The skeptic in me wonders whether we will all one day be tracked around the clock by infrared, and whether the details of our wanderings will be made available to the marketing department at Wal-Mart. I spoke with share some of my dread. But they are also hopeful, with Reed, that smart technology will afford old people new freedoms. You can't say that technology is purely good or purely bad. Currently we don't have any philosophers who are specifically addressing that question.
Health care needs to develop a new ethical analysis, a new base.
In the meantime, Harold Taylor will remain at Oatfield, sleeping an average of 9.65 hours a night and thoroughly enjoying life. When I stepped into his living room late in the afternoon and found him tipped back in his easy chair, Taylor told me that Oatfield was by far the best of the four managed-care facilities he has inhabited. Illustration by Stan Fellows. All rights reserved.