• USA Today, Wednesday, March 15, 2006 10:30 AM

Kevin Maney, USA Today's tech columnist, riffs on the idea that more choice equals more happiness. Last year, at the annual PC Forum, tech leaders lauded the idea of "the long tail," which means a business can offer almost endless choice through the Internet. But the tech gurus at this year's conference have done an about-face on the idea that more choice is always better. One of the keynoters, an author of a book called The Paradox of Choice: Why Less is More, got on stage and said that while more choice may lead people to find exactly what they want, they will feel worse, for several reasons. Too much choice leads us to regret, making us imagine we could've made a better decision. It also leads to self-blame, because it raises our expectations, with the responsibility for  hopes not fulfilled placed squarely on our own shoulders. It's good to be able to blame others; apparently it's healthy. This might be the secret to Apple's success with the iPod, which offers few models to choose from. Too many choices could end up paralyzing consumers, leading them to turn away. This would also appear to be a generational argument: it seems that many of the people frustrated with choice come from the Baby Boomer generation. If you're talking about Gen Y-ers, they seem to have no trouble negotiating a broad array of consumer products.    

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