Every small electronic device is adding more and more features, which is to say more and more of the same features. An iPod is striking for being able to show movies. But so is a G.P.S. unit that transmits driving instructions over an FM radio and uses entries in your address book  uploaded from your cellphone via Bluetooth  to plot routes that may vary depending on traffic conditions updated by satellite based on real-time information from other drivers. There is no meaningful reason why the remote control for your new HDTV could not also place a phone call or tell your new washing machine to skip the spin cycle. Or, somehow, vice versa.

This means that many small, portable electronic devices are crowded with redundant functionality, which makes them more complicated and more expensive than they need to be. How many places do you need to store your address book or play Tetris? But what feels like redundancy is in fact just a sign of incomplete convergence. The G.P.S. unit I want has a hard drive with more room for music files than a midsize iPod Nano. But I already carry an iPod, and I certainly don’t want to listen to music over the G.P.S. unit’s speakers or, for that matter, through an FM frequency on the radio. Nor do I want to watch a download of “Scrubs” or “Pirates of the Caribbean” or get my e-mail or balance my electronic checkbook on the screen of the G.P.S. Not yet, at least.

But before long, there will be a single slim rectangular device in which convergence is complete. What it is will depend on where it is and what it’s near. We will have no idea what to call it, because none of its functions will have priority. Lose it, and you lose everything.

What all this convergence means may be a meaningless question, like what it will cost. But this is not just the convergence of many tools into one. It’s also the convergence of a significant part of our reality into broad, intertwining strands of digitized data. That is an old prediction for the computer age  the way everything dissolves into information  but there is something new in watching so many different kinds of information receivers become one.