It's not transparent. We're still aware of what it is we are doing. We're still fiddling around with modems and cables and spending ages waiting for things to happen. Just as being a car owner used to mean you spent ages fiddling with engines. You have to be interested in the technology itself to be prepared to spend the time fiddling with it. It's only when the technology is really good that it vanishes and lets us get on and use it.

>How will they be overcome, and how long will it take to do so?

Seamless, pervasive, intimate networking. By which I mean that all the machines we use talk to each other without bothering us about how to do it. How long? I don't know. If past form is anything to go by, it will be promised over and over again but never seem to arrive, then it will arrive very suddenly, catch us all, very briefly by surprise and within months we will have completely forgotten that we ever didn't have it.

Short feedback loops. You write a book and it's a year before people start reacting to it, by which time you've put it way behind you, and you can't change it anyway. Put something out on the web, people are responding to it instantly and you can respond to that response. It's not like being in the movies anymore, it's like being in the theatre.