What did Jim Cantalupo promise at a Wall Street meeting on April 7?

"The world has changed. Our customers have changed. We have to change, too. " Brave words from Jim Cantalupo, chairman and chief executive of McDonald’s for the previous 100 days, who promised investors at a Wall Street meeting on April 7 that the world’s biggest fast-food chain no longer wanted to be bigger than everybody else, just better.

Email captures the essence of life at the close of the 20th century with an authority that few other products of digital technology can claim. Email, ultimately, is a fragile thing, easy to forge, easy to corrupt, easy to destroy. A few weeks ago, a co-worker of mine accidentally and irretrievably wiped out 1,500 of his own saved messages. For a person who conducts most of his life online, such a digital tragedy is akin to erasing part of his own memory. Suddenly, nothing is left. He has lost himself as well as his links with others.