Some Higher Tech for Consumers : A new level in convenience, but comfort will be the bottom line

Gadgets are supposed to make our lives simpler, like the 1950s washing machines that seemed to augur a carefree future. Today, however, life is complicated, and a lot of people blame the omnipresent computer. No matter how earnestly we try to digest the information it delivers at blinding speeds, the task often seems overwhelming, like sipping water from a full-bore fire hose. Now an emerging concept called “convergence” promises to let the computer return simplicity to our lives.

Convergence, the merging of once-separate methods of organizing and transmitting information, came to Los Angeles this past weekend with the delivery of Toshiba’s Infinia computer line. The computer is said to be the first fully convergent gadget available in retail stores. By the end of this month it will have competition in local stores from the Gateway 2000 company’s Destination computers.

So what’s the big deal? The Infinia pretty much looks like any other desktop computer. But by pushing buttons the user can alternately watch television, screen first-run movies and concerts, review voice- or e-mail, surf the Web, peruse faxes and hold video teleconferences.

Of course, Toshiba, Gateway and the gaggle of other companies planning to launch similar machines in 1997 are hyping the convergence concept largely to reel in new customers. If they succeed in a massive way, consumers will have taken a significant step into the digital era.

Most people still exchange currency, information and other valuable goods in what computer wonks call “atomic” form: particles assembled in ways than one can have and hold, such as dollar bills and compact disks, books and videocassettes. In the digital era, by contrast, information largely will be stored as binary digits or “bits.” This allows vast amounts of information to be in a tiny space.

So while in an “atomic” era we have to rummage through cardboard folders, vinyl record albums, paper TV guides and answering machine tapes for information, in a digital era we need only type a few words on a keyboard to search a centralized database. Moreover, the new convergent computers allow us to combine this data in any way we choose--e-mailing a home movie over telephone lines, for instance, or dubbing a new score onto a movie soundtrack.

History shows, however, that new technologies do not succeed simply because they are more novel or efficient. They succeed when we feel comfortable with them. And comfort, being a human emotion irreducible to binary digits, means that the immediate success of the convergent technologies is still far from certain.