Given the same set of data, tasks, and decisions, my software should behave very differently for me than yours does for you. It should learn my habits, adjust to my needs, and help me learn the habits and adjust to the needs of others. But that doesn't happen. The notion of "skinning" applications is ironically appropriate: software customization only goes skin deep.

On the lifehack sites, you'll find people talking about their strategies for staying sane and productive. Technology plays a key role, but the real action is in the realm of technique: how people adapt technology to suit their own unique styles. Those techniques are strikingly diverse, as of course they always have been.

Technologists, though, are not nearly so diverse. I've noted the overwhelmingly male population of software professionals. That's one problem. The insularity of engineering disciplines is another. If we can't find a way to partner with linguists, artists, psychologists, teachers, and librarians, the next century's Internet might not look very different from our own.