car not only tells you the best route to your destination, but the traffic congestion situation and how to avoid it.Intelligent infrastructures, however, won't do the job by themselves; nor will technological advances, though they will help. The larger, and far more difficult task, will be persuading people to modify their behaviour.

For instance, the report envisages private cars being replaced by an "automatically controlled personal taxi system, running on its own guideway network", in which each passenger is identified by a smart card. This may appeal to the kind of person who now joins a car club. But those who view their car as an integral part of their personality - currently by far the majority - won't be so enthusiastic.The report's authors assume that life 50 years hence will be fundamentally different in ways that we can't yet imagine - just as, 10 years ago, nobody could have imagined the web-dominated world we all now live in. They also remind us that behaviour, too, may be counter-intuitive. For example, it was assumed that advances in electronic communication would cut down people's need to meet face-to-face, thus cutting down on travelling and the need for office space. In fact, the result has been quite the opposite: meeting people electronically makes us want to meet them face-to-face, increasing, not decreasing, the number of journeys people make.However, of one thing the report's authors are certain: the future is electronic. And this leads to some unsettling thoughts.One is that this future society will be a surveillance society.

If energy efficiency and sustainability are to rely on sensors predicting our every move and want, then privacy as we know it will surely become a thing of the past.The other is that future computers had better be more reliable than they are now. If the authors of this report are correct, then in 50 years' time a system crash will be an awesome thing indeed.motoring independent.co.uk. Pauline Viardot-Garcia was more than just the greatest diva of the 19th century. The Spanish-born mezzo-soprano transformed 19th-century opera and song, inspiring everyone from Berlioz to Brahms, and Clara Schumann to the young Faur?Yet her own compositions have been virtually forgotten since her death in 1910. An evening of words and music at the Wigmore Hall, staged by Opera Rara, is about to recapture the world of Viardot and her music. Such is the significance of Viardot that the American mezzo-soprano Frederica von Stade will make her Wigmore Hall debut at the age of 60. Viardot was born in 1821, the daughter of a singer and teacher, Manuel Garcia Her elder sister was the legendary soprano Maria Malibran. When the latter died aged 28, the burden of this famed family's reputation fell on Pauline's shoulders.The poet Alfred de Musset heard Pauline sing when she was 17 He compared her voice to "the taste of a wild fruit...

Pauline possesses the secret of great artists: before expressing something, she feels it. She does not listen to her voice, but to her heart." He was the first of many who fell in love with this unlikely-looking woman. Pauline was no beauty, but numbered among her admirers Berlioz, Gounod and Ivan Turgenev.On the advice of her friend George Sand, Pauline married the theatre director Louis Viardot, 21 years her senior. But aged 22, touring Russia, the superstar met the 25-year-old Turgenev and accepted his offer of Russian lessons. It was the beginning of a lifelong passion against which Pauline fought with all her might.