[Prestidigitweeze]

Yet the "gadget that does everything" is still a gadget.

The NYT writer seems to be conflating two ideas: That gadgets are becoming less popular, and that gadgets have become passé. The second idea is more plausible than the first, but it, too, seems to confuse fashion for evolution.

The technofetishist allure of smartphones will continue to dull over time, as did laptops' luster, but both devices remain ubiquitous. By contrast, portable CD players are rarely used, but that's because they have become media-unwieldy and limited, not because they were created long ago or are too specific. If those were the criteria, then headphones would be obsolete.

I also think that our interest in smaller and smaller devices is partly a response to overcrowding and the demise of houses as standard dwellings for working people. Mobile access is key, but so is the reclamation of space.

For those reasons and others, I doubt that gadgets will lose their market in our lifetime unless disaster limits our access. Instead, we'll watch the same reactions recur: failed attempts at renouncing gadgets and boredom with the commonplace (however the commonplace is perceived).

Gadgets do become relics in the wake of other gadgets, or their function (as the NYT writer underlines on a massive placard) gets consolidated into the evolving repertoire of what later gadgets do well.

Of course, miniaturization makes redundancy inevitable -- i.e., laptops, tablets and smartphones that do many of the same things -- but use is often size- and hardware-specific, just as pieces of furniture that serve roughly the same purpose are used in different ways.

In that sense, gadgets are furniture sets for the mind (among a cluttered mansion's worth of other things).