won't find you ♪ ♪ holding hands while the walls come tumbling down ♪ ♪ when theyd they have to fade ♪ everybody wants to rule the world ♪ as soon as we have intelligent machines creeping into our lives. short of a phenomenon. >> personal computers, walk around stereos, mobile telephones. >> a major moment in the history of flight. >> experts tell us, all of this is just the tip of the iceberg of what's to come. >> there's literally a

almost a cult. >> we're no longer on the verge of the personal computer revolution. we're right in the midst of it, ♪ the average family home, cory practices her violin. christian plays with his cars, and mike and carol worry over the bills. >> we went into the 1980s in pretty much the same technology that's been in place for a couple decades.

typewriter. calculators, tv, oven. a car. you listen to music on a big old stereo system with a turn table. maybe you had a digital watch, and that was the only thing that was going to be digital that you tu owned. >> hello? i'm not here now, but my faithful machine is. >> there was a handful of technology at that time. one was the telephone answering machine. you'd be driving home, and you'd say, i can't wait to check my

messages. you know, it had become part of the day, honey, i'm checking my messages. from the noisy streets of new york to the laid-back tranquility of california. americans are tuning out and tuning in. >> when i think of technology in the 1980s, i think of the walkman. the walkman was huge. >> it's the latest fad. tiny stereo cassette players with featherweight headphones. >> it's like carrying your stereo with you, you know, on your head. >> the walkman took listening to music from a fixed location in your home to mobile. >> you are witnessing the ultimate miniaturization of the cassette player. never has so much genius been coaxed into so little space.

kind of scientific breakthrough that has to happen first. and none of this stuff could have happened in the 1980s without the transistor being invented in the late 1940s. and japan in particular understood that they could make things smaller, more versatile. things smaller, more versatile. sony was the brand name that so solid it was a pleasure to hold.

>> the makers of tv programs and movies shown on television claim their films lose their rerun value when they're recorded on home videotape recorders and played later. the movie studios said this violated copyright laws and sued for instigating widespread in the home law breaking. >> you cannot have high-class entertainment if 50 million taping machines are out there in an unauthorized fashion with no compensation to owners, taking from them what rightfully belongs to them. >> the supreme court today answered a multi-billion dollar business question affecting the wallets of millions of americans

and one of the nation's fast growing forms of recreation. home videotaping. they ruled that using the machine to tape programs is legal and violates no copyright you law. >> not only did the movie industry lose that one but they were totally wrong. the vcr turns us into a generation of movie nuts. >> it may be the fastest growing business in america. the sale of tapes to that people buy or rent to play at home. >> more than 24,000 retail outlets across america now rent or sell tapes of all kinds. >> you go to a store and pick out something you missed. in the old days if you missed a movie, you missed the movie >> and it's not restricted to blockbuster films. jane fonda with workout tapes have shown you can make money with a product geared specifically to the home market. >> not just taking movies home but making them at home and anywhere else you happen to go. >> i was the kid who had a camcorder. it was the size of kentucky, and it was the size of kentucky, and it had to be, because it played vhs cassettes. >> the setup can be used by just about anybody. it's about to revolutionize the industry.

>> there's no developing. you can rewind and record over it if you didn't like the take. that is an enormous shift. >> americans by billions of dollars of electronic equipment. just when you think you've bought the latest in audio and video, there's a new generation of gear which has clearer pictures and better sound. >> this camera, using a simple little tape like that, just possibly the wave of the future. like them or not, video games are the youth phenomenon of our day. quarter by quarter, $6 billion got fed into video game slots last year. you won't see these folks they have businesses to run. they have passions to pursue. how do they avoid trips to the post office? stamps.com mail letters, ship packages, all the services of the post office right on your computer. get a 4 week trial, plus $100 in extras including postage and a digital scale. go to stamps.com/tv

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like them or not, video games are the youth phenomenon of our day. quarter by quarter, $6 billion got fed into video game slots last year. that's double what americans spent to go to the movies. >> people flock to them, because the arcade game could afford expensive hardware at the time. and the hardware had enough

power to do things we'd never seen before. >> there was essentially an arcade in every mall or in every street corner. the lunch money was not safe if there was an arcade around. >> arcade games at the time were the first machine that we could really interact with. we could cause a world to do something. so we'd grab a joystick and move a character around or fire something at a spaceship. we've never had experience like that before. >> the popularity of these video games is nothing short of a social phenomenon. pac man is seemingly everywhere. retailers can't keep the home version stocked. one dealer describes the demand. >> phenomenal. telephones ringing every five minutes. it's pac man mania. >> my big memory of the '80s was my best friend got this $300 console that connected to your tv.

you just play this thing forever, and it was the first time anybody had ever seen anything but tv on a tv. and i thought, wow, this is technology. >> the imaginary rockets are controlled by the same chips the u.s. army used in their defense programs. the significance of the chip does not only lie in gadgets. her whole future will be changed by the silicon chip business. >> it was discovered that you could actually etch a whole lot of transistors onto a piece of of silicon, which was basically a cheap substance that could be manufactured. >> these chips can control the flow of electrical current that in effect enables them to store and remember zillions of bits of information on a surface just a little bit thicker than an eggshell and smaller than a fingernail. >> this silicon chip supplies the brainpower for 1,001 electronic gadgets from wristwatches to microwave ovens. >> the industry gives birth to a new high-tech cult and a place

called silicon valley. >> the magic part of silicon valley is that there was this boiling pot of people who were involved in technology, involved in science. >> silicon valley was hp, sri, xerox park and stanford that was a hell of a combination. >> there were these two cultures engineered with ph.d.s and hobbyists. >> there was a lot of counter culture people. so you had cheap semi-conductors. you had people that would look at things differently than what the conventional person was, and that's what the technology needed then. >> one of the things that was really hard about making a computer was now on a chip. so all of a sudden, people who had a thirst for this stuff could go out and buy a home brew computer. you could make them yourself. >> there were a lot of people into the changes in technology and how we a part of it, even at our companies we were the fringe element. we had the jeans. we're not the managers and leaders. but a clever design on its own had value. >> you had these guys like steve jobs, bill gates and steve wozniak. and bill gates appall allen messing around on the edge of

the personal computer industry. but no one in corporate america and no one in most of the homes of america thought that the personal computer was anything that would ever have, would ever even happen, let alone have any relevance to them. >> for all of us, the computer revolution was really exciting. it was like, wow, this is wide open. >> it was a group of people who want to make a change in the world. and eventually, the two forces in silicon valley, the hobbyists and the button-down business guys ended up coming together when the chip makers realized the things that the hobbyists were doing could lead to a new product called the personal computer. >> it was at a computer club where they displayed the computer they'd been working on, and it caused a sensation. >> we had absolutely no idea what people were going to do with these things when we started out. as a matter of fact, the two people who it was designed for was woz and myself, because we couldn't afford to buy a

computer kit on the market. we got it working and showed it to our friends and everybody wanted one. >> woz was the technical genius and jobs was the marketing genius, and you needed both of those kinds of mindsets to make this new technology work and create this company out of thin air called apple. >> since the apple computer company was founded five years ago, its sales have sky rocketed from $100,000 to more than $100 million. with the most popular type writer-sized computer on the market. steven jobs is 26 years old and sees his computer's future as the future of man kind. >> how many calculators do you have? >> two maybe.

>> and you use the automatic teller machines? >> sure. >> so life is already seducing you into using these things. it's not at 1984-ish vision. it's going to be very human and very gradual and seduce you into learning how to use it. >> random access memory is internal memory built inside of this computer. >> these new computers were rough, ugly, difficult to use inventions when they first came out. >> it would crash and you would have to figure out what to do. it would not always create the right results, so it really did take a mind-set of someone willing to cut it some slack. >> don't take big steps. >> everybody kind of agreed their could be the next big thing after the printing press if we do did right. it's not just having a machine. the world needed to be made better. those are the things that actually can lift a society into a new way of thinking. >> industry experts say we're no longer on the verge of the personal computer revolution. we're right in the midst of it thank you. and it's gathering steam with

more and more people jumping aboard every day. cannot live without it.

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the brain. and it was a threatened concept. >> 1980s is a period of time when the big, giant, impersonal machine that lives in a huge, air conditioned room someplace suddenly becomes something that sits on your desk. >> something is happening out there, something that's expanding your world. small computers are happening. >> as soon as we have intelligent machines creeping into our daily lives, into our factories, into our hospitals, into our businesses, then it's going to be a new world out there. >> computer stores have become the neighborhood soda shops of the binary generation. the disciples, young and old of smart machines. >> companies that were starting

to build personal computers, companies like atari, tandy, commodore, apple began to see them as a public market. it was seeping into the public consciousness. >> personal computers have become the business of at least 25 companies, with radio shack and commodore grabbing three quarters of the market. this personal computer costs about $1,400 and fits nicely on a desk corner. duplicating its performance five years ago would have cost $75,000 and required a unit the size of a large refrigerator. >> when the average american thought computer, they thought ibm. it made these mainframe computers that ran pretty much everything. >> ibm was one of the most powerful corporations in america. and in technology, it was the most powerful company that had ever existed in technology. >> because of this activity in personal computers, it started to make ibm look like they were behind the eight ball. >> they look at the apple ii and say, huh, we could build one of those.

we built computers that put men on the moon. we'll get that business, squash these guys, no problem. >> ibm has entered the small computer market for the first time. >> the idea has become so big that the giant of computer companies, ibm, is busy marketing its new small computer. >> it will, they say, give credibility to home computers. they'll no longer be just another new gadget. >> ibm has set an objective to build the office of the future. >> before ibm came in, companies would not think about buying personal computers, but suddenly, when ibm's selling one it becomes a safer decision. >> ibm's personal computer is intended for office, school or home use, aimed at exactly the same market as its competitors. >> when ibm started developing the ibm pc, it needed an operating system. and this young guy named bill gates had started this tiny little company called microsoft. >> bill gates was that unusual combination of a tech guy who was as good as the best tech guys, but he also had a business sense, and a business vision. >> at the time, everyone was making it up as they went along. there was nothing that came before it. there was no personal computer industry. so when gates said to ibm, how about this, we'll write you're

operating system for your pc, and we'll get a cut of every machine you sell, and in addition, he made sure it wasn't an exclusive license, that he was going to be able to sell the software to ibm, but he was also going to be able to sell the same software to other people, because gates intuited that there would be people that would build knockoffs of ibm in the pc clones. >> it was a genius move who was still in his early 20s. and you've got these guys at ibm in blue shirts and dark ties looking at this company microsoft and saying, who cares? software, who cares about software. we build these big machines. >> ibm did not realize it was essentially handing all this power to this little nerd. >> if you had stayed at harvard a few more years, would this computer revolution have passed you by? >> perhaps. things moved quickly in the industry. it was an urgency to get out there and be the first one to put a basic on the micro computer that caused me to drop out. >> if you don't have one, you

will be amazed what these little gadgets can do. >> the idea was that ordinary people might have a use for computers. now, it took a while to figure out what those uses might be. >> the mane thing was spreadsheets and word processing. the computer was the best typewriter you could ever have. it gave you a new way to write. you could change things around. and check your spelling. it would always look perfect. >> bottom line numbers. >> my dad had the large ledger sheets, done them all by hand, and i remember taking a computer to show him the spreadsheet. and i remember taking a computer to show him a spreadsheet. and suddenly, he understood the value of a personal computer. >> there was a drastic mindset change in the whole country about what a computer was. and happened over a very short period of time. >> gather around and we'll tell you a lit bit more about the system. >> here at the west coast computer fair, the speed of development is so great that each fair outdates the previous one. >> it is lower prices that has helped the tremendous boom. about one home in ten will have a computer by the end of this year, by 1990, the number could be two out of three. >> we knew the personal computer

was getting serious when the competition started. when you have competition, innovation gets stimulated. >> compaq. >> atari. >> this is the one. >> higher resolution. great other expandability than ibm's pc. >> ibm's entry heated up an already volatile market. one industry innovator, osborne computer, was forced into bankruptcy last month. and apple, the industry's number one had to concede it was now number two, behind ibm. >> all of a sudden, you were in an old-fashioned competitive business in which you really have to be better than the other guy. >> there are 150 micro computer companies and all of them want 50% of the market, and that just isn't going to happen.

this is the newest kind of office in america. and this is the telephone which will ring in it. >> the big thing was the phone in the car, which was like, we are now officially in the modern era. and the first thing you always said was, hey, i'm calling from the car. >> when these things started to pop up in the mid 1980s, the

customers were people who had a business reason for having these things or some super rich dude who just wanted to show off. the big breakthrough idea was the idea of cellular systems. >> it's called cellular because your telephone is tied in to different transmitters, called a cell, and as you travel, the signal goes from cell to cell. >> this is something never ton before. if you don't have one you probably will have one in a decade say the makers. as the price comes down to the range of other high-tech toys. >> there were people who understood even in the early days that being trapped in a car was not freedom. people are fundamentally, naturally, mobile. >> i like to say the technology will go from a phone in the car to a phone in the briefcase to finally a phone in your pocket. >> and this is it. this is a portable cellular phone. you will be able to take this to any american city and call virtually any place in the

world, and its maker, motorola says a smaller version than this will be on the market next year. >> first cell phones look like soviet army field telephones, these huge lunch boxes you hold up to your head. >> this is just the birth of this industry. all inventions start out in a very rough state. whether it's computers or cell phones. it took a while to refine them and make them into something that all of us use. screen. it says please press return. >> the computer has become a national mania, and we're told, miss the electronic boat and you're sunk. >> in the future, everything's probably i going to be computerized. so you're going to have to know how to use computers. >> my son just took a class in school, and he's only 8 years old. i figure i just as soon be as smart as he is. >> for all you hear about friendly, they aren't really except for playing pac man. >> a small snag in computer

marketing is called techno phobia. fear of these bloodless little wizards. manufacturers are trying to overcome it by making them what they call user-friendly. >> isn't that pretty? now what do i do? >> making computers easy enough to use for a beginner, it wasn't always true. people had never encountered this stuff. >> hold down shift and press -- >> so there was a great disconnect between the ambitions of the apples and microsofts and the realities of people trying to use these things for the first time. >> right now, if you buy a computer system and you want to solve one of your problems, we immediately throw a big problem right in the middle of you and

your problem, which is learning how to use the computer. substantial problem to overcome. once you overcome that, it's a phenomenal tool. >> steve jobs thought that a computer should require no technical skill. he thought that it should be capable of generating artistic endeavors and not just number-crunching business things. >> is there anything you'd like to see? >> we'd love to have it in a book right now, you know, about this size, but that's technically impossible. >> steve's like, i want to make a friendly computer, a computer that comes from a different kind of place, that owes its inspiration to people who are thoughtful and creative and human and humane. >> this is an experimental office system of the xerox research center in palo alto, california. >> flowers, my anniversary. i forgot. >> xerox in the 1980s was one of the most exciting companies in america. they had a booming business. it wasn't a computer company. but they opened up this lab called the palo alto research center. >> xerox park was xerox's think tank. they were working on all these crazy, out-there ideas which

included the mouse, overlapping windows, fonts and graphics on a computer screen just to see if they could do did. steve jobs hears about some of this work going on at this lab and wants a look. zblooer. >> steve was very visual and he could see right away the graphic interface was different and more communicative than anything he'd seen before. he knew it was effective. because it was affecting him. >> jobs realizes, this is the future of computing. this is a whole different kind of computer to be built. famously, a computer for the rest of us. >> 1984. the ridley scott commercial for the mcintosh. >> it depicted of the ibm scary leader on the big screen saying that this tiny little company,

apple, is going to destroy the reigning power. >> we shall prevail. >> on january 24, apple computer will introduce mcintosh. [ applause ] >> personal computer war heated up today. apple computer officially unveiled its new mcintosh. >> i'll let my mcintosh speak for itself. >> hello, i'm mcintosh. >> the introduction to mac was an event. steve jobs really did think of the mac as a thing that would change the world. >> apple is betting $100 million and admittedly, its future to make inroads against ibm. >> apple felt like a rock band. they had the same kind of spirit. they seemed to be going up against the man in ibm. >> it is aimed at a largely

untapped market of managers, professionals and students. may make up about 75% of the white collar workforce. less than 5% now use computers, mostly because of their complexity. mcintosh is designed for simplicity. using a palm-sized unit called a mouse. >> it was the first time that a machine was personal, it was simple, it was friendly. >> it took the computer out of the exclusive domain of geeks and nerds and people who had memorized the commands and put it on the desk of everybody. untrained, nontechnical people. >> stores around the country put them on sale today, and analyst say it's a good bet that mcintosh could soon be the biggest apple of the industry's eye. >> it's got its best years ahead of it, eventually i want to be able to carry my mac around with me, walk around with it in my pocket. >> you really like that mac. would you trade it for an ibm? >> are you kiddin'? >> as material sciences progress, more and more circuitry keeps getting put on

smaller and smaller chips, circuit boards. so the closer together elements on a chip are, the faster the motion of signals between them. there's something called moore's law, named for gordon moore. one who worked at intel. they are getting to the place where they can double the computing power of a computing chip every 18 months or so. and this is what really made the power of computers explode in the 1980s, because every 18 months these things were getting twice as good. >> you could get the whole computer on a chip. it was less expensive to manufacture. you had smaller which led to faster which led to cheaper. >> under any other field of consumer products, things get more expensive over time. milk, gasoline, houses, but not technology. one of the striking things about the development of hardware during the 1980s was the fact that it was getting so much powerful so rapidly that

developed a strong tendency on people who were going to buy a computer, should i buy a computer today? no, if i wait six months i can get twice the computer. >> the reason we are attracted, it is a power tool that gives me power that i feel i should have had but nature left me without. and i can now exploit more of my potential with a computer. my name is jeff sheldon,

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if all goes according to plan, columbia, this nation's first space shuttle will fly like a skylark next march. >> if the shuttle program works the way it's designed to, it will be a technological feat marveling that of the trip to the moon. >> the space shuttle had new systems, new technology. fly by wire system. you don't have pulleys and cables, all done by electronics, all the commands go through a computer. >> built as the world's first reusable spaceship, carrying satellites and scientists. >> the most important thing was the digital revolution of faster, more powerful computers with complex software.

>> computers are absolutely necessary to fly a spacecraft like the shuttle. it's the most sophisticated, most complex system that has been put into space yet. >> first time i saw columbia and got close to it, my whole thought was, oh, my god, it's big. and this is going to go 17,500 miles per hour? >> more than half a million people crowded the beaches around cape kennedy this morning to witness firsthand the first space shuttle launch.

>> t-minus 10, 9, 8, 7. 6, 5, 4 -- we've gone for main engine start. >> we added the largest pop bottle rockets on the planet. when you light that puppy, it's going somewhere. >> america's first space shuttle. and the shuttle has cleared the tower. >> columbia, houston, you're going 40. >> i am in the mission control center, but it's only after the fact that you get into orbit that your mouth drops and you calm down and go, wow, that's amazing. >> and the vehicle is performing like a champ, like all of us who have worked so long on it knew that she would. i think we've got something that's really going to mean something to the country and the world. >> the astronauts have about 14 more hours in space before they touch down tomorrow in the mojave desert. >> we were in l.a. and heard the sonic boom. >> that was it, that was it! it's coming down. >> there it is. right on the glide slope columbia.

>> putting that all together in a technology to make it fly and then landing is remarkable. nothing like it had ever been done. >> touch down. >> they're down. >> i said, it worked. the damn thing worked. >> the day will come, according to nasa, that a launch will be so routine that the press and television won't even bother to cover it. >> 30 weeks later, after columbia had been returned to the kennedy space center, astronauts flew columbia into space again. >> the space shuttle was like a large truck that could deploy satellites, and it had a robotic arm so that you can repair and upgrade spacecraft. >> and liftoff of the orbiter challenger and the sixth flight of the space shuttle. >> this was the birth of space travel, not just space missions. we're talking about setting a laboratory. almost like a university in space. it started feeling like anybody could be an astronaut. >> the countdown is under way tonight at cape canaveral towards sunday's launch of the challenger, the liftoff of challenger, it will carry america's first teacher into space. >> still doesn't seem real that i'm going to be able to go with these guys. i'm excited. >> the ice is cleared away, and challenger should be going away very soon. let's go down to the kennedy space center and take a look at challenger sitting on the pad as they continue the countdown. >> the challenger flight was the 25th flight of the space shuttle but an especially notable one,

because hundreds of thousands of school kids around the country were tuned in to the launch. >> it was the first mission i wasn't in the mission control center. i was outside, standing next to the families. >> t-minus 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3,2, 1 -- liftoff of the 25th space shuttle mission, and it has cleared the tower. >> roger roll, challenger. good roll, flight. >> my responsibilities i was spaceflight communicator, i was the one actually communicating with the crew. >> engine throttling up. >> challenger, go with throttle up. >> i was looking at my screen, and i turned and looked. and i did not understand or recognize what i saw. it didn't make sense to me, because it was this fiery mess. >> we've had negative contact. >> there was this angry, red glow. and this wail. from the hearts of the family,

because they knew what i knew. that challenger crew was gone. >> today is a day for mourning and remembering. the future doesn't belong to the faint hearted. it belongs to the brave. the challenger crew was pulling us into the future, and we'll continue to follow them. there will be more shuttle flights and more shuttle crews, and yes, more volunteers, more civilians, more teachers in space. nothing ends here. our hopes and our journeys continue. >> to honor our fallen, we have to find this and fix it and fly it again. >> within a matter of days we knew it was the solid rocket

booster joint that failed. the o-ring was a failed design that led to the loss of the challenger. >> during the 30 months since the accident, there have been hundreds of hardware changes to not only the booster but to the orbiter and the large liquid rocket fuel tank. numerous software changes have been implemented. all had been tested exhaustively.

>> i wanted the opportunity to fly on that first return flight, and i was fortunate, being assigned to that crew. >> three, two, one, zero, and lift off. americans return to space.

androbots in san jose. manufacturers predict in a few years robots like these will liberate us from mundane and time consuming household chores. >> he will guard your house. he will be your companion. he will bring you a soft drink out of the refrigerator. >> you under no circumstances tell the us this is a necessary piece of equipment. this is just a fun item. >> well, telephones or whatever, they always start out as a luxury and then they turn out to be a necessity. >> i had a robotics company that

failed, damn it. but i always believe if you can envision science fiction, we are going to have robots running around the close. >> one of the problems was the engineering mentality, we're going to build it because we can. >> watch out, some items have more functions than you might dream, like this samsung microwave oven tv security system. >> this is the first indash portable car video system. >> for the car? >> for the car, right. >> it's really frustrating and exhilarating to watch the way technology evolved. >> the home miner has a memo pad. and it will beep. >> we are going to spend the

rest of our lives around a telephones set. >> right. >> almost nobody would say we are going to take technology to this point. it's much more chaotic. things rise, ball, bubble and fall back. it is a confluence of developments that are all happening at the same time. >> small and portable are the watch words for the '90s for manufacturers showing their wares in chicago this week. sony has camcorder that fits into your hand and a combination tv/vcr that fits into your purse or briefcase. >> if you have one of these and one of these but you don't have one of these you are missing half the fun of owning a computer. this is a modem, with it you can turn your computer into a window on the world. >> i remember the first time. it was like the first time i had scuba dived. there is this whole world out there. >> we can type a message like hi. it comes down at the bottom and simply press return and it will be broadcast to everybody in the room. >> does anybody say anything meaningful or useful.

>> it is social banter. it is an area for social banter. >> people falling and love and getting married on line. >> exactly. >> i remember the first time, you know, the the modem dialing. here's a chat room with 12 other people typing in real time from wherever they happened to be. blew me away. >> there is tremendous demand. if you look at all the on line services, bulletin board, user groups, various thing, there is literally a hyper culture developing, almost a cult. >> those early information services greatly multiplied the power of what a personal computer was. >> since they joined prodigy, a computer service accessed by service, they do everything from checking the weather map to shopping on line for christmas gets. they even buy and sell stocks. they tell us this is just the

tip of the iceberg of what's to come. >> there were all kind of crazy ideas that really foreshadowed the next explosion of technology. >> a human being drives through aspen by touching the tv screen. >> is it reasonable to assume that our children will have such devices? >> i think it's reasonable to assume you will have all these things in your home in a short amount of time. >> the thing about decades is they don't often actually arrive on time. when it comes to the world of technology it really did. the world fundamentally changed in the 1980s and the world we live is was born in some ways. >> this was the decade in which

the world made our personal lives just that much richer and easier than they had been before, at least those of us who could figure out which button to push. >> we went from invention to innovation. innovation is taking a idea into a product. >> they contents of digital random access mobile portable and cheap started to catch on. >> different ways to run a business. different ways to communicate with your friends. different ways to experience virtual worlds. i don't think we've ever seen a decade like that frankly. >> there was realization this was going to be part of our lives, where our work and entertainment and all that was going to reside. >> i believe that what is happening today is truly a revolution in the deepest sense of the word that 30 or 40 years from now it's going to be hard to recognize the way we live. >> technology can make our life better. and technology means that anything's possible. >> it is a fascinating future, but one which computer scientists themselves are beginning to question. for example, with free flow of information, can someone tap into my home computer and invade my privacy? will electronic mail eventually lead to electronic junk mail? will the stores as we know them today eventually disappear? and don't many shoppers really like squeezing the tomatoes?

will we end up with a cashless paperless society? and do we really want one. these are the kinds of social problems that scientists say society should answer. u.s. officials say another north korean test could happen within days. plus, his first year almost over, we take a look at the presidency of donald j. trump. and new york city preparing for its famous ball drop in times square 2018. right around the corner. are you ready for it? live from cnn world headquarters in atlanta, we want to welcome our viewers here in the united states and all around the world. i'm george howell. "cnn newsroom" starts right now.