The elite group of educators, scientists and politicos who make up the World Future Society have looked ahead, and they don’t like what they see, What they see, you see, is themselves growing old and cashing in their membership cards.
So when the society’s 1,000 members gather in Chicago later this week for their annual meeting, the featured topic will be “Reversing Human Aging.” Featured will be a discussion by Michigan State University’s aptly named Michael Fossel on ways “of adding 50 to 60 years to the average human lifespan.”
WORDIMPERFECT
THIS COREL ISN’T OK
They’re hanging cybercrepe in Orem, Utah, where Canadian computer giant Corel Corp. has broken the news that it will fire 530 locals and shut down the WordPerfect operation there. WordPerfect, another victim of Bill Gates’ binary bulldozer, was the first decent word processing program to hit the scene. Today’s computer revolution would never have happened without all the people who bought early PCs when about all they could do with them was process words.
Corel, which bought WordPerfect in 1996 from Utah’s Novell Inc., is a very distant third behind Microsoft Corp. and IBM in word processor sales, but vows to continue developing WordPerfect Suite in the land of Moosehead and Maple Leafs.
Novell responded by dumping 10 million shares of Corel stock, which analysts viewed as retaliation in the wake of past Corel promises to keep WordPerfect going for hundreds of thousands of users who consider it something of a cult classic.
TODAY THE WEB…
…TOMORROW THE WORLD WIDE
Just when it looked like Gates couldn’t get any richer, his Microsoft Internet Explorer Web software has caught on big-time, according to a new survey by the anti-Microsoft group NetAction, which notes glumly that not a single one of America’s major Internet service providers offer the competing Netscape browser as an option.
America Online, Internet MCI, the Microsoft Network and CompuServe, accounting for combined subscribers exceeding 20 million, have signed deals to make Microsoft’s browser the only one they distribute to customers.
ANOTHER WIN-WIN SITUATION
WINDOWS 98 SELLS LIKE ’95
Will Bill’s good news never stop? Contrary to legions of naysayers who grouse that Windows 98 is little more than a minor tune-up for Windows 95, American consumers are sweeping ’98 off the shelves almost as quickly as they did for the massively hyped debut of Windows 95.
PC Data, the Virginia-based research house, recorded sales exceeding 500,000 boxes of the $90 Windows 98 upgrade in the three days following its June 25 launch. That almost exactly matched sales of Windows 95 in the same period three years ago.
