Sci-Fi Today, Sci-Fact Tomorrow

In the future of Stephen Spielberg’s Minority Report, televisions and computers have been replaced by transparent screens on which life-size images appear to be floating in thin air. Watching Tom Cruise operate this fictional technology, David Lauren, Vice President of Ralph Lauren, was inspired to develop similar screens, but with a retail spin — his version would be implanted behind a store’s glass window and would be touch sensitive, allowing window shoppers to interactively browse through Lauren merchandise and purchase what they saw using a built in credit-card swiper.

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Is Technology Moving Too Fast?

The newest technologies–computers, genetic engineering and the emerging field of nanotech–differ from the technologies that preceded them in a fundamental way. The telephone, the automobile, television and jet air travel accelerated for a while, transforming society along the way, but then settled into a manageable rate of change

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The Suicide Seeds

For farmers hoping for a healthy harvest, the best place to turn for help these days is the Monsanto Corp. One of the world’s leading biotechnology companies–and lately a pioneer in genetically engineered seeds–Monsanto has been incorporating flashy traits like herbicide and pest resistance into everything from canola to corn.

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