Troy (WWJ)  -- Back when he was a kid, the fiftysomething Wall Street Journal tech columnist Walter Mossberg remembers, cars were the sexiest product going.

In fact, Mossberg told a crowd of around 200 at a WWJ Newsradio 950 business breakfast Thursday morning, his dad used to take him to dealerships to see the new cars every fall -- even if he wasn\'t in the market for a new car. They were that exciting.

To listen to the full presentation, click this link.

Technology products have largely replaced the automobile as having that level of excitement, Mossberg said -- witness the huge crowds surrounding the introduction of products like the iPhone. Meanwhile, "cars have become boring to most people," Mossberg said in the speech at Somerset Collection in Troy.

But there\'s hope to restore the public\'s appetite for the latest and greatest things on four wheels -- by combining today\'s love for technology with the automobile.

Mossberg said American car companies are behind the Japanese and Germans in making the auto interior digital -- and that even the Japanese and Germans aren\'t doing all that much.

Today\'s technologies are perfectly able to offer e-mail voice reading systems. Mossberg said he wants cars that sync up your music collection every time you come home, that have Wi-Fi, and that have better navigtation systems. He said there\'s tons of computing power in most cars -- it\'s just not evident in the vehicle\'s interior, which would be a way to get buyers excited again.

Mossberg, who\'s written the Journal\'s personal technology column since 1991, said the Internet is fast becoming like the power grid -- just something that\'s always in the background and always on.

"When you used your hair dryer this morning... you did not say, \'Hey, I\'m going to go on the electrical grid,\'" Mossberg pointed out. "You don\'t say, I\'m going to go on the electrical grid to watch \'Desperate Housewives\'... We\'re very conscious now of the plumbing, the ISP we have, but the Internet is really just this big grid, and we\'re going to have more and more and more things that plug into it and take what they need from it and deliver all these experiences to us -- entertainment or video or commerce."

Mossberg said he believed the PC has peaked as a technology, and that the cell phone will increasingly be the way people get content from the Web.

\'The iPhone is the first pocket computer that runs a real computer operating system," Mossberg said, adding that in its first 60 days it\'s already spawned business applications from companies like Salesforce.com.

But there\'s a problem with cell phones, Mossberg said -- the four major cell phone carriers, which Mossberg says he refers to as the "Soviet Ministries."

Mossberg, who covered national and international affairs for the Journal from 1970 to 1991, said Soviet ministries tried to replace the free market -- citing one example, by deciding how many raincoats should be produced, in what colors and sizes and styles and in which locations.

"And they never got it right," Mossberg said.

Similarly, he said, cell phone companies and cable companies try to determine what kinds of phones and services should be offered on their networks, making them "tremendous obstacles to innovation and entrepreneurship."

After all, he said, "If you want to change computers, you don\'t have to tell your ISP. In cell phones it\'s exactly backwards ... they have rigged it so the Verizon phones won\'t work on Sprint and the Sprint phones won\'t work on Verizon. Our government has allowed itself to be bullied and lobbied by these giant companies over the past 20 years."

The wireless companies argue they have to have that control to subsidize phones.  So, Mossberg said, "my point of view is, let\'s get rid of the subsidies. I guarantee you that without those subsidies, Moore\'s Law ... would guarantee you\'d still get that $99 phone."

Mossberg said the United States is behind the rest of the industrialized world in both its wireless phone networks and its Internet network speeds. While he said he doesn\'t believe government can remedy these problems itself, he said better public policy is important in fixing both problems.

As for major tech companies, Mossberg said he remains a fan of Microsoft Corp.\'s Office suite, but not so much of Vista, which he said took too long to bring to market and runs too slowly. Google, he said, is focused on so many things right now that he worries they\'re not focusing enough on the core business of search. At Apple, Mossberg said Steve Jobs is so involved in every company decision, from press releases to store designs, that he worries what might happen if something happens to him.

After speaking at Somerset, Mossberg was off to Ford Motor Co. for a demonstration of its Sync technology system, developed with Microsoft.

For more photos from the event, click this link.