http://dailynews.yahoo.com/headlines/tc/ story.html?s=v/nm/19990703/tc/millennium_shopping_2.html
> Saturday July 3 12:46 AM ET
>
> Try This Non-Wash, No-Iron
> Cyberfuture For Size
>
> By Kevin Drawbaugh, European consumer
> goods correspondent
>
> LONDON (Reuters) - Please step forward into
> the future for a moment ... an android shop assistant is asking
> why you want blue trousers when its database says you prefer
> gray.
>
> Your sleeve communicator is beeping -- it's your genetically
> engineered boss at the spaceship plant -- and you just
> remembered you forgot to order milk on the shopping net before
> leaving home this morning.
>
> Some things will never change, but quite a lot will in the next
> 1,000 years, says a far-reaching report from investment bank
> and brokerage Morgan Stanley Dean Witter.
>
> For instance, clothes in the year 3000 may not need washing or
> ironing, thanks to new surface treatments, and everyday items
> will be bought almost instantly via the Internet.
>
> ``Fashions of the Third Millennium,'' the report compiled by a
> group of Morgan Stanley clothing and luxury goods industry
> analysts, ranges well beyond hemlines and lapel widths into such
> realms as Internet connectivity and bioelectronic technology.
>
> ``Some executives smirked about our survey's time frame,'' wrote
> the analysts, who interviewed 16 apparel industry executives,
> including Tommy Hilfiger and Kenneth Cole.
>
> ``But if suppliers don't go beyond the industry's current problems,
> they may just as well admit defeat.''
>
> Gazing into their crystal balls, the analysts and executives saw
> some stunning wardrobe improvements by the year 3000.
>
> As well as being created in non-wash, non-iron materials,
> clothes may also be able to maintain body moisture and
> temperature, and deliver vitamins to the blood through the skin.
>
> Apparel will be custom-made for individuals, based on electronic
> body-scans and rapid production, or sold at globally standardized
> sizes in place of today's sizing hodgepodge.
>
> The Internet will be pervasive and connected to individuals via
> all-in-one, miniature units holding cell phone, organizer and
> pager, and integrated into clothing ``to make Star Trek look
> positively prehistoric,'' the report said.
>
> Staple products, such as food, will be obtained by almost
> effortless thought-pattern or push-button Internet requests.
>
> Although products such as clothing will be sold on the Internet,
> the report believes the trip to the department store or shopping
> mall will not disappear -- as social and entertainment occasions
> in the same way that restaurants supplement home dining today.
>
> Stores may be staffed by ``semi-human'' assistants implanted
> with organic data processors enabling them to recall instantly
> the tastes and sizes of thousands of customers.
>
> More alarmingly, an elite of genetically engineered humans may
> exist alongside the normal human population. These super humans
> may demand a completely new array of products, especially in
> the sporting and luxury goods categories.
>
> The overall population will be much larger, more ethnically
> diverse and older. By the end of the next millennium, the median
> age could be 48 compared to today's 26 -- a shift that will doom
> today's teen-oriented, hip-hop marketplace.
>
> True to form, the analysts did not miss the chance to recommend
> some stocks that they said would be winners ``over the next
> three years -- or the next 1,000.''
>
> Among them were European luxuries makers LVMH, Hermes and
> Bulgari, as well as U.S. firms Nike, Liz Claiborne and Tommy
> Hilfiger.
>
> But with a further burst of prescience, the analysts conceded,
> ``We doubt whether many of the companies we research today
> will be around by the year 3000 in their current form.''
--
sentience@pobox.com Eliezer S. Yudkowsky
http://pobox.com/~sentience/tmol-faq/meaningoflife.html
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