For my inaugural blog with the CTC I thought I'd explain my point of view, which is to mix pragmatic idealism with a positive sense of skepticism.  And I will do what I can to toss in the international perspective, one frustratingly missing from so many technology discussions in the US.

Huh?  What does this mean?  Well, I love hearing all the enthusiastic pronouncements of three-screen convergence (which started in, oh, 1994) but I always love to start musing about all the , well, things that seem to act like magnets repelling each other. 

Sooo, it is not that my skepticism will be negative, reactionary or contrarian, because I love some of the things either heading down the proverbial pike or already at my offramp (OK, OK, so I couldn't resist extending the metaphor)-like the Amazon Kindle or its soon-to-be competitor(s), among them Plastic Logic.  I love the concept of the netbooks but my experience thus far with three of them (one from ASUS and two from Acer) has been less than stellar (read:  want to throw them out the window).  Still, $200-400 is not bad.

So, speaking of international and therefore travel, let's think about the (non) convergence of what we take on our business trips.  I met a guy in the airport and we started to do an inventory of what he had to carry on his trip.  It is worth repeating: