This argument will play out over the next few years, while we wait for phone lines to become fast enough to give Java a serious trial. This is the ability to find information that we actually want. The programs that handle these functions are mature and complete enough to be merely tools. At the other extreme are tasks that will never be successfully computerized. I am convinced that I will never see a computer that can take a recording of normal conversation and convert it into text, or one that can translate a document from Japanese to English without numerous howlers.
Information retrieval is at the top of the list.
If our own computers give us information by the ton, the Internet can provide it in Krakatoan quantities. Finding the particular facts you are looking for can seem impossible. Yet in the long run the Internet, which links together many of the world's data resources, should be the ideal research vehicle. Tools are available for finding information in the limited universe of one's own desktop computer, and for now they are indispensable, if space-hogging and sometimes cumbersome. If I had had perfect foresight, I would have started down the Mac road a dozen years ago, because Macintosh systems, while more expensive, are much less harassing to use than IBM PC-style models.