*All* the trade rags have sunk into insignificance. I used to read them religiously, now I read not a one of them, ever. I don't even go to ZDNet unless someone directs me there. Computing has become a nearly vacuous activity and there is almost nothing interesting to say about it, just as there is very little to say about plumbing. There aren't even any good fads to write about.

Why is this? I really think the lack of interest in good, creative development environments limits what can be done with current systems. The old tools, and the new-old ones like Java, are simply maxed out on creative potential. If for some reason people became interested in Smalltalk, with its inherent power to create large-scale, capable systems (say, self-organizing systems or truly cooperative, parallel computing systems), some of the pop would return to computing and it might get interesting again - for a while. But the sad truth is, it's more or less a mature technology now and so it's just not very interesting any more.

UNIX is played out too. I love it, but it's a dinosaur - a very sturdy dinosaur.