The reason why Apple computers have worked so well over time is that, unlike Microsoft, they don't bend over backward to be compatible with every piece of hardware or software in the digital universe. To code or create for Apple, you follow Apple's rules. If you're even allowed to.

Digital technology is both arousing and distancing. We don't look at the users on the other side as people. They aren't - they're just usernames, Facebook photos and Twitter handles.

The cloud is still really just a bunch of servers, owned by someone or something, whose decisions and competence must be trusted. This applies to everything from Google Docs to Gmail: Putting our data out there really means putting it 'out there.'

Mobile notifications put people in a state of perpetual emergency interruption - similar to what 911 operators and air traffic controllers experienced back in the '70s and '80s.

As Apple continues to release new styles of netbooks, laptops, and even desktops with untold movie-watching and game-playing capabilities, I wouldn't be surprised to see the iPhone operating system running on them - and the Macintosh eventually becoming a thing of the past.

Our technologies become more complex while we become more simple. They learn about us while we come to know less and less about them. No one person can understand everything going on in an iPhone, much less pervasive systems.

For Google, the problem with being a free, abundant, and rather infinite set of services is that it's hard to create much of a stir about anything. There are so many major software service options under the 'more' menu on the Gmail page that they've had to go and add a final item called 'even more.'