You could use your car to transport you in a round of golf, but why the hell would you? I think this is the sort of statement we'll soon make about so many "computing" activities that don't require typing. "Consuming" information via the Web, something most of us do daily now, does not require a full keyboard. Rather, we're hindered by a full-sized computer when it comes to the consumption of information like text because it's not natural to read one long electronic column of words framed by flashy ads and other noise.

Those that think there is no room between the handheld phone and a full sized computer probably descend from those who thought the automobile was worthless because it couldn't go everywhere a horse could.

Technology just changes things, and the big breakthroughs always look good in hindsight, not so much because of the needs they met at their inception, but because of the way they changed our approach to life.

There were no paved roads when the first automobile set out; no nighttime football games when the lightbulb debuted; no Facebook when the first computers were networked. None of these things, which we take for granted today, were even imaginable at the time their enabling technologies were born.

I think we're now in a time when "technology" is beginning to feel even more natural and taken-for-granted. This is a good thing because the more natural it feels, the more useful it is, and the more it can allow people to be people.