OK, it's 2001, and we don't have jet-packs or floating cars yet. Not to mention household robots. So what are all those scientists up to, anyway? In our technology issue, our own Mike Gibson reports on two local manifestations of the cutting edge: the nascent collaboration of UT and Battelle at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (learn what "teraflop" means!), and the ever-changing multi-disciplinary field of web design (learn what "web design" means!). And no, you don't need your calculator.

Hepatitis C doesn't get as much press as HIV, but the debilitating disease is showing up more and more often in segments of the population here and nationally. John Sewell reports on its dangerous creep and difficult treatments. Plus: Seven Days, Meet your City, and Knoxville Found.

Joe Sullivan takes aim at Victor Ashe's scattershot downtown planning in Insights, Ta Kisha Fitzgerald makes a case for attorney affirmative action in Color Conscious, and Jack Neely starts the new year by finishing up some old business in Secret History.

Remember the old days when the Internet was going to make us all rich, famous, and thin? Like, say, late1999? Angie Vicars does. In an exclusive look inside the digital wonder that is iPIX, she takes us back to those halcyon months (or weeks, at least), when it seemed all you needed for your first million was a college degree and a little bit of HTML.

John Sewell gets some talkin' blues from neo-traditional mojo man Keb' Mo' in the Music Feature. Eye on the Scene clicks on the latest local MP3 releases. Heather Joyner is awed by the latest edition of the Knoxville Museum of Art's Beyond the Frame exhibit, featuring Pam Longobardi and Catherine McCarthy, in Artbeat. Adrienne Martini sees the virtues of genre in contemplating recent books by "speculative fiction" writer Dan Simmons in Pulp. C.A. Smith shows you what it's like to really work for a living in Tire Shop in Yikes!.

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