AT lunch on Thursday I sat next to a man who told me proudly that he was computer illiterate. ''I hope I can stay that way,'' he said. Fat chance. Digital fugitives
face extinctionThe geeks who are trying to exterminate the ''year 2000 bug'' point out that computer chips are now everywhere -- in cars, fax machines, telephones, wrist watches, microwave ovens, coffee makers...any gadget that plugs into the wall or has a battery and is more sophisticated than a flashlight probably includes a computer. Lots of them, we're told, are likely to croak on Jan. 1, 2000.
Computers have long populated the outer offices of executive suites, but until recently they weren't seen in the inner sanctums.
Adm. Hyman Rickover, the imperious Father of the Nuclear Navy, once addressed a meeting of the American Society of Newspaper Editors. Someone asked him how he dealt with stress. ''Stress?'' He raised his eyebrows. ''I don't deal with stress. I give it to other people.''
That's what CEOs and top-line executives once did with computers -- they gave them to other people. Of course, that was in the good old days before e-mail from corporate headquarters became a fact of life.
At the new CompUSA ''superstore'' on Ala Moana, modems, hard-drives, CD-ROMs and the latest software are stacked like oranges in a grocery produce department. If it succeeds, by the year 2000 computer illiterates might be as hard to find in Hawaii as sandalwood.
John Flanagan is editor and publisher of the Star-Bulletin.
To reach him call 525-8612, fax to 523-8509, send
e-mail to publisher@starbulletin.com or write to
P.O. Box 3080, Honolulu, Hawaii 96802.