A large collection of stories and anecdotes about clueless computer users. It's a baffling phenomenon that in today's society an individual, who might in other circumstances be considered smart and wise, can sit down in front of a computer screen and instantly lose every last shred of common sense he ever possessed.

I have a soft spot for people who say things like "The computer revolution hasn't started yet...we're not even close to what we should have." I'm prone to agree. But when the speaker is Alan Kay, who invented a huge proportion of what we do have today, I enthusiastically grant him credence.

I see two trends in progress. In one, we're continuing movement towards application-independent data storage. In the other, we're witnessing a proliferation of devices that each store the same data in a unique and incompatible way. I believe it's a time to watch developments carefully, and to be ready to move our advocacy efforts to a new arena.