The chief executive of Deutsche Telekom, Ron Sommer, stepped up his resistance to efforts to oust him today, even as speculation grew about potential successors.

Mr. Sommer's future is expected to be decided on Tuesday at a meeting here of the company's 20-member supervisory board.

In a letter published as a full-page advertisement in German newspapers today, Deutsche Telekom said that any change in its strategy "would not be in the interest of the shareholders, customers, Germany as a business location and certainly not in the interest of our employees."

"Those who don't invest in the future won't have one," the advertisement said.

It is estimated that there are over two billion Web pages, and thousands of newsgroups and forums, on the Internet - covering virtually every topic imaginable. However, many users find that searching the Internet can be a time consuming and tedious process.

This has driven the development of improved search and information retrieval systems. However, we now need ... to present the user only with the information they need, rather than a large set of relevant documents to read.

... community Web sites could help ... just by adopting the current generation of knowledge management systems ...

Metadata has useful role ... but it has limitations ... [XML is a] key opportunity ... good user-friendly, and "intelligent", tools will be critical ...

The success of Internet based knowledge management, and the Semantic Web, will require the development and integration of various data standards, ontology definitions, and knowledge management and agent technologies. It will take a concerted and significant effort to get there. The likely longer-term benefits are much more effective Internet searches and smart information extraction services, which present the user with concise relevant extracts.

The Information Revolution is changing the world in myriad ways. But is it a change for the better? Will advances in computer technology strengthen democratic values or destroy them? Enhance personal freedom or enslave us? Contribute to the world's problems or help solve them?

Technomanifestos sets out to answer these questions by investigating the primary sources -- the seminal but seldom-read texts that form the philosophical foundation of the Digital Age. From artificial intelligence to nanotechnology, cybernetics to the World Wide Web, it charts a fascinating course through the history of ideas in the latter half of the twentieth century.

A science writer with a refreshingly humanistic point of view, Adam Brate brings his subject to life, exploring the professional triumphs and tragedies of such visionaries as Norbert Wiener, Doug Engelbart, Ted Nelson, Richard Stallman, and K. Eric Drexler. Far from being computer geeks, they emerge as a lively group of radical thinkers, deeply committed to civil liberties, personal empowerment, and participatory democracy.

With a sure hand and an eye for the telling detail, Brate illuminates the intersections of technology and society, computers and culture, information and meaning. And he deftly places technological advances into broader social and political contexts, tracing their impact on work, education, media, and law.

About 500,000 people have lost their jobs. Dozens of companies have gone bankrupt. As much as half a trillion dollars in investments have evaporated. An accounting scandal threatens to bring down WorldCom Inc. and federal authorities are investigating the books of other former highfliers.

There is another casualty of the implosion of the telecommunications industry: a grand vision of the future.

At least 63 telecommunications companies have landed in bankruptcy since 2000, ... [but] the most expensive failures may still be ahead.

Could you try to explain your big idea?

What was it like [to spend a decade on this]?

Do you have a follow-up project planned?

Was it a burden being a child prodigy?

Do you think people will expand on your ideas? How does that make you feel?

Nissan has, with the 350Z, one burbling, stiff, balanced, rear-wheel drive, high-powered, true-to-its-roots sports car.

Already, more than 7,000 people have placed orders for the 350Z. Its engine and exhaust deliver a basso burbling note, acceleration is pin-you-in-your-seat quick from the get-go.

When Fran Lebowitz cracked, at the awards ceremony of the Council of Fashion Designers of America last month, that "homage is French for stealing," her remark got a laugh but also some yawns.

That Ms. Lebowitz's quip itself had a shopworn ring might be expected at a time when nearly every aspect of the culture somehow benefits from re-use. The idea is essential to post-modernism. In music it's called sampling. In high culture circles, where it's known as appropriation, it's ancient history.

It was two decades ago when the art critic Craig Wright observed that appropriation, accumulation, hybridization and other "diverse strategies" had come to characterize "much of the art of the present and distinguish it from its predecessors."

Now, those diverse strategies have become so institutionalized that when Moby turned Alan Lomax's 1930's tapes of Southern spirituals into a best-selling album of ambient music, he won Grammys and made millions. When Paul Thomas Anderson channeled Robert Altman's oeuvre, he was awarded the Palme D'Or at Cannes. When Sherrie Levine made stroke-for-stroke copies of watercolors by Mondrian, postdoctoral students lined up to write dissertations on her attenuated ironies.

... Half of fashion, in fact, seems to owe its professional existence to a single truism: one is as original as the obscurity of one's source.

But isn't this as it should be?

What is originality, anyhow? In spite of the current embrace of sampling and appropriation, "we persist as a culture in our commitment to the ideal of originality. The artist who admits to working in the manner of another artist will likely stand accused of being second rate." Wouldn't it be better to scrap the originality fetish and treat the creative act as "a combination of copyings, various and multiform"?

Some people see life as a contest. Others don't, especially when they're behind the wheel of an automobile. There, they seek enjoyment -- the happy passage of time and space. They want the car to be a part of that happiness, not the essential cause of it.