Less is more… (more or less…).

In April 1981 Xerox introduced the Star 8010 workstation, the first commercial system with a Graphical User Interface (GUI) and the first to use the “desktop” metaphor to organize a user’s interactions with the computer. Despite the perception of huge progress, from the perspective of design and usage models, there has been precious little progress in the intervening years. In the tradition of Rip van Winkle, a Macintosh user who awoke today, after having fallen asleep in 1984, would have no more trouble operating a “modern” PC than operating a modern car. The “desktop” is still the dominant user interface paradigm. Equally durable is the “general purpose” nature of PC design, which assumes that we channel all our transactions (a diverse lot) through a single interface on a single computer. While common discourse about digital media is dominated by the concept of convergence, we argue that from the perspective of the usage model, just the opposite concept, divergence, should be the dominant model. We argue that the diversity of web browsers tomorrow will match the diversity of “ink browsers” (a.k.a. paper) today. Systems will have to be tailored to dynamically connect the user with artefacts relevant to the user's current actions -and do so in a way, form, place, and cost appropriate to the user. This change is as inevitable as it is essential. In the end, it will leave us with new concepts of computers, communications, and computing -and of computer science itself. Few computer science departments or computer firms appreciate the magnitude of the impending change. It is time for them to wake up.