A minor tragedy was played out in Chicago last week when the once-mighty National Computer Conference exhibition – it used to be the computer industry equivalent of the Motor Show, the Boat Show and the Ideal Home Exhibition – huddled into a tiny corner of the vast echoing McCormick Center: a mere 15,000 people are thought to have shown up, but then there were only 147 companies exhibiting, and according to Computer Systems News, 50 of those were hangers on – magazines, consultants, research outfits; just to rub salt into the dripping wounds, among the manufacturers was a vendor of glass cleaning fluid, another selling low-tech bookmarks – and, whisper it, a third selling electric massagers.
