for 2 October 1996. Updated every WEDNESDAY.

EVERYTHING SMARTS Filler Is Your Key to Understanding the Future! [Source: Fast Company, 9/96] Bill Miller, Head of Research and Development, Steelcase: "Everything will be smart. Nicholas Negroponte, from MIT, said in his book Being Digital that atoms are over, it's all bits now, because bits are smart and atoms aren't. But that's not true. Are atoms smart? What's the smartest atom? DNA, which created life! The right metaphor is, everything is smart." "There will be smart furniture. Envision a table that knows who you are, that can talk to you, give you directions." "Why do objects have to be dumb?" "The answer is in the furniture."

	TREND O' THE YEAR: PUBLIC BEATDOWNS Immoral Media Whore... Mark DeCarlo, former host of Studs, speaking in an AOL chat: "Kathie Lee Gifford is a hypocritical, bible-beating, insincere media whore. She invited me on her show specifically to insult me. She said I was propagating rampant immorality in America. And then the very next week she was kissing Hugh Grant's ass. So who's immoral there?" [Entertainment Weekly, 9/27/96] Immoral Media Hitler... "Today and others, [Ted] Turner was said to have compared [Rupert] Murdoch to the "late Fuhrer" and accused him of using his New York Post to smear Time Warner." [AP Newswire, 9/27/96] Suddenly Losin'... "What did a mediocrity like Brooke Shields ever do to deserve her own series, let alone network TV's best time spot this fall?... 'Suddenly Susan' is one of the biggest bombs ever detonated outside the Nevada test range." [San Francisco Examiner, 9/19/96] Suddenly Bruisin'... Louis Rossetto, CEO of Wired Ventures, on Netizen TV: "[I]t's true that we fired the first host (of course, the first producer's pick), because he was frankly an asshole, apparently had never read the column in the magazine or seen the Web site, was insulting to everyone he came into contact with on the set..." [Netizen Threads, 9/20/96]

	SERVICE-ORIENTED BROADS? James Ledbetter: "When the staff [of New York] was told of Kurt Andersen's forced exit, [K-III Executive V.P. Harry] McQuillen apparently said something about making the magazine 'broader and more service-oriented' - a code that one writer translates as 'stupider and more boring.'" [The Village Voice, 9/10/96] STUPID VS. BORING

MAYBE HE'S NOT ON CRACK! Jon Katz on Suck: "They constantly complain about the self-referential nature of the Web, yet they seem to define it." [Netizen Threads, 9/25/96]

words Polly Esther pictures Terry Colon