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TIME: Almanac 1990
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1990 Time Magazine Compact Almanac, The (1991)(Time).iso
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time
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010190
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01019017.000
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1990-09-17
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TECHNOLOGY, Page 104MOST OF THE DECADE
Most likely to put the Post Office out of business. Futurists
predicted that electronic mail -- computers talking to computers
-- would soon replace the stamped envelope. They turned out to be
wrong. The true expression of 21st century communications is one
fax machine talking to another. Modern high-speed facsimile
technology has opened the telephone lines to everything from
blueprints to fingerprints, including unsolicited, unwanted faxes
-- the 1980s version of junk mail.
Most likely to fail in the middle of a billion-dollar deal. It
was the technological breakthrough that made where people make
their calls ("I'm calling from the freeway! The chairlift! The
beach!") as important as what they had to say. The concept behind
the cellular telephone is to divide a geographical region into
overlapping "cells," each assigned its own radio frequency. As
callers travel from one telephone cell to another, a complex
computer system automatically switches their call from one
frequency to the next. And with a little luck, the party they're
talking to gets switched at the same time.
Most likely to get you run over by a truck. First there was
the boom box -- big, bad and blaring. But soon Sony introduced the
Walkman, the compact musical device designed to be seen but not
heard. Since then, sidewalks and streets have been filled with
people wearing small foam-rubber circles on or in their ears and
expressions of rapture on their faces. Watch out for that manhole!
Most likely to turn your child into a space cadet. At first,
home video games were supposed to be educational, teaching the kids
computer literacy and all that. Then came Nintendo, purveyor of the
Super Mario Bros., to revitalize the world market for mindless
alien blasting. Parents now suspect that there is something
disturbingly addictive about these amusements, but at least they
keep the kids off the streets.
Most likely to bring Elvis back to life. With revolutionary
speed, music lovers are replacing their favorite old scratched-up
45s and 33s with shiny compact discs. The complete works of almost
all major artists, from Rachmaninoff to the Rolling Stones, are
being released in the new format. At up to $18 a pop, CDs are
costly, but the tones they produce are astonishingly crisp and
clear. Pressed between CDs and cassette tapes, the venerable vinyl
long-playing record is being relegated to memory lane.
Most likely to leave you hanging in suspense. Tonight's the
final installment of a 34-episode Masterpiece Theater series, and
the boss wants you to entertain clients. But no problem! That's why
you -- and millions of other Americans -- bought the videocassette
recorder with the one-month, eight-program calendar timer and
standby one-touch record. Once you have mastered the owner's
manual, a lifetime task for some, you just shove in a tape and
press a few dozen buttons. What could go wrong?
Most likely to leave you talking to yourself. Making a quick
phone call to ask a simple question? Forget it. Since the advent
of voice mail (a.k.a. automated answering systems), there are no
simple questions -- just a maze of electronic choices that could
have been designed by Kafka. Got a medical emergency? Please push
1. Want something kinky? Press 4. Need to talk to a human? Just
stay on the line.
Most likely to produce a one-night standoff. People who were
weary of blind dates, office romances and the kind of companions
they met in singles bars embraced video dating services as a way
to look before they leaped. But dates who look luscious and sound
suave on videotape may not be so appealing in the flesh.
State--of-the-art electronics still does not remove trial and error
from love.
Most likely to turn you into a couch potato. Sure you could
jump to your feet, dash across the carpet and risk a sprained wrist
twisting dials on the television set. But, hey, why bother? This
is the age of the wireless remote control. While exercising only
your finger muscles, you can flip through the six dozen channels
on your cable box, skip commercials and turn down the volume on
grating sports announcers. In fact, you can do just about
everything but make the characters on screen step into your living
room -- and that may yet come.
Most likely to be more than you bargained for. You say you only
want it for word processing? No can do. Buy a personal computer and
you are also buying a life-style. Loaded up with the computational
power that was once available only to governments and large
corporations, people are using desktop machines to do everything
from making investments and laying out newsletters to designing
paper airplanes and picking the winners of the football bowl games.