So, first of all, a big “woah” about this iPhone gaming thing. Can’t say I really saw that coming. I thought you guys had this stuff locked down tight! Oh well, it’s not like you guys aren’t used to upstarts swiping your marketshare, or being marketshare-swiping upstarts yourself. Good for goose and gander or something, right?

I gotta say, from where I stand (on a peninsula between two metaphorical points), you don’t really stand a chance this time around. Phones are small, everybody has one, and they have them with them all the time. Of course they’re going to become the dominant gaming platform! And those kids you’ve been banking on? Their parents are going to get tired of letting them steal the iPhone “real quick” for an “Angry Birds sesh,” so child-producing members of society will just buy more iPhones or iPod touches to keep all elements of their nuclear families in line. You’re screwed.

But that’s not what I’m here to talk about. See, just because you aren’t taking the boring, safe, world-dominating approach doesn’t mean I don’t love you! I love you for you.

Nintendo: the 3DS is the outsider art of gaming consoles. It’s completely bizarre! It hardly makes logical sense! It’s too large to put in a pocket, it has several contradictory and possibly superfluous features. It still has two screens. I love it. Glasses free 3D can be headache inducing, and it’s a little difficult to pull off while in motion, but it’s unquestionably innovative. We’ve been struggling with the lack of accurate depth perception in 3D games ever since there were 3D games. Mario 64 taught us how a 3D platformer should play, and now depth perception has a chance of teaching us (at last!) exactly how far we should jump.

But the display might not even be the best part. Those cameras are augmented reality savants. Sure, you can do a bit of augmented reality with a phone, but what sort of stuffy phone user is gonna juke and jive around a virtual dragon while wailing on the fire button? They won’t even be able to see the dragon with their thumbs splayed all over that poor, solitary touchscreen. Those cameras on the 3DS are a gift to the world, a gift to our collective childhoods. A love letter.

Sony: the NGP is the space mission to Mars of gaming consoles. It’s way too ambitious, and bureaucratic pressures will threaten to destroy it before its (inevitably late) launch. But what a beautiful dream! That screen, that rear touchpad, those dual analog sticks! It’s more powerful than a $500 tablet computer from Apple. You’re bringing the current generation of home console gaming to your handheld, and yet so much more.

If you can deliver on even half your promise, every single red blooded male that ever touches that device will know, within his heart of hearts, that his phone is a pale imitation of a true handheld gaming computer. I think the rear touchpad alone should win you some sort of Nobel Peace Prize. You are a bold explorer, Sony. A conquistador of functionality.

Ultimately, neither of you will find nearly as much success in this handheld generation as you enjoyed last time around. Even your PS Suite efforts are unlikely to make much of an impression, Sony, simply because your heart isn’t in them. You two are dreamers. Your heads are in the clouds. And my thumbs salute you.

Like, how many computers do I have right now? With nearly entirely different UIs? And zero commonality in file system? My MacBook Air (bless her), a Windows desktop, an iPad, an iPhone, an Xbox 360, a PS3… I’m living in madness! It’s a bourgeoisie hell! Sometimes, if I’m lucky, I can manage to slurp something into the cloud and get it onto another machine. My Xbox 360 can work as a Media Center Extender. Four of these six devices are somewhat compatible with Dropbox. The PS3 kind of has a browser.

Isn’t the promise of the post-PC era supposed to be simplicity? This doesn’t feel simple. Where do I get my music? Where should I create documents? Where should I store them? Should I store them? All the most “elegant” “solutions” for these problems feel more like hacks than solutions. Google Docs, Rdio, Dropbox, Gmail, AirPlay, Windows MCE, knife in the face. If I truly went post-PC and got rid of the MBA and the WD, I’d be in even worse shape. These devices all hate each other!

Alright, I get it, I’m supposed to drink the Kool-Aid and go all-in with one manufacturer. Just like how in the 50s if you didn’t buy all your appliances from the same manufacturer, your house wouldn’t turn on. Makes sense. So let’s try out Apple, shall we?

Nope, everything still sucks. It’s such a chore getting a document from my Macbook to my iPad and back again that I hardly bother. At least the music syncing works between the laptop and the tablet, and the laptop and the phone, though it’s certainly a lot of manual management to keep the right media on the right storage-strapped device. Photo libraries? With three different devices capable of capturing and storing pictures? A nightmare.

What’s the point of all my whining? Merely to say that I’m not on the hunt for a different way to do computing, and certainly not an additional way to do computing, I want a simpler way to do computing, full stop. If I’m trading from a single multi-purpose device for a myriad of single-purpose devices, where have I really gotten?

I don’t think of the iPad as a simple alternative to my PC. I think of it as a reset of PC UI and ideas; a chance to start over. It’s not about the touch screen or the form factor, it’s about a fresh opportunity to get things right. It’s up to the likes of Apple and Google to add enough functionality to their tablets or other post-PC devices so that my old windowed desktop becomes marginalized. Please, let it be marginalized! And if they can’t do that, I at least hope somebody figures out this whole cloud thing so that it doesn’t feel like an afterthought.

This, of course, gives me pause. I might disagree with my distinguished former colleagues at Engadget on a few points of style, for instance, but for the most part we’ve vehemently agreed with each other when it comes to big picture technology issues. Carriers need to be more flexible and device agnostic, phones need capacitive touchscreens and multitasking, laptops should have long battery life and nice screens, browsers shouldn’t suck, etc.

So why isn’t “nets should be more neutral” just as cut and dry? Why isn’t that a simple question of technological preference, instead of a messy political debate that I’m on the oh-so-very-wrong side of the fence on? It’s because Net Neutrality is a two-part issue. Part technical, part ideological.

See, I think Dell should have better screens and battery life in its laptops. I am unshakable in that belief. I will yell at them in print, glare at them in meetings, and ridicule them among my colleagues to that effect. That’s the technical side, and it’s a bit of a no-brainer.

Similarly, I think internet should be fast and open. Service providers should concentrate and compete on improving speed and being (for the most part) application agnostic. By allowing the widest swath of applications on their network, they allow an entire economy to build value for their network. When they start choosing sides or clamping down, that’s when they’ll really have to “compete” on turf they aren’t capable of winning on — providing every service every user ever wants. So, that’s pretty cut and dry, right? About as common sense to someone like me as “longer battery life” and “better screens.”

But there’s a second half to the Net Neutrality debate that is ideological. Simply put, I know what I want in a product from Dell, and I know what I want in a product from Verizon, but I would never want the government to dictate to Dell or Verizon what they can or can’t or must or musn’t deliver to me. This belief has nothing to do with my nerd cred or geek affectations, it has everything to do with the fact that I’m an immovable conservative, ideologically.

Of course, I’m not naive. I wouldn’t begin to assume that service providers won’t ever make bad choices that harm their customers — in fact, they seem particularly good at shooting themselves in the foot. I don’t know what the next five years are going to look like on the internet. Maybe I’ll have to pay $5 to access YouTube, or $5 to access anything that isn’t YouTube! Stranger things have been suggested by Net Neutrality advocates, in the form of quasi-dares to these service behemoths. It would be horrible, and I’d yell bloody murder within my 140 character limit. But I’d still much rather live in a country where business decisions are made by business owners, not the vague machinations of a representative republic.

Now, I’ve been involved in enough “debates” over politics in my life to know they rarely deserve the term. They’re typically shouting matches, and they don’t accomplish much. I’m not going to turn anyone into a conservative with a simple editorial, and so I doubt I’m going to convince anyone that the government shouldn’t tell Verizon and AT&T what they can and can’t do with the networks they built. If your ideological slant has you in the governmental-intervention-for-the-greater-good corner, I don’t have a shot of getting you out of it. I can’t even promise that Net Neutrality wouldn’t be for the greater good, at least in the short term. I really don’t know. But I do believe very strongly that it isn’t on the side of freedom. Or even Freedom.

My purpose here is to help frame this conversation. Some people seem to think it’s odd that old white men in Washington could feel so strongly about an issue like Net Neutrality. “Do they even know how to use a computer? Leave this one to us nerds.” And it’s true, perhaps they don’t have any conception of how a “dumb pipe” approach to a network is a good move for consumers and therefore a good move for the providers. Perhaps they have their teenage daughters sync their iPods for them, and a PR staff responsible for their Twitter activity. They very well might be squares.

But they know politics. In their mind (and mine), government intervention and specification doesn’t promote innovation, it hinders it. That is what is at the crux of this issue for me, and why my objection to Net Neutrality has nothing to do with a betrayal of my nerd roots, only a continuation of my political heritage.

Of course, Bill hasn’t been around to make the dream come true, he’s been busy saving Africa and our public school system and the souls of fellow billionaires. He did leave behind a multi-billion dollar sotware company, however, that is perfectly poised to make “A Robot in Every Home” a piece of fact instead of fiction. Since then, Microsoft’s one major (intentional) contribution to the industry has been the sporadically updated Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio. It’s a good tool for prototyping and simulating simple robotics, but it isn’t moving anything forward. In fact, it treats the robotics industry exactly like computer industry stalwarts treated the burgeoning PC industry: as a hobby. What Microsoft hasn’t been doing over these past years is building a robot operating system, or making an even greater gamble on actual robots themselves.

Oddly enough, Microsoft’s largest contribition to robotics as of yet was largely inadvertent. The Kinect sensor for the Xbox 360 was launched in November of 2010, and was a surprising success with consumers. While normal people snapped up the mysterious sensor by the millions, brought it into their living rooms, and realized how very-out-of-shape they were, pale hobbyists (“hackers,” as they’re known these days) quickly sequestered themselves in their garages (circa 2010 / 2011: poorly heated loft apartments), and taught the Kinect sensor new tricks. The piece of hardware that was originally intended to be a locked down add-on for the 360 became a multipurpose 3D sensor extraordinaire. Microsoft actually issued a mild out-of-touch (and never repeated) threat to the hackers, but the “damage” was done, and hundreds of burgeoning roboticists had a supremely powerful tool in their hands — and incedentally generated millions of dollars worth of free PR for Kinect with YouTube videos of their exploits.

In 1974, when Intel released the 8080 microprocessor, it wasn’t trying to invent the PC, it was just trying to improve upon its existing, limited 8-bit 8008 chip. It was up to the likes of MITS (the Altair 8800) and Microsoft (Altair Basic) to make good use of it. Clones and successors quickly followed, and Intel has obviously kept up over the years. Perhaps Microsoft would be happy to accidentally spark a robotics revolution with the Kinect sensor, but wouldn’t it prefer to be at the center of it? Besides, Microsoft doesn’t actually build the 3D sensor heart of the Kinect, those honors go to a company called PrimeSense, which is offering the same tech to anyone for a similarly low price.

Someone is going to figure this out. Willow Garage, fueled by some mysterious and apparently inexhaustible venture capital, is taking the open source angle with its ROS (Robot Operating System). The project already has a good amount of traction among bearded hackers and ambitious university robotics programs, since it allows altruistic types to build upon the innovation of others instead of continually “reinventing the wheel” (as Willow Garage puts it) and building their own robot operating system and hardware support from the ground up. Still, while ROS has made great strides and is home to some very exciting innovation — along with its fair share of Kinect hacks, of course — it’s nothing a consumer would find useful or even approachable. What the personal computing revolution did was take tools that were already commonplace in the enterprise and hand them to regular cro-mags who wanted to “balance a checkbook” with a spreadsheet application or “word process” without a typewriter ribbon. Microsoft put those tools in the hands of hobbyists, then Apple put them in the hands of regular people, and then Microsoft put them in the hands everybody.

What we need a Microsoft or a Google or an Apple to do — or if they won’t do it, Enterprising Upstart X — is build an operating system that runs on standardized hardware or commodity hardware, with built-in capabilities for doing things that are actually useful for a home user. Buzzing you in when you get locked out, signing for a package, taking that frozen chicken out of the freezer while you’re at work, feeding your pet, and of course the veritable classic of robo-problems: getting you a beer. As simple as these things sound, they’re actually incredibly complex in terms of where general robotics innovation is at currently. That’s why EUX is a longshot, but there’s still room for some barefaced ingenuity. The dawn of the PC was marked by incredible efficiency of code and hardware, techniques that made Bill Gates and Steve Wozniak famous. Currently, the retail robot closest to being able to manage all these tasks is Willow Garage’s PR2, which costs $400,000, harbors two dual-processor Xeon servers (16 cores total) and is still slow as molasses.

Imagine a robot that you could buy at Best Buy for somewhere between $2k and $4k, unbox and configure in half an hour, and then just take for granted as an extremely reliable, whine-free household member for the next few years (or, if you bought it from Apple, exactly 12 months before the upgrade lust sets in). It would change everything. Of course, it sounds preposterous given the current state of this barely-there industry, but it’s going to be a reality within the next decade. Who will get us there first?

I’ve been writing for Engadget for more than five years. What an insane thing to be able to say! In my time as Contributing Editor / Associate Editor / Senior Associate Editor / Pixel Density Enthusiast, I’ve written 1.5 million words on roughly 5,500 posts. More importantly, I’ve learned an amazing amount from my co-workers, particularly Peter Rojas and Ryan Block, who gave me my big break and taught me how to write for the site and hunt for news.

Since that fateful fall of 2005, it’s really all been a blur. I’ve moved to NY, flown all over the world, held and photographed thousands of gadgets, podcasted my heart out with Nilay and Josh, and most recently been able to be a part of The Engadget Show, which still floors me with its audacious scope.

I’d love to be able to keep doing this forever, but unfortunately Engadget is owned by AOL, and AOL has proved an unwilling partner in this site’s evolution. It doesn’t take a veteran of the publishing world to realize that AOL has its heart in the wrong place with content. As detailed in the “AOL Way,” and borne out in personal experience, AOL sees content as a commodity it can sell ads against. That might make good business sense (though I doubt it), but it doesn’t promote good journalism or even good entertainment, and it doesn’t allow an ambitious team like the one I know and love at Engadget to thrive.

I want to continue to be a part of this industry: I love technology, I love exploring what the future holds, and I love high pixel density displays. I’m not exactly sure what these next months and years are going to look like for me, and I’m truly sad that they can’t look like Engadget, but I’m excited to find out what’s next.

Paul J. Miller
Former Engadget Editor

And now, the moment you’ve all been waiting for… my very first post on Engadget. And my last.

Update: Thank you for the love! It means a lot, and if it’s any consolation, I’ll miss you all too.