So the mythical handset I want that (1) has a browser that works for all online content and (2) has wireless access will still not be perfect.  It will necessarily still have a pretty small screen.

Someone said to me a couple of days ago that he didn't think that screen would be immersive enough for virtual worlds.  I wonder about that. 

When you first go into a movie theater (one of the in-person ones that still exist in many cities), you aren't drawn in by the screen at all.  It seems like an artificial incursion on your life -- it even feels a little silly, all facing front to watch a rectangular expanse at the front of the room.  People chew popcorn noisily and you notice how old the curtains are that are hanging on the sides of the screen, how cheesy it is to draw those curtains back when it's time to start the film (audible old pulleys straining), and how dingy the room is.

But when the film begins, and if it's any good at all, you forget about all that.  The screen completely fills your vision.  I'm always surprised by how easily I forget that I'm sitting in a room watching a projection. It's a jolt to leave the room and have your sense of space snap back to the here and now.

I have a feeling that there's a tipping point for small screens, and that they don't have to be big to capture us completely.  They just have to be big enough to draw us in.

Which is a good thing, because we'll be playing in virtual worlds that are changing on the fly and feature scheduled happenings.  Or so BusinessWeek asserts this week. We'll recreate the world using presence detection ("my team is here with me") and timed events ("it's time for us to land that spaceship") while sitting near a wireless access point.  

We can keep the big laptop screens for weekends.