Maria Wilhelm, People magazine's editor of new media projects, sounds only slightly defensive when she says, "I covered the Gulf War in Kuwait and the beginnings of the Yugoslavian breakup, and pop culture is absolutely as important as wars. Absolutely. It's a common language and provides the ability to have shared experiences."
Reliving those shared experiences is likely to be lucrative for both People and Voyager, which co-produced the People: 20 Years of Pop Culture CD-ROM. Possibly the first truly mass-market, general-interest CD-ROM, it features every cover and cover story - 1,038 in all - from the first two decades of People magazine. It's also got morphs of Michael Jackson's increasingly inhuman facial tweakages, juicy tidbits from photographers on stars who acted like assholes, and more Princess Di than you can shake a scepter at.
Depending on your point of view, it's either a dream come true or a sign of the impending apocalypse. US$29.95. Voyager: +1 (914) 591 5500.
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