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The computer might appear to be a dehumanizing factor, but the opposite is in fact true. It is already leading the consumer society away from the mass-produced homogeneity of the assembly line. The chip will make it possible some day to have shoes and clothes made to order—the production commanded and directed by computer —within minutes. The custom-made object, now restricted to the rich, will be within everyone's reach.
In no area of American life is personal service so precious as in medical care. Here, too, the computer has become a humanizing factor; the patient tends to give a more candid account of his symptoms, regimen and medical history to a machine programmed to ask the proper preliminary questions than to a harassed and possibly intimidating doctor.
At Boston's Beth Israel Hospital, for example, some patients sit down at a computer terminal before meeting a physician to provide their medical histories and receive information about the hospital. The computer interviews can be done in French and Spanish, as well as English, with a physician receiving an instantaneous translation. At Beth Israel and other hospitals, much of the literature on some major ailments, such as stroke and blood disease, has been computerized for doctors' consultation. Computers are already capable of detecting and monitoring ocular and cerebral ailments such as glaucoma and brain tumors.
At a few hospitals, computers are programmed not only to remind the pharmacy department to prepare prescriptions but also to alert nurses to give the proper dosage at the right time. After a physician examines a patient at Boston's Massachusetts General Hospital, a report, including lab test results, is logged into a data bank. One of the hospital's more than 100 terminals will then handle the patient's history in an intelligible language infelicitously named MUMPS (an acronym for Massachusetts General Hospital Utility Multi-Programming System).
More broadly, computers enable the patient to receive a health profile at far lower cost than previously possible; analyze vast amounts of blood; and, by systematizing information about the patient, cut down his hospital stay and pare both institutional and patient costs.
Next to health, heart and home, happiness for mobile Americans depends upon the well-tempered automobile. Computer technology may make the car, as we know it, a Smithsonian antique. In addition to the microprocessors under the hood that will help the auto operate more efficiently, tiny computers will ease tensions and make life simpler for the driver and passengers too. Ford Motor Co. now offers buyers of its Continental Mark Vs an option called "miles to empty." At the push of a button, the driver can get a readout on the amount of fuel in the tank, and the number of miles he can expect to go (at current speed) before a refill is necessary. Drivers of General Motors' 1978 Cadillac Seville will also be able to punch a button and find out the miles yet to go to a preset destination and the estimated arrival time. The ultimate auto will make the solid gold Cadillac look leaden. It will accommodate a pencil-size portable phone capable of reaching any number in the world in seconds, automatic braking that will take over from a panicked driver, and a mini-radar to avert collisions.