I can rule out the cellphone immediately because I used to own one and I don't anymore. I find I can do more and better communicating via the Internet and face-to-face. I think the cellphone should be renamed the "C C", pronounced see-see., being short for a cellular communicator because it does more than just phone duty nowadays but its just a very inconvenient computer. Who has fingers small enough to operate those mouse keys?! I will eventually get one and ditch the home phone because it only ends up being mostly telemarketers and wrong numbers on that line.

But choosing between the computer and the automobile is tougher.

You can travel to places with both a lot faster than walking. The computer can take you places much faster than a car but a lot of that travel is the virtual kind.

The computer gives a better return on investment I would have to think than a car. I can go to work on the computer now. I have a couple of smaller writing jobs and the car takes me to some other local part time places of work. So if I was to put a value on how much money the computer and the car return versus the expense you have to outlay, well then the computer wins again. You have initial investment, paper and ink cartridges, mouse batteries and Internet connection fees and occasionally you buy software to add function but it's not as bad as a car.

The car needs gas and it costs a lot more initially than a computer. You have insurance and repairs and tire replacement and a whole bunch of other things that add to its cost.

And what can you do with a car? Well you can drive it, race it, carry passengers or goods and go to places to do other things like play golf or go to a restaurant. But a computer can be used for so many different things. Everyday somebody is creating some new way to use the computer and it's pretty much open ended.

And computers seem to always get cheaper. My first business computer carried a price tag of close to $10,000, didn't have a colour monitor (they hadn't come out yet), it only ran DOS and memory chips were a thousand dollars a megabyte.

Now cars only get more expensive and you don't get much more for that dollar. A new computer always seems to have more memory and faster speed and better resolution and all for less money than the previous one.

So I guess the answer is very clear to me. The computer wins. It does a lot more for a lot less than a car and it appears it is going to be the way we communicate in the future. And it's all based on 1's and 0's. It's a very simple idea that grew into something that no one could ever imagine and it wil continue to follow in this path.

In the year 2100, will we still be driving a car? Will we still be using a cellphone? Will we still be using a computer? I think the answer will probably be yes on all three counts but the computer will have evolved way beyond the other two in what it will be able to achieve. Our old buddy HAL, in 2001, will likely have become a reality and then some. The car won't be the same because we can't keep running it on gas so it has to change and there are too many powerful people that don't want that to happen.

The computer has been so successful because it was individuals that made it do all the wondrous things it can do. The big business folks only market them. They don't know how to do anything with them. The just hire a bunch of people that know how to use them and try to stick them in a room somewhere. Well that's changing, too.

So yep, it's the computer. Hands down.