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Predictions for 1986
Aug. 17th, 2006 02:22 pmI finally got the Commodore-64 stuff mailed off to ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
wormquartet. As I was rooting along in the dusty old box, with AOL floppies and strange cables, I dug up this letter from the World Future Society. They mailed it to Fresh Air Radio, and a smart programmer put it in my box. These are three separate News Releases, one announcing a conference which I won't bother with. Before I file them away, let me share with LJ. My comments in [brackets].
Futurists offer forecasts for 1986
Bethesda, MD -- Each year the World Future Society publishes forecasts for the years ahead. These forecases are made by scientists, scholrs, and others who write for the Society's magazine, The Futurist.
Here are 10 forecasts found most though-provoking of those made during the past year.
* The East-West polarization that has dominated international relations for decades may ebb. Both the US and the Soviet Union will draw back from their worldwide rivalry and focus attention on their domestic problems. [SU didn't "draw back", it collapsed, but we kept up a worldwide rivalry with foes real and imagined.]
* Clothes will be custom-made in minutes in the near future. A video camera will scan a customer's body and tell a computer the shape, style, color, and design of the clothing. The fabric will them be shaped around three-dimentional molds and heated to retain human contours. [Nope]
* Space tourism may be the biggest growth industry of the twenty-first century. A week's vacation in a space station or a honeymoon on the moon will become commonplace. [Still early in the century, but 20 years on this prediction looks worse than it did in 1986.]
( more predictions behind cut )
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Professors Urge Using Dead To Help Living
Bethesda, MD -- Two university professors have suggested the establishment of institutions to keep alive the bodies of "braid dead" persons so their bodily organs can be used by living people.
There is now a nationwide shortage of living organs that can be transplanted into people suffering from heart, lung, kidney, and other ailments. The useable organs of newly dead people could be kept in their owner' bodies until time for a transplant operation, say professors Harld G. Hshane and Walter J. Îaly of Indiana University.
Life-support systems can keep the various organs in a human body alive and functioning long after the brain has ceased to function and the person is legally dead, explain the professors in the January-February 1986 issue of The Futurist magazine.
The brain-dead bodies -- termed "neomorts" -- could be kept in neomortoria -- units in hospitals where cadavers on life-support systems could be housed. At present, life-support systems are disconnected from brain-dead persons and the still-living organs are allowed to die without any use being mad of them.
Potential benefits of neomortoria include: Organ storage, drug research, medical and nursing education. [I edited this line down from the last page. A complete miss. The exact opposite happened: Before people are declared dead, people swoop down on the families and buy organs from the about-to-be-decceased.]
wormquartet. As I was rooting along in the dusty old box, with AOL floppies and strange cables, I dug up this letter from the World Future Society. They mailed it to Fresh Air Radio, and a smart programmer put it in my box. These are three separate News Releases, one announcing a conference which I won't bother with. Before I file them away, let me share with LJ. My comments in [brackets].Futurists offer forecasts for 1986
Bethesda, MD -- Each year the World Future Society publishes forecasts for the years ahead. These forecases are made by scientists, scholrs, and others who write for the Society's magazine, The Futurist.
Here are 10 forecasts found most though-provoking of those made during the past year.
* The East-West polarization that has dominated international relations for decades may ebb. Both the US and the Soviet Union will draw back from their worldwide rivalry and focus attention on their domestic problems. [SU didn't "draw back", it collapsed, but we kept up a worldwide rivalry with foes real and imagined.]
* Clothes will be custom-made in minutes in the near future. A video camera will scan a customer's body and tell a computer the shape, style, color, and design of the clothing. The fabric will them be shaped around three-dimentional molds and heated to retain human contours. [Nope]
* Space tourism may be the biggest growth industry of the twenty-first century. A week's vacation in a space station or a honeymoon on the moon will become commonplace. [Still early in the century, but 20 years on this prediction looks worse than it did in 1986.]
( more predictions behind cut )
-----
Professors Urge Using Dead To Help Living
Bethesda, MD -- Two university professors have suggested the establishment of institutions to keep alive the bodies of "braid dead" persons so their bodily organs can be used by living people.
There is now a nationwide shortage of living organs that can be transplanted into people suffering from heart, lung, kidney, and other ailments. The useable organs of newly dead people could be kept in their owner' bodies until time for a transplant operation, say professors Harld G. Hshane and Walter J. Îaly of Indiana University.
Life-support systems can keep the various organs in a human body alive and functioning long after the brain has ceased to function and the person is legally dead, explain the professors in the January-February 1986 issue of The Futurist magazine.
The brain-dead bodies -- termed "neomorts" -- could be kept in neomortoria -- units in hospitals where cadavers on life-support systems could be housed. At present, life-support systems are disconnected from brain-dead persons and the still-living organs are allowed to die without any use being mad of them.
Potential benefits of neomortoria include: Organ storage, drug research, medical and nursing education. [I edited this line down from the last page. A complete miss. The exact opposite happened: Before people are declared dead, people swoop down on the families and buy organs from the about-to-be-decceased.]