To draw this out further: our expectation of ultimate transience, which has resulted in enormous numbers of files being stranded on now-unreadable media or simp

To draw this out further: our expectation of ultimate transience, which has resulted in enormous numbers of files being stranded on now-unreadable media or simply obliterated into thermal noise when someone kicked the plug, has an upside: it allows us to be wrong. We can go down blind alleys like Microsoft Bob. We can afford to throw a hundred different approaches at a problem and see which one sticks. Even if it sticks for a dumb reason like "everyone already uses Word", we can gradually improve what stuck, or propose new approaches like Google Docs. Or we can toss it all and move to tablets. There was an OS that had a similar component oriented model to what was being imagined here, and that was Apple Taligent. It was built around the component embedding model "OpenDoc" and had editors for types of content not types of file. It turned into a never-arriving death march, and I have a feeling that part of the problem is that in the presence of diversity of choice, the component model sucks. How can LyX and Microsoft word operate as components, and share data, when their assumptions are so radically different? The answer is that they can't, and that component data will live in little silos unless flattened down to a deliberately weakened structure like plain text cut and paste. Unless you have One Twue Text Editor. And One Twue Pixel Editor. And so forth. It's an ecosystem that can only tolerate tyranny. (Microsoft's tiles UI suffers the same problem. Looks pretty and makes sense only on a phone where they have all the programs under their thumb.)