A lot has been said about convergence when the now and future of tech is discussed, how we will all move into this unicornian utopia where everything we do is on one platform and one view.

In some ways this is fast becoming a reality, take the evolution of the cell phone – undeniable

• telephone
• music player
• video player
• camera
• GPS navigation
• Games
• and on and on …

All in one!! Hard to fathom a few years ago!

And yet in other ways for every step towards Avalon we take, we take a step away. This is a result of one of the most important catalysts of the growth of tech – Competition

Free and open competition encourages the establishment of new and different ideas/tech and with this comes the divergent tech we see today:

Cell Phone manufacturers and their different operating systems and subsequent apps (heaven help you if you switch from one manufacturer to another these days)

Web Browsers – no further explanation needed

And now social media entities. Myspace, Facebook, Twitter and now Buzz each with their own contacts/lists/friends/feeds

What this does is make it very difficult have one single view of all our contacts / friends / tools etc.. we either have to pick 1 of each and stick with it or begin the noise riddled exercise of juggling all the various options.

Take Buzz for example, to me this is a another Twitter but with its own friends. Do I follow both in order to avoid missing out and in so doing commit myself to so much noise (as its called), or do I simply stick to what I know and use (Twitter) and ignore Buzz.

Thankfully there are companies out there who have seen this as an opportunity to create platforms that will “converge” these things into one.

An example of which is Inbox2 – A messaging tool which brings all your views into 1 (Twitter, Hotmail, Facebook, LinkdIn, Gmail etc…) and whilst it is still a Beta (slightly buggy and not at its full potential) it offers hope.

And yet I am sure the next best tech is around the corner which will split my neat and tidy consolidated view of my tech world and force me to begin the tech juggle all over again.

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Matt de Beer

My Blog: http://www.debeer.za.net

Twitter: @mattdebeer