We have smart phones, but do we want dumb screens?

[Commentary] Almost two-thirds of Americans are using more than one computing device — defined as a smartphone, tablet, computer or netbook — according to a poll released this week. Unsurprisingly, the poll, which surveyed 2,000 Americans, found that 83 percent of people want access to their documents in the cloud. Of course they do. When 63 percent of the population has multiple computers and one-third has more than three, keeping them synced is a pain best left back in the early ’00s and late ’90s where it belongs. The survey, conducted by Harris Interactive on behalf of a company that provides presentation software in the cloud, helped crystallize a question: Do we only want dumb screens? By dumb screens I mean the ability to get whatever content and services you want over the web as opposed to stored on a hard drive or locked to a device. So far today, the answer is we want it both ways, but in the future I lean toward dumb terminals with one exception: the smartphone.