A real-time case in point.

As I write this (you'll have to believe me) I've received an e-mail message from my brother that contained a link. What do you do with a link in an e-mail message? Click on it of course. There's nothing very complicated in that. But he's working on a Mac while I'm on a PC, and he's using a different browser than mine. We're of course used to having problems with sending files between us, but a simple URL? That's going too far! My guess is that something unexpected went wrong (as opposed to something "expected"?), because it's too distressing to think that the link didn't get delivered correctly simply because of our different operating systems. We have, after all, done this sort of thing before. This time, however, it didn't work as it should have. The strange part is that both of us took this in stride. Neither of us saw it as what it really was - an affront to the promise of the internet.

Go to: The Promise of Ubiquitous Access.