Personal hovercraft. Jet-propelled backpacks. Robots that automatically prepare your meals and clean up afterwards. And everyone's favorite - weekend junkets to the orbting Hilton space station. Back in the optimistic 1950s, technology writers were confident that by the 21st century, such things would be a part of daily life.
The catch phrase "flat TV" has been circulating for years, mainly to describe the many flat-panel plasma and LCD sets that have swamped the market. But with an average cabinet depth of 3 to 5 inches, can those TVs really be called flat? To find a truly flat display, you need to check out OLED (Organic Light-Emitting Diode).
I trudged through booth after booth, aisle after aisle, mile after mile, becoming increasingly depressed. The Consumer Electronics Show - held mainly in vast, warehouse-size buildings - was like an inventory manager's nightmare. Some idiot had leaned on the "TV" button and unwittingly ordered up a zillion screens.
"The most interesting thing in life is change." So says Cy Curnin, singer of the perpetually shape-shifting synth-rockers the Fixx, in discussing both his creative (and personal) wanderlust and the impetus behind his second solo offering, The Returning Sun (Cy Curnin/Squirrels Eat Nuts; available at cdbaby.com).
<IMG SRC="/images/archivesart/404walkhard.jpg" WIDTH=200 BORDER=0 ALIGN=RIGHT>Life wasn't easy for Dewey Cox, but he overcame the obstacles placed before him with music that transformed a country boy into the greatest American rock star who <i>never</i> lived.
