So, the countdown to the third millennium has begun. Large-scale dates - a new year, a new century, a new millennium - are very tempting to see in them large-scale milestones on the way to new, of course, big and good achievements. But the silent, indivisibly continuous and inexorably independent flow of time is indifferent to the conventional standards imposed on it. Milestones, stages, eras of our activity rarely coincide with round numbers on an endless ruler of time. Nevertheless, such dates make us think: what have we managed to do, what do we have today and what needs to be done tomorrow? Where are we going and where are we going?