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We enlarge and expand. We have recently found out that the entire universe is expanding more than we had initially believed. We build, invent and discover at a pace that is dizzying for us, perhaps turtle footed for you. This year the automobile industry produced a vehicle powered by liquid hydrogen; Detroit plans to have fuel-cell cars on the roads in 2004. (I assume yours run on carrots.) The computer industry comes up with a "killer app" every 18 months. With silicon chips reaching their limit, the industry announces "molecular computing"--shrinking computer circuits to the size of molecules. Soon we will have flexible transistors and bendable screens, easy to fold, like a newspaper.
Once the human genome is decoded, genetic sequences can be patented, licensed and (of course) sold. On a higher plane, in the past three years alone, astronomers have discovered 17 nearby stars that appear to be orbited by planets the size of Jupiter. We're experiencing a bit of trouble with outer space lately, having just lost two costly gizmos we launched toward Mars. Have you found them?
Half the country is fat, half low-fat. Butter and eggs, once out, are in; I suppose you have tossed them out again. Coffee, once considered poison, turns out to be harmless. Red meat is not as lethal as once thought. Take a shot of Scotch, of red wine. Take a shot: vaccines are on the way soon that will prevent pneumonia, rheumatic fever, meningitis and the flu. There's a new prospect called regenerative medicine--using the body's own stem cells and growth factors to repair tissue. We make ourselves anew. And how are you?
While we expand, we also contract. America Inc. has become a term for describing the unending mergers of vast companies--multibillion-dollar mergers, real money today. Oil companies, car companies, food companies, banks; everything comes together. Media companies become telephone companies. Telephone companies become software companies. Book-publishing companies are swallowed whole by companies that make music, movies and magazines. Nothing is wrong with these adhesions in principle, but some "products," like books, suffer. Not long ago, the large book publishers would take on a number of excellent but unprofitable manuscripts as a kind of intellectual duty, pro bono work for the national mind. These days, if a book is not predicted to sell at least 15,000 copies, fuhgeddaboutit (there you go). The Great Gatsby (fewer than 24,000 copies sold in its first 15 years) would not be published by a major house today.
Religions merge: this past year the Methodists with the Episcopalians. Folks are merging too. U.S. immigration officials recently predicted that by 2050 (50 years ago for you), nearly half the country's population will be nonwhite. There are more interracial marriages every year. I like to picture you as a nice, rich shade of beige.