Cellphone Evolution Revolution
The following is a commercial that I’m not being paid to post, and should not imply endorsement. It’s called “The 4th Screen“.
Congratulations Nokia, that’s clever marketing. You got me. Not just me, but many others: there were several copies on YouTube, and even a copy shot on someone’s cellphone at a convention somewhere. Mega-viral.
The hype around cellphones is well known, and possibly well deserved. There’s no such thing as being “out of touch” anymore. You are now always near a phone no matter where you are in the world (well, pretty much…). This means you’re always near help, always near the comfort of your family and friends, and always near the information grid that connects us all. Staggering that this technology is so young.
What strikes me as odd about the ad, however, is the theory of non-mobile technology as isolating. Worse, they imply that any interaction we think we’re having isn’t real; at least not real enough for them. This, of course, ignores Web 2.0, love letters to the net, the way culture and education have been transformed, etc…
… but I digress. I’m being touchy about the “but it was virtual” line. I’ll let it go now.
What I find fascinating about the evolution of the cellphone is that it’s quickly becoming what we had only dreamed it could be: a portable computer and all-purpose media device. When people think about cellphone evolution they often think back to the giant bricks of the 80s (remember the term “car-phone”?), but even if you narrow your focus to the last decade or so you can see some dramatic changes:
- Color displays became standard
- batteries last many days without recharging
- even the cheapest new devices connect to the Internet now
- all phones have cameras in them with higher megapixel ratings than the best digital cameras of a decade ago
There are really only three steps left:
- Make the screens resizeable.
- Create software to easily overlay lookup data on whatever the camera sees.
- Eliminate all proprietary power and data cables.
Sound like I’m aiming too high? I’m not so sure… even five years ago I never thought I’d see a cellphone with a battery that lasted a few days without a recharge. Technology’s growth has a life of its own.
The evolution has been sudden, and yet we hardly take notice. In a real way the shape of humanity, of how we spend our days and how we communicate, is out of our control and out of our perception. Twenty years from now we may stop, look around, and be completely baffled at how we became the people that we are.
