1986 Science fiction allows an author to project current reality into a future world that does not exist yet. Consider our world today. We are at the start of an information age. Year after year these companies grow larger and branch out into new areas. Population dynamics should give us some clue.
Computer power increases even faster than the multinational companies grow.
A new generation of computers is being born. These systems are parallel processors. In ten years we may see computer systems that are composed of millions of processors. Coupled with the information revolution has been a quieter revolution in biology. In the last ten years scientist have been able to synthesize complex hormones like insulin that in the past could only be obtained from animal sources.