The conversation continues... Last month, my company held our 25th anniversary PC Forum, the annual meeting of the computer and online market. As you might expect, while the speakers were holding forth onstage, audience members were second-guessing them from the floor.

Only this time, the attendees engaged in some high-tech heckling, using their PCs hooked up to the conference's wireless local-area network (Wi-Fi, for wireless fidelity), and from there to the Internet.

The implications are broad.

No, it won't make private meetings public. But it will make for more two-way communication at public meetings. Listeners can simultaneously query the speaker and communicate among themselves instead of everyone remaining silent while one person at a time speaks.