When the radio was first developed, it promised to become a great new tool for worldwide communication. These days radio is mostly used for entertainment.
Television was promoted as a revolutionary method to communicate news and information around the globe. Now it is routinely condemned for its mindless entertainment content. Now it would seem that computers are headed down the same road.

This story from the Miami Herald is but one I’ve read lately regarding the future of computing. It would seem industry is determined to sell us on the idea of the computer as the entertainment center of the home. Is this going to be a wonderful new world in which our video recorder has a brain of its own, or will our insatiable desire to turn every promising communications technology into a means of placating the masses through shallow entertainment turn the personal PC into another TiVo clone? Is entertainment the best use we can come up with for this potentially powerful device?