Sunday, January 25, 1998

Crystal ball's gaze targets technology

In looking at what the future may bring us in Abilene and the Texas Midwest, the one word that keeps popping up is technology. Whether it's farming or eduction or banking or health care or home entertainment, anticipation concentrates on the changes wrought in practically every area of our lives by technological advances -- many of which remain yet to be discovered.

Indeed, as Larry Gill of Abilene's Dodge Jones Foundation puts it, "We don't have a clue how rapidly technology is going to change our lives in the next 10 to 15 years."

And so technology is a connecting thread that runs through today's special section, Outlook '98, which makes a prophetic gaze into the crystal ball to examine local prospects in the arts, in employment, in sports and recreation, in politics, in community development, in religion, in youth services and travel and senior life and the retail market and even the prison system.

Bill Whitaker's lead story, which describes "A Century of Change," makes an ideal start for this special section, emphasizing that the once-remote expanses of West Texas are no longer so isolated from the farthest corners of the world -- thanks to technology, of course.

The rest of the Reporter-News staff has joined together in producing this 16-page section, which we hope you will find enlightening and provocative and perhaps occasionally a bit disturbing as we prepare to encounter the challenges and the opportunities afforded by the new era just over the horizon.