Walt Mossberg

In 1998, it was possible to make a big-screen romantic comedy about email. Yep, email - the same medium we often think of now as boring and even annoying.

If Apple, Amazon, Netflix, or somebody else can ever blast away all the ridiculous vestiges of decades-old TV content and technology we live with today, I'll buy whatever they come up with. Until then, I'm settling for a Caavo.

We need a wireless mobile device ecosystem that mirrors the PC/Internet ecosystem, one where the consumers' purchase of network capacity is separate from their purchase of the hardware and software they use on that network. It will take government action, or some disruptive technology or business innovation, to get us there.

Streaming TV shows, movies, and other types of video over the Internet to all manner of devices, once a fringe habit, is now a squarely mainstream practice. Even people still paying for cable or satellite service often also have Netflix or Hulu accounts.

I see retirement as just another of these reinventions, another chance to do new things and be a new version of myself.

There's precedent for adjudicatory proceedings on technology issues to have massive consumer and business benefits. One of the most famous was the so-called Carterfone decision in 1968.

My first computers were a Timex Sinclair and an Apple II.

There's no other major item most of us own that is as confusing, unpredictable and unreliable as our personal computers.

For many years, even as users became more sophisticated, personal computers took too much effort to use without problem-solving, keeping alive the yearning for greater simplicity. Microsoft's dominant Windows platform, in particular, was a home for all manner of bugs and problems that required IT people to straighten out.

No computer or smartphone can ever be considered 100 percent 'safe.' We're all engaged in a perpetual battle with criminals and hostile governments trying to use computers and the Internet to steal information and identities.

There are lots of reasons email persists, even as faster and simpler forms of communication proliferate and your personal communications likely have mostly migrated elsewhere. But one big one is that new types of media channels rarely totally kill off old ones, even though everyone predicts they will.

Whether you are a consumer, a hardware maker, a software developer or a provider of cool new services, it's hard to make a move in the American cellphone world without the permission of the companies that own the pipes.