Word: prospect
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...what we know as TV will have been transmogrified from a box in the corner into a ubiquitous, wall-to-wall bath of infotainment. And the array of program choices, already so bewildering, will multiply almost to infinity. But that is the predictable part. The most tantalizing and scary prospect is what this electronic deluge will do to us. Will we become zombie consumers of Lethal Weapon 17, or connoisseurs of Greek drama on channel 894? Will our voracious image consumption erode our ability to read and speak, or will TV teach us new languages? Will we be happy...
This concentration on economics will be made possible by the prospect of general peace in the 21st century, heralded by the lifting of the nuclear arms threat in the 1990s. In the century ahead, the world will contain more democracies than ever before, and they will dominate in Europe, the Americas and the countries of the Pacific Rim. Since it is a truism that democratic states do not make war on one another, warfare should become essentially irrelevant for these nations, most of which will reduce their armed forces to the minimum necessary for individual or collective defense...
...idea of progress loses all meaning if progress no longer implies the democratization of affluence. It was the prospect of universal abundance that made progress a morally compelling ideology in the past. According to the old way of thinking, the productive forces unleashed by industrialism generated a steadily rising level of demand. Even humble men and women could now see the possibility of bettering their condition. The desire for a full life, formerly restricted to the rich, would spread to the masses. The expansion of desire -- the motor of progress -- would assure the expansion of the economic machinery necessary...
...challenger was transformed into a weird tag-team contest in which the newcomer might join forces with one man against the other -- or beat up on both of them simultaneously. And the complicated debate calculus that had been at the center of weeks of negotiations was skewed by the prospect of an unprecedented three-way debate...
...Colleges. "Some of these groups have to be cautious," says John Seffrin, CEO of the American Cancer Society. "They could advocate for major shifts in funding in ways that on the surface makes sense but in the long haul do great violence to the scientific effort. It raises the prospect that these precious resources can be wasted...