Some Divergent thoughts about Convergence.

I am taught as a creative director to be contrarian and perverse. And that's exactly what I plan to be now.

You see convergence is one of those words that makes me instantly suspicious. Because it is a word widely used by analysts, engineers, commentators and specialists to justify all manner of expensive projects, investments and salaries. And yet the general public do not use the word at all - indeed they seem to have no need for such a word. I suspect there is a reason for this - that they have no need for the concept which the word describes.

We have been here before, of course. Remember when banks started offering mortgages, and building societies became banks? "Imagine", said everyone, "How much extra business we can generate when we cross-sell all our customers everything". I am sure that wildly extravagant projections were made for the extra business accruing - with many pointless mergers making investment bankers rich on the proceeds.

All of which overlooked one thing. That most people have one mortgage and one bank account. That they are just as happy to have both with a building society as with a bank. But, in many cases, they could leave them apart. The human brain does not have infinite capabilities, but if there's room enough in that brain for a vocabulary of 20,000 words, there's probably room to remember "my mortgage comes from a building society and my chequebook from a bank." Just as I seem to cope in my kitchen with the fact that I boil water in a kettle and make toast in a toaster without any urge to combine those two confusing devices.

But at least this effort was not as destructive as, say, the convergence between Gas and Electricity - where the consumer benefit was, er, cheaper gas or electricity. Rather like the much heralded Triple Play, convergence in these industries operates as a form of giant sales promotion - a kind of BOGOF. Pay us a tinceywincey bit more for the service we think is important - always the incumbent's main line of business, incidentally - and we'll give you two other services for less. This creates value how, precisely? Lowering prices to gain market share is not an innovation. Lowering prices merely to swap your customers around and turn them into price-driven switchers is just silly.

Just because convergence seem sensible, that is no guarantee that people will adopt it. Women's fashion is far more in need of convergence than technology - imagine the savings that would result if womenfolk could standardise on just two or three shoe types, one or two dress types and fewer colours. Yet, irritatingly, my wife shows no signs of doing this.

Maybe people buy lots of gadgets for the same reason women buy clothes - they just like them.

In any case there already is a perfect convergence device which is mobile, can handle all kinds of entertainment media and offers multiple connectivity and communication capabilities combined with being a powerful gaming device. I am using it right now. It's my laptop.