Today, the prevalence of desktop computers is a given.  Major corporations are offering them as an employee benefit, socially aware leaders worry about the "digital divide," and there is a hot new market for home networks.  We now count computers among the very necessities of 21st Century life.  It seems that only the most stuanch luddites would suggest that we are dealing with a multi-billion dollar fad.  Even so, that may be the case.

We have arrived at the point where we must choose not only the nature of upcoming information / communications technology but its impact on our very way of life.  Over the next couple years, the fate of desktop computing will be determined.  We will decide whether to continue actualizing its full potential or leave it behind as merely a transitional technology.  The former choice will give us continued access to a flexible, ever improving vehicle for creative expression and learning.
 
The technology involved in the latter choice will make for a more convenient and efficient world, but it will not offer much room for individuality and thoughtful interaction.  It will depend almost exclusively on simple designated appliances which will allow us to personalize the information we are given, but not allow much latitude for initiative or creativity.  Activities such as email, gaming, stock trading, banking, shopping, listening to music, and even watching videos will be increasingly simple, convenient, and accessible.  We can expect a plethora of pervasive computing devices that will range from smart kitchen appliances, personal climate controls, and geographic positioning devices to digital fish locators and automated triage nurses.  However, activities that engage us as creative agents will be more restricted.  A new technology-based digital divide will stand between most of us and the fast emerging possibilities for producing our own movies, composing music, making visual art, designing gardens, creating new clothing fashions, and a practically infinite number of other personally fulfilling endeavors.

Unfortunately, opportunity to shape our "brave new technology" was taken away from us almost before we knew we had it.  Now it is in the hands of lawyers, judges, and legislators.  The much celebrated free market can bring us the greatest possible good only if it is allowed to do so.  It must not be restricted by either unjustified public regulation or by the bad actions of a private monopolist.

In the current controversy between Microsoft and the Federal Justice Department, those of 17 states, various other IT companies, and many frustrated product users, I must reluctantly favor governmental action.  I have little interest in whether one, two, or three daughter companies are created.  Any of these outcomes are OK with me.  What I really want is to be assured that the business practices of whatever emerges will be closely scrutinized well into the future.  In this case, as in the cases of Standard Oil, U.S. Steel, AT&T, and arguably, IBM, Adam Smith's "invisible hand" can be untied only by an extraordinary intervention.  In addition to restoring responsiveness, quality, innovation, and competitiveness to the current software market, such an intervention can be a warning to other corporations whose ethics might have been tainted by the self-centered relativism of the 1970s and the pure opportunism of the 1980s.

Even though we, the mere consumers and end-users, have been by passed in this controversy, we have a real stake in its outcome.  It may have such an impact on our day-to-day lives that we may want to bear it in mind when making decisions in areas as diverse as buying computer equipment and contributing to political candidates.

Quite arguably, Microsoft helped forward the move to personal computing a decade ago.  Apple had dropped the ball by its early-on failure to aggressively license its superior operating system and collaborate with clone makers.  It excelled at innovative design and technology.  It definitely did not excel at marketing the resulting products.  For that we had to turn to Microsoft, a company that has and probably always will be culturally incapable of any true design innovation.  It was, however, superb at scavenging from others and, by default, force-feeding what it turned up to the consuming  public.  We soon had little alternative but to accept and learn to live with the warmed-over design embodied in its Windows Operating System.

Through a mix of luck and some genuine marketing genius, Microsoft successfully sold us "prime-grade" sizzle masking "canner-and-cutter grade" steak.  The complicated solutions it provided for relatively simple problems caused many users to regard computers with a familiar mix of awe, fear, and hatred.  Although routine tasks were given an extra aura of mystery and challenge, workers still struggled to accomplish them, while some early-90s corporate managers were gratified to find that they were still in control:  "After all, those young upstarts who work for us should pay their dues before taking over."  Computing, they seemed to think, should not be fun.  Windows should not be discounted as a useful tool for corporate hazing and hierarchy maintenance.

Regardless of the psychology and sociology involved, a desktop monopoly came into being.  Such a state is not intrinsically bad.  In fact, at times, monopolies can be even convenient.  (The benevolence of Ma Bell saved us from the annoyance of competitive dinner-time telemarketing.  Yet, if she had continued to hold unchallenged sway, the internet and wireless communications with which we are familiar today would not have been economically feasible.)  Monopolies become evil only when their power is abused.

Unfortunately, abuse has been unavoidable in the case of Microsoft.  Its pathological inability to innovate has doomed its products to perpetual adequacy without the possibility of excellence.  To survive, it has had to remove its more capable competitors from the field.  It has been required to engage in forced bundling, exclusive agreements, manipulated incompatibilities, and absolutely any other practice that might help it hold a market position that has never been based on quality.

Ultimately, our very robust free market will overwhelm any false barriers that at least this monopolist can erect.  It will do so with or without government intervention.  However, we stand to lose much if the market is left to cleanse itself.  Rather than dissipate resources in a pointless struggle with Microsoft, the industry will simply continue its current strategy of abandoning the desktop and focusing its still very considerable innovative energy on easy-to-use designated devices.

A move from the desktop to the purse or pocket may bring us considerable comfort and even more  convenience, but there will be some very unnecessary losses.  A key educational tool will be needlessly limited.  A valuable channel for personal creativity and group sharing will have essentially passed from the scene.  The internet will become even more dominated by commerce, and we will risk losing a potentially valuable tool for civic participation.