As tools for everyday life, today's PCs are hopelessly complex and clunky, Donald Norman argued in his recent book The Invisible Computer (reviewed in TR, September/October 1998). For those of us frequently exasperated by our own computers, Norman's book offered comforting validation. It also offered a tantalizing solution: Make computing ubiquitous, by replacing PCs with networks of small, dedicated "information appliances." Yet many of the appliances Norman proposed as examples, such as the "home financial center" that pays bills electronically and communicates with the checkbook appliance and the credit card appliance, sounded just as complicated as the computers they were intended to replace.

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