Document text
New year is reason to project, reflect By Vicki Guarino of the Mail Tribune A New Year, and a new millennium at long last. Just another day? Well, sure. "But," said Jackson County Commissioner Sue Kupillas in the waning hours of 1999, "this is a time of transition and a time to reflect." For Kupillas, that reflection centered on the technological developments in communications and the effects they have on human and community relationships. People can reach bigger and wider audiences faster now than ever before. Access to the Internet "soap box" endows users with a powerful ability to influence and re-shape people and events. In that, Kupillas sees opportunity for great good and great harm; for people to be drawn apart to the fringes, or together in the center. "I don't know how to do this, but it is something we are going to have to think about," she said. "It may seem boring, but we need to pay more attention to the center." As technology evolves, she predicts, the humanity of our interactions will endure. "Our families, our neighbors, our communities -- those things are still going to be important; to be able to help people." Helping or harming one another is becoming a surprisingly complicated matter, however, when the technology relates to medicine and biomedical advances, says county public health officer David Gilmour, citing access to genetic engineering as an example. The need and challenge now, said Gilmour, is for the mechanisms to guide the process of providing access to that technology and medical care. "Hopefully, within the next couple of centuries, our social institutions will be able to keep up with the technological changes. I can see that as being a problem." With chief responsibilities for the county's largest high school on his shoulders, North Medford High School Principal Don Lacey says his big concern is keeping kids in school. "The young today have fantastic futures in front of them," said Lacey. "They are going to live to be 100 years old. "Diseases today will not be diseases in the future." And education will only become more important. The personal and social loss for youngsters who drop out of high school will grow deeper. "The loss for them is a loss for all of us," Lacey said. "We are robbing ourselves. Our young people are going to bring the future to us." As an educator thinks about education at this time of reflection, the county' chief law enforcement officer, Mark Huddleston, thinks about crime. And he, too, thinks about children. Huddleston looks back on community accomplishments of the past decade or so in handling of the most helpless of victims -- abused children -- and sees hope for safer families and communities. The help now provided through treatment can ease suffering and trauma for a lifetime. Today, by Lacy's measure, that's a century of anguish or well being. "We really do save kids from real trauma," Huddleston said. State Sen. Lenn Hannon looks at technological and social gains of the past and says he is optimistic about the future. He sees a society that can ease suffering and help people contribute. "I think this is an exciting time to be alive," Hannon said. "I'm excited and optimistic for what the future holds." Mail Tribune Copyright � The Mail Tribune 2000, Medford, Oregon USA