A computer as a whole consists of both hardware and software. The hardware includes such items as the central processing unit (CPU); the computer's primary storage, random-access memory (RAM); and other hardware devices such as disk drives, monitor, keyboard, printer, and the like. Of these, all hardware devices other than the CPU and the RAM are generically referred to as peripherals. The use of this term reflects a great bias in computer architecture and hardware design, where the CPU and its immediate environment are considered to be central to computing, and everything else is merely an object in the periphery. To some extent it is sensible to give importance to the CPU, of course, but there also a case to be made for why the excessive fixation on the CPU is unhealthy. It is certainly true that peripherals have improved little over the years compared with the tremendous...