That is an interesting point. What you perfectly
described is a dedicated computer. These are also called
embedded systems and they are everywhere. Cell phones are just
computers that happen to be good at controlling radios that let
us make telephone calls.

	All those digital televisions are dedicated computers
that run a resident operating system whose focus is controlling
the tuner and decoding the sound and picture of television
signals.

	These systems don't look like computers and they sure
don't run Windows or Linux as we know them in our computers, but
they may run a form of Linux or Windows designed for embedded
systems.

	I have experimented in the past with the Motorola 68HC11
which is a special version of the Motorola 6800 microprocessor.
It was originally used by the millions in 1980's era automobile
engine controllers in various General Motors products. It
contains the traditional CPU parts such as an accumulator and
ALU or arithmetic Logic Unit but it also has counter/timers and
some analog to digital converters built right in to the chip.
These were used in sophisticated programs that tuned the engine
to optimize performance as the vehicle was driven.

	You could have also run a word processor or spreadsheet
program on one of these processors, but they were really meant
for controlling machines.

	You certainly could take one of those 68HC11's or any
number of the newer embedded computers and make them in to the
kind of box you are wanting but it would also be very expensive
since we would buy only a relative few of them compared with the
number of microwave ovens or even ham transceivers sold.

	I am not disagreeing with anybody who doesn't like
lugging a computer around to access everything else but we may
get accessibility via a dedicated piece of software running on,
say, a hand-held device like an Iphone or PDA.

	If more devices used Bluetooth or WiFi, you wouldn't
even have to hook up cables.

	The pieces to the puzzle are mostly already here but
they are not going to come together by accident. Many times
manufacturers include things that would give us access but don't
because they weren't thinking along the right track so we need
to all think systematically when we ask for accessibility. In
other words, how can this be done using as much off-the-shelf
resources as possible?

	The best computers are the ones you don't even see. When
people watch TV, they aren't thinking about computers, but they
are running one whether they know it or not.

	What we need is open-source software running on a
platform churned out by the millions. That's how you get good
things to happen that don't cost an arm and a leg.

Martin McCormick
Tom Brennan writes:
> An interesting thing about all this is that all these digital gadgets 
> could be
> made accessible with a port.  There could be a universal box that just 
> plugged
> into them all as you needed or wanted and most of the problems would be 
> solved.
> Again, this requires an external gadget to make them work but a far less
> involved and expensive one than a computer.