In bringing you tomorrow's news today, we have mapped a path from the already familiar landscape of life in 2000 through to the uncharted territories of 2050.

Your guides are scientists and experts whose ground-breaking work is already creating the new millennium. We do not have a crystal ball, but the research, intuition and imagination of today's leading minds can help us look into the future. At times we may appear irreverent - but never malicious.

Our vision is bold. History teaches us that it must be. Few could have predicted the impact of the first moon landing; the fall of communism; the advent of the pill or the Internet. The next five weeks will sometimes amuse, occasionally disturb, but always keep you thinking.

The second decade of the century is marked with a continuing move towards a tailor-made society.

Cheap computers allow us greater choice and biotechnology helps us believe that we can improve the environment and ourselves.

A bio-attack in New York makes us aware of our fragility; Ireland is united; and Britain, consisting of England and Wales, gains a new monarch - King Charles III is crowned.

Nothing surprises us: the cloning of Bill Gates from a single hair; the creation of a human-chimp hybrid; an athlete using nanorobots to boost his oxygen levels - all earthly progress seems inevitable.

Attention begins to focus on space: the lethal debris floating there; the contest for its territories; and what America will do with the weapons.