While I'm a big fan of Google, gobbling up just about every feature it releases while still in beta, they seem to be running the same path befitting developers of platforms. That is, while Microsoft established the first standard for what we've come to expect in a computing experience with Windows, Google is well poised for the same position for defining for us the same experience in "the cloud." And while in the pioneering days - 1998 - Microsoft overran all its competition, dominating the market with its products, and almost decimating into oblivion what we know now as the mighty Mac Book, Google seems to be the likely choice for holding the title and presiding with kingly stature over the Web 2.0 proving grounds.

And what had made Microsoft so formidable was that the PC world was, by-and-large, an open platform. Both hardware and software manufacturers were given the opportunity to designing and engineer for it. While Microsoft and Windows' contribution was the OS that tied all these diverse threads of market competition together, its product increasing in value when a plethora of software and hardware choices dominated the puny shelf spaces of Apple or Linux, it was heralded for a time as our savior. It launched a stock market boom, and gave rise to the term Tech Stocks. It formed the cornerstone of the IPO boom. It made us believe that anything was possible, as if our generation had traveled to the Moon as well. It was a Golden Era, but the enthusiasm, as with all things, didn't last.

Bill Gates at this time became the image of national Evil long before Bush came onto the scene. His fickle audience - the one who thought that a comuterisized utopia aught to be at hand - criticized Microsoft for not only for violating anti-trust laws, but also for being negligent at delivering a reliable product that didn't crash. The computerized world had, rightly, become paranoid that, because no one could touch this juggernaut devouring small upstarts that soon became a piece in their Start>Accessories bar, there would be no check or balance to their mighty dominion.

Well, no one knew at the time that, while the fear that unstable computing was becoming a norm, that a simple search box on a nearly blank page, Google, would become the David to this Goliath.

But Google seems to be repeating the mistakes of the past. Apple, even on its death bed, was still touted as having a better, more robust computing experience. It did so since Apple had a heavy hand in coding for its operating system. While Windows had gone the route of a free-for-all and developers-run-amok with the fine print of "compute at your own risk," Apple's saving grace was the claim that no virus or buggy warez could even make a beach head on its virgin desktop.

But while Google has built its temple and is in full stride with its mighty empire; while Google has, recently, done what most in the Microsoft days would reckon is the unthinkable: divorced itself of even the need to have an internet connection to use some of its products; while their competitors - Yahoo and Microsoft are still clamoring for their piece of the Web 2.0 market share; while Google has championed the "open source" movement in the form of its arsenal of gadgets and its incursion into mobile communications with the Open Handset Alliance, it has fallen prey to the same forces that disappointed once proud owners of a PC - the bugs; the pesky failures because, when code is so freely given and manipulated, a platform opens itself up to potential hazards. The header for Gmail "labs" projects informs you:

Gmail Labs: Some crazy experimental stuff.

Gmail Labs is a testing ground for experimental features that aren't quite ready for primetime. They may change,break or disappear at any time.

If (when) a Labs feature breaks, and you're having trouble loading your inbox, there's an escape hatch. Use http://mail.google.com/mail/?labs=0.

In other words, like with Microsoft, "compute at your own risk." That's fine and dandy when it's declared that these projects are not "ready for primetime," but Google has, unfortunately gone a step further with their business model that defies even the reckless gobbling up of small Web developer projects and including it in its kingdom. Their platform is built and patch together in a more haphazard way than Microsoft ever dared to do. Here's what Google declares about one of its recent additions to its pre-loaded OS:

The idea of an OS, as an abstract concept, goes beyond what makes the "thing" turn on and house its warez. What makes something an OS, as an abstract concept, is its way of mediating the human intellect and the Will with the device(s) or object(s).

We have to start thinking about an Operating System (OS) not just as something pre-loaded on a computer or a gadget that makes it turn on, but as an ecology of interconnected hardware that functions as our platform of connectivity.

It's not so much any more that we choose a Blackberry vs. an iPod vs. Android vs. Web OS as the system that runs our phones; it's not so much any more that we choose Mac OSX vs. Windows vs. Linux to run our desktops and laptops; it's not so much that we choose Gmail vs. Hotmail vs. Yahoo mail to host our PIM information and e-mail; it's no so much anymore that we choose Facebook vs. MySpace vs. Linkedin to manage our relationships; and, it's not so much anymore that we choose Flickr vs. Photobucket vs. Tweetpic to host, share or print our memories. The versus go on and on like with iTunes vs. Windows Media Player vs. VLC player. It's really mind boggling ... gaming systems; oh boy, here I go again with the versus.

What it's really all about is that the mathematics that combine all of these options together in, G-d help me, I can't count how many ways, says that each variant produces for the individual their unique operating system - specific to the person that utilizes them in what could be considered, seamless integration.

The idea of an OS, as an abstract concept, goes beyond what makes the "thing" turn on and house its warez. What makes something an OS, as an abstract concept, is its way of mediating the human intellect and the Will with the device(s) or object(s).

When these devices and objects are made for and eager to be interconnected i.e. networked together and utilizing content off of each other rather than merely syncing, then the OS-as-ecology of diverse things becomes a real and tangible, if not critical thing to consider.

Will my new phone (iPhone vs. Android v. Web OS) be compatible without  researching its ability to communicate with a Sony Vaio notebook be a consideration for either ditching Google OS or making my next purchase a Mac Book Pro? Will Windows 7 continue dominate my gadget ecology or is an Unbuntu netbook a way to transition my operating system to the next wave? Will the need for a thumb keyboard be supreme, despite the touch input rally becoming the norm?

This is the stuff of the old Adam West Batman series, and certainly, each and everybody's OS is in a continual process of thwarting the villains of being outmoded or ineffective for one's productivity.

The folks over at gdgt.com have come up with novel widget to add anywhere in your online presence that announces your current and past OS. The widget is simple enough - a list of gadgets you've have. have had and want. Presumably, since their Website and podcast is a gluttonous play-by-play discourse at every new gizmo under the sun, they behoove themselves by letting their subscribers gloat in style about their collections of them.

However, beyond the mere surface of announcing to the world gadgets you own, gadgets you should be owning, and gadgets you used to own, on a deeper level, the widget begins to describe your electronic ecology - your OS of social connectivity. In short, society has its tools to bind and glue us all together. Take a look at your OS and see if it crashes on you or if its set-up is so seamless that you don't notice it's running in the background much like you don't notice your toe until its stubbed or your eyeball until it itches.

A remarkable problem in today's age is that our gadgets and favorite Web sites can do much much more than we're aware of. Google's Digital Liberation Front takes a step to break the issue of either not reading manuals or that they're not written with a full feature list.

Simply put, the most daunting problem of today's wired world is a that it swept through so fast that no one in the late 70s and early 80s solved a vexing human problem: most people don't read the instruction manuals. And, even if you were gutsy enough to flip beyond the quick-start poster and read your manual cover-to-upside-down-Spanish, then you STILL wouldn't be able to capitalize on some of the nifty things these gizmos (and Web tools like Gmail and Google Maps) can do.

For example, my one and a half year old daughter, hungry to be old and digitized like daddy, has managed to show me a few short cuts on both my Palm Centro and my iPod. Her deft little monkey-at-the-typewriter fingers managed to reveal to me that tapping my phone's space bar on the quick-dial screen reveals a list for jog dial navigation of ALL the numbers associated with that contact. I've not missed this feature in all the five or so years I've owned a Treo of some sort. I never knew. But if ignorance is bliss, then ohh, the near car collisions I would have avoided on the freeway with those lightning quick space bar strokes which would have spared me a few seconds, attentive to my cell phone screen.

Again my daughter came to the rescue for my iPod. Her thumb presses on the center button of the click wheel revealed a toggle for that feature. I had been scratching my head on how to repeat songs or albums on my iPod; scratching it probably as many times as those design interns over at Apple's packaging plant scratched their head saying to each other, "You think it needs a manual in the box?"

"Naaaa. No one reads them anyway."


Well, the sad and lamentable folly in all of this is that while everyone has at their home's desk or in pockets or at the local cafe a full arsenal of military-grade communication devices and strategic planning mainframes a la WPOR in War Games, they're truly under deployed.

The war of attrition in remaining friends with the folks you thought of calling last month and that you really, really would love to hear from but probably won't is bloddy carnage when a thorough set-up of one's device or e-mail client or reminders would be like having smart bombs in the Peloponnesian War.

Thankfully, at least on the Webware side, the folks over at Google are out to train the regiments by launching their site: The Data Liberation Front. There, direct and indexed, is a step-by-step tutorial on every feature their armory could equip you with - Matrix-style - for FREE.

Five minutes on the site has already made me go "Wow, you can do that too? Neat-o!" And, I thought I was a Google OS aficionado. I'm tempted to let my daughter bang on my laptop's trackpad to see what else I might have missed.

Folks, lest we go down like the Atlanteans in muted technological folly, then read the manual and join a message board or two; like if you were on the Starship Enterprise seek out new features and new interconnections, and by all means, enlist a hundred monkeys to help you figure it out.