This skirts perilously close to my disclaimer but, ah well, let’s talk about Convergence. As with many things Penny-Arcade take it to absurdity to reveal essential truth (that second panel in particular is a more swearword laden version of one of my conversations from a few weeks ago). What does convergence mean? Is it the archetypal Linux toaster? Two things that most people don’t really seem to want shoved together becuase you can? Is it running an Apache web server on your phone? Is it giving people who spend 30 quid a month on their phone free broadband? Is it controlling the playlist for the music you’re streaming from your server over your Xbox 360 on your WiFi phone (yes I did do that and yes I am a huge geek)?

The honest truth is that nobody really knows. It’s likely to be a little from the top and a little from the bottom but if there’s noe thread you can draw out of all that it’s that people will start to get more and more impatient and annoyied when ‘their’ stuff doesn’t just work, or just connect using simple well exposed interfaces. If I were selling DRM or any other copy protection tech right now I’d be getting worried about regulation due to its well known ‘issues’ with interoperability.

You know, the ’skirting’ process of trying to put together a post like this is almost more fun than writing the thing itself. A bit of Traffic Analysis could tell you what’s really interesting.