Word: virtual
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...corporate manifestation of that warrior spirit is Oracle, the software-and-consulting giant Ellison has built over the past 20 years. Oracle enjoys a virtual hammerlock in the immensely profitable business of organizing and storing information in electronic databases. In the past fiscal year the firm squeezed more than $600 million in profits from revenues of $4.2 billion by helping firms like Pacific Bell and American Airlines track billing records and airline reservations. The company's market value is $28 billion--more than that of Time Warner or H.J. Heinz--and it has enjoyed better than a 30% annual growth...
...VIRTUAL PETS...
Tamagotchi, the latest toy craze in Japan, arrived last week in a Brink's truck at Manhattan's FAO Schwarz. The egg-shaped pet chick has a virtual life right on a key chain, where it's hatched, lives and dies--virtually. When it beeps, the owner is supposed to pet it by pressing its buttons. The chick even leaves virtual droppings to be cleaned up. It sells on Japan's black market for $500, but the suggested U.S. retail price is $15. The profits are real...
...with our lives, and the rest of it we can rebuild if we keep helping each other like we have been." Her 92-year-old father, Willard Guerard, had to be rescued by helicopter from his farm near East Grand Forks. Asked where his daughter, who has gone from virtual anonymity to daily appearances on national television, got her wits and her will, he said, "From me." As a girl, he added, Pat farmed potatoes with her dad, and feeling the earth in your hands prepares you for anything. "The quality of life here is real good," he explained...
...test of his model, Montague created a computer program that simulated the nectar-gathering activity of bees. Programmed with a dopamine-like reward system and set loose on a field of virtual "flowers," some of which were dependably sweet and some of which were either very sweet or not sweet at all, the virtual bees chose the reliably sweet flowers 85% of the time. In laboratory experiments real bees behave just like their virtual counterparts. What does this have to do with drug abuse? Possibly quite a lot, says Montague. The theory is that dopamine-enhancing chemicals fool the brain...