One late night, I sat at my father’s kitchen table swapping “work stories.” I told him about my drowning in lab meetings and email, and he told me about his unending fights with his computer. At 65, my father is an active consultant to the plastics industry, with a Ph.D. in chemical engineering and a wall of awards that chronicle his busy career. Yet despite all his success, what seemed to consume him on this late night was, of all things, a wireless mouse. His computer support consultant insisted it was “the thing to have,” yet in a few short months my father had knocked it on the floor countless times, misplaced it twice, and finally broke it recently. A wireless mouse was not the thing to have for my father. In fact, he was quite furious at “this wandering mouse” …