The world of information technology is still moving fast, although frequently end-users do not have much of a say about the direction it is heading.

The industry has decided what we really, really want is to receive our phone calls, letters, faxes, email and voice messages on a single hand-held device, a mobile super phone that delivers everything instantly via the internet.

"Convergence" is the industry buzz word to describe this rather complex process.

In addition to all our communication needs, the device would be able to deliver all the reading matter we will ever want or need, including local, region-al, national and international newspapers and reference books.

It sounds like a pretty good idea. I can see the benefits of immediate and non-location-specific access to digital information but I am not sure I much like the idea of electronic books.

A hard copy book is a delight to me. I enjoy the feel and smell of new paper and I like the heftiness of a fat novel far too much to want this pleasure to vanish.

Fortunately, novels and other pleasure reading materials, such as magazines, are not going to vanish because far too many people will still want them around. What will change dramatically is the way pure information is presented to us.

As people become generally more aware of the best way to search for information, we will become much more discerning about the things we access on the internet.

The day of the indiscriminate web surfer is drawing to a close. The day of the technophile is dawning. Industry leaders agree the universal hand-held device is almost certainly going to happen in the very near future.

We have all the component parts already. All it needs is for a smart entrepreneur to design a way to pull them all together into a single compact unit.

A major obstacle is the plethora of file types we need to look at. Image files of umpteen types, text documents which could have been created with a PC or Mac, database files that could come from 100 database packages - the list is endless.

What we really need is a universal file format which would allow us to see whatever information we choose, on whichever device we choose.

In fact, the concept of a universal file format is so uncomplicated it already exists. The trouble is most people do not know about it.

The ubiquitous PDF file, produced in Adobe Acrobat and readable on almost any computer, may be about to come of age.

Adobe Acrobat allows the user to take almost any type of content and publish/print it in almost any way.

Adobe, which calls this wide range of options "network publishing", agrees the fut-ure will demand much more from file formats and has already begun to create a workable solution.

Acrobat 5.0 (the latest version, released earlier this year) allows the user to create a single file that can be read on a computer, printed on paper and, with a very little tweaking, be published on the internet.

My guess is a future version would have the missing bits of code in place to allow users to publish their information in a way that will make it available to anyone, anywhere.

With all the pieces in place, things could start to move again.