gates/otellini on pc's - ok, but...

...so the wintel heads got together to crank out a may 15 wall street journal commentary to object to other recent journal pieces that may have suggested the end of the pc era, or the advent of the so-called "post-pc era." link to their commentary: WSJ.com - End of the PC Era? Hardly!

they make some good points. doubtless, the pc is here to stay. but, the suggestion (paraphrased from the commentary's conclusion) that any time you want to share pictures, download music, synchronize devices or watch lost "you sit down at your pc, of course" conjures an image of heads deeply sunk into a trough of pc koolaid.

no doubt, our lives are truly richer for the pc, even more so since the advent of the commercial internet. but the picture painted in the linked commentary is incomplete - the landscape is actually far more vast. sure (as they write), the traditional fixed or portable pc and related internet penetration rates may indeed be poised to surpass the 1 billion mark next year, but what about the already more than two billion mobile subscribers worldwide who are also either already attached or have the potential to attach to the web today?

i s'pose it's all just semantics. after all, what used to be called mobile phones are rapidly becoming richly-functional handheld computers in their own right. and, such devices - so very, very versatile - liberate us in ways that the pc and the array of peripherals mentioned in the gates/otellini commentary have only hinted at. the bottom line is: the device in your hand or pocket at the moment you need it is the device most valuable to you - all the more so when that device has an always-on broadband wireless connection and the ability to create, share and/or consume content ranging from images to video to music to blogs to whatever...and beyond.

the commentary did have it right in citing andy grove's reference to the pc as the ultimate darwinian device. the evolution of computing is indeed darwinian - mobility is the next stage. sure, "sitting down at your pc" is always an option. but it's just that, another option - with obvious limitations in terms of time and space.

later.