FPS Practice Problem - Body Enhancement

The following passage was devised by the Future Problem Solvers organisation for competitors to practice upon in 2008.

My daughter will receive her first programmable tttoo today The baby, Daylin Ndjeka Anziani, born at 12.45am on April 15, 2039 received her genetic tattoos at birth. Using her own DNA, genetic cell manipulation marked her forhead, brow and jaw. As a teenager, a work tattoo will be applied to her cheek revealing her aptitude and talents. Her generation marks the new face of the human race, required for all citizens of the Continental Coalition born after 2029.

The indigo petroglyphs marking her forhead reveal her family rank and position. As in earlier times, her tattoos tell the world "I am Durinazzi". Her birth status is clearly noted on her jaw and pictographs on the left and right side share her family background. She hardly even squirmed as the tattoos were applied. In fact, I think she liked the procedure. From birth, her identification is secure and ancestry forever noted.

Now that she is six months old, I ready her for the appoinntment at Durinazzi City Hospital. I am nervous about the programmable tattoos Tattoo-medics are not required by law, but I am convinced this is the right choice for my daughter. After the overwhelming success of RFID (radio frequency identification) with animals and the medical breakthrough in Smart Tattoos with diabetes and health maintenance, I know that programmable tattoos are the next step for safety and protection.

Her paediatrician, geneticist and nano-bio-technicians assure me that the procedure is painless with few complications. Tattoo-medics use polyethylene-glycol beads coated with fluorescent molecules in a programmable implant that is injected jyst under the skin. The beads are larger than ink modules, so they float in the fluid between the cells and cannot be absorbed. The digital ink is visible through a translucent layer of skin. The beads have the ability to rearrange themselves into preset words, numbers, and animations that can display bio-sensing readouts monitoring pulse, body temperature, and signals frm the nervous and circulatory systems.

Tattooed warnings inform parents of the need for medical intervention due to infection or illness. For typical childhood diseases, dispensing devices embedded in the Tattoo-medic follow the fuel-injected principle to deliver vaccinations wheen required and medicine if the molecules sense a fever or presence of harmful vireses or bacteria. The positive benefits of Tattoo-medics, constant health monitoring designed with her individual DNA far outweigh any possible negatives.

Technological innovations with the programmable tattoos will continue to advance. Soon I will have to decide if I want to be able to know where she is and monitor her movements through tattoos with pico-speakers allowing me to speak to her through a tattoo. Eventually, using Wi-Fi mapping, she will be able to choose amazing tattoos that can record, recall, and redisplay on command stored emotional memories that she can extract and watch. Networked with WPAs (Wireless Personal Area Networks), these implants will create a broadband connection between humans and machines, taking the idea of a personal computer to a whole new level.

Programmable tattoos provde safe monitoring for health and identification. These "identity cards" help every parent rest a little easier. The Continental Coalition and world medical associations have come together to support and regulat these procedures. However, some countries in each of the continents resist the innovations citing loss of civil liberties and unknown, long term negative effects. These countries are refused membership in the Continental Coalition unless they comply.

The Continental Coalition, working in the best interests of all humankind, requests that you use the FPS model to generate challenges the Coalition faces, select an underlying problem, and produce solution ides for the use of these tattoos.

Political Problem Solving

Many of the problems that Australia faces today are complex and multifaceted. They may have technological and engineering aspects to their solutions, but in almost all cases these solutions require political will and the intervention of government in some form or other (eg: through legislation, through public funding, through coordination of government agencies, etc).

Your task is to identify a problem (or multiple connected problems) and devise a political solution to this problem. You need to establish a political party and outline it's policy measures that will tackle the problem you identify.

The process of dealing with this political issue has six steps:

1. Identify problems faced by Australian society and become familiar with an outline (general characteristics) of these problems. From these identify between 1 and 3 problems that you believe to be the most serious threat to Australian society in the coming decades.
2. Identify the underlying problem. Here you are identifying the causes of the problem in section 1. You should also explain what you want to do and why you want it to be done.
3. Brainstorm alternative solutions. This will require further investigation into the problem. In step 2 you offered a solution based on very little research and understanding. Now you need to look into the problem more deeply and identify a wide variety of solutions. Remember, your problem is complex and may require several steps and/or several components working in concert to solve. You will need 16 alternative solutions.
   
4. Now that you have investigated a range of solutions, you must determine which are the most effective. But first, determine the criteria for evaluating alternative solutions.
5. From your list of solutions, select 8 solutions that you think have the most potential. Scale these solutions on a scale from 1 (poorest) to 8 (best).
6. Start a political party and develop a policy response to the problem(s) you identified in steps 1 & 2. Your political party must have a name, a demographic of voters that it is seeking to appeal to (primarily), and a set of policies aimed at solving these political problems. Some consideration must also be given to marketing these policies to the electorate in order to persuade them to vote for your party.

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