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Q. Are there any companies in the U.S. that are both profitable and loved by their customers?

Well, lots of smallish mail order companies I guess. On a more significant level, there's Southwest Airlines, whose book value last time I looked exceeded that of American, United, and Delta Airlines - the three largest U.S. carriers - combined.

Southwest flies only 737s, mostly on short routes. There's no assigned seating, and no frills at all. It's cheap and dependable. The CEO, who is about to retire, is a loveable, motorcycle-riding, cigarette-smoking old varmint, and part of the outfit's success has to do with his charisma. Customers love Southwest. And it's by no means a niche player. It serves very large markets: Mr. and Mrs. America, and also the younger or more downmarket traveling salesperson.

Q. Do you fly Southwest?

A. God no, only when I have to. It's a zoo. But they really do what they do very well, they know who they are, and they don't compromise.

Q. Anyone else?

A. MBNA, the giant credit card company. They have a total commitment to customer service. Every employee's business card bears the title "Customer Advocate." Paychecks are delivered in an envelope that says "Brought to you by the customer." Senior management has to spend time on the phones, actually working in customer service. I've now confined my credit card use to MBNA cards, because it's such a hassle dealing with other card issuers if anything goes wrong.

Q. OK, here comes the big question: Whither the Internet?

A. Well, any fool could have seen that the bubble would burst. Typical of burst bubbles, the Internet now seems to be in a bit of bad repute. Or at least what we've been calling e-Commerce is. I got to know Jay Walker, the impresario of Priceline, a bit last year when he was everyone's hero. He's now the poster boy for dot-com failure. Jay was neither as brilliant as he was given credit for (the Harvard Business Review was doing monthly panegyrics on him!), nor as dumb as he's accused of being now. The U.S. direct marketing trade press has been very critical, dredging up failures from his past. Well, he's an entrepreneur, and sometimes he and other people get hurt. That's life in post-industrial capitalism.

Three things I think are clear: The Internet is being increasingly integrated with other modes and channels. E-mail has great potential as a direct marketing tool. And the ultimate impact of the Internet will be in Stage 3

Q. What's Stage 3?

A. Stage 1 was the hyper-excitement of the late 1990s. Stage 2 is the absorption of the Internet into everyday life, and that's taking place right now. Stage 3 will be the increasing invisibility of the Internet as it becomes embedded in other things.

Q. The smart doorknob idea?

A. Carrying it to an extreme, yes. That's the MIT Media Lab program, "Things That Think."

The great potential of the Internet is as an enabling technology, allowing lots of other things to happen. The great enabling technology of the 20th Century was electricity, which allowed us to turn night into day, among other radical things. The Internet has the same potential.

It's useful, I think, to compare electricity with computers and the Internet. There's a very interesting book called "When Old Technologies Were New," by Carolyn Marvin, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania. A hundred years ago, electricity was sort of a show-off thing, used for tricks and stunts, much like Stage 1 of the Internet. Experts were called "electricians" (the word we now use for the guy who fixes the toaster!) and thought they were superior to other folks. Again, echoes of Internet, Stage 1.

The Sears catalog in 1908 featured a "home motor" which you would crank up, and then (theoretically) plug appliances into. But of course electricity didn't really take over until the "home motor" became an invisible thing inside the appliance. That's what's beginning to happen right now in Stage 2, and will culminate with Stage 3.

Q. Will the Internet become completely invisible?

A. No, I think it will follow the trajectory of other technologies. Electricity is invisible, but TV - enabled by electricity - is right in your face. In a sense, electricity split into two parts: an enabler and the media it enabled. The Internet will end up with a similar split, certainly if it remains an information and communications medium. So you would still search the Internet for weather information, let's say, but in its invisible guise it will be the agent in your refrigerator that calls the repairperson for you. The first use is analogous to TV, the second analogous to electricity.

The computer itself, though, is going in the direction of invisibility. I don't think it will split. As everyone knows, the personal computer is a clumsy, early-stage interface, analogous to the crank you had to use with the original automobiles. As Nicholas Negroponte, the MIT Internet guru, says, the secret to interface design is to make it go away. The personal computer is an interface, and it will go away.

Think of the computer's progression through the years. In 1946, you needed a building to house a computer. Personal computers were first commercialized about 20 years ago. They were clunky things. Now there are ever-smaller laptops, and hand-held devices. With biotech and computer science coming together over the next few years, we will end up with literally invisible computers.

Q. Dare we ask…will this be good or bad?

A. Oh yeah, I can answer that one for sure. It'll be both. That's always the way with technology.

Q. What are you keeping your eye on, technologically?

A. Everyone's talking about broadband. I don't see much of it yet. But certainly, when and if it comes, it will change the Internet significantly. And voice recognition, if it ever gets really good, will also change everything.

Q. You started out as a direct mail guy. What are you now?

A. Well, I'm still a direct mail guy, and certainly a direct marketing guy, and I guess for sure a marketing guy, and then, in the lay sense, a technology guy. You have to pay lots of attention to technology, because that's driving everything these days, whether the economic times are good or bad. And of course I try to be a thoughtful guy.