One of the top business stories of the past week was I.B.M.’s accouncement that in 2008 it would freeze pension benefits for its U.S. employees, and offer no pension at all – just a 401(k) plan – to those joining the company from that point on.

Déjà vu all over again? Sadly, yes.

For several years now, any number of companies have iced their existing pension plans – Hewlett-Packard, Verizon, Sears, to name a few– while others have eliminated their plans outright, and not with a whisper but a bang. Last year, United Airlines’ plan — nearly $10 billion in the red, and covering well over 100,000 employees — crashed and burned, making it the biggest pension default in U.S. history. Last year overall, more than seventy of the nation’s 1,000 largest companies froze or altogether ditched their plans, according to consulting firm Watson Wyatt Worldwide.

So, why the big deal over I.B.M.?

Two reasons, one symbolic, the other sobering.

Big Blue, of course, is the iconic Twentieth Century company, having ushered the world into the computer age through countless innovations in chip technology and information handling. That’s the symbolic part.

The sobering part is that I.B.M. is no wounded department-store chain, or some bizarrely named, amalgamated phone company built on the ashes of the old Baby Bells. I.B.M. – no matter that Bill Gates fleeced it when he was still but a recent college dropout – is today financially solid. But, as The New York Times pointed out, its pension freeze underscores how even healthy companies “no longer want to bear the risk or the expense of providing a firm promise of a lifetime pension.”

That risk falls to you and me, as I explain throughout THE NUMBER, even though no one ever bothered to put out a formal press release so informing us. That the old retirement support systems are dead or dying, and that we’re now (help!) firmly in control of our destiny are, in fact, two of the six Eisenberg Uncertainty Principles defined in the book.

Those Uncertainty Principles are beginning to get an airing now that THE NUMBER is finally available in the stores. Articles about the book, and about the ups and downs about the Old and New Rest of Your Life, are to be found in current issues of TIME, NEWSWEEK, and BUSINESS WEEK.

And, next week, on Wednesday and Thursday mornings, January 11th and 12th, I’ll be popping up on the CBS Early Show, no doubt to talk a bit more about how, when it comes to corporate pensions and the brave new world of self-presevation, baby, it’s cold outside.