27 Wonderful Inventions That Solve Those Annoying Little Problems

On the other hand, being digital (sorry) is more global and cuts across most of life. Joel Birnbaum, the luminous head of research at Hewlett-Packard, calls future computing "pervasive": "something you do not notice until it is missing." Such research must look outward, because it's not just about the next-generation PC, it's about life.