A New World Dawns

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What's all this got to do with computers? you ask. I'll tell you. They reopen the territory, that's what they do. Oh, not the land, of course. That's gone like the topsoil, with the wind. But the land was never our real territory anyway. It was the dream, my friends; the territory was always the New World ideal. We don't ever want to run out of that, do we? Goodbye land. Hello space. Can't you picture all those moons and stars, smiling and winking and waiting for a visit? Howdy, Mr. Jupiter. Inventions arise when they're needed. This here screen and keyboard might have come along any old decade, but it happened to pop up when it did, right now, at this point in time, like the politicians call it, because we were getting hungry to be ourselves again. That's what I think, buddy. "The most idealist nations invent most machines." D.H. Lawrence said that. Great American, D.H.

O pioneer. Folks over in Europe have spent an awful lot of time, more than 200 years if you're counting, getting up on their high Lipizzaners and calling us a nation of gears and wheels. But we know better. What do you say? Are you ready to join your fellow countrymen (4 million Americans can't be wrong) and take home some bytes of free time, time to sit back after all the word processing and inventorying and dream the dear old dream? Stand with me here. The sun rises in the West. Play it, Mr. Dvorak. There's a New World coming again, looming on the desktop. Oh, say, can you see it? Major credit cards accepted.

—By Roger Rosenblatt