In 2008 my friend Michael Vassar, in agreeing with Peter Thiel’s thesis about the decline of innovation, suggested that the only game changing technology of the 21st century so far had been the iPhone. 2008 was young year yet for what we then termed “smartphones,” which my daughter now thinks of simply as the “phone.”* I remember vaguely that my response was that the 21st century was young, and we didn’t know what impacts the new phones would have on our every day life.
One truism has been that the new phones have cannibalized whole sectors. Think maps and watches. This week I realized that it had finally happened to my iPod shuffle, from which I have been moderately inseparable since January of 2008. The morning checklist of what I have on me no longer necessarily includes a shuffle, because as long as I have a power source (as I do at the office) there’s no reason why the phone’s battery life should be an inconvenience.
The 19th century was the age of steam and the train. The 20th century was the age of oil and the automobile. We never really had a nuclear age. But it looks like this century will be the age of electricity and the phone. Though what we mean by “phone” is going to change a great deal, to the point where the term itself will be a curious anachronism. Children in the next generation my wonder why we call them phones in the first place.
* To be fair, in terms of pure telephone utility I think the older flip phones were better as single feature devices than the current smartphones (battery life, robustness, etc.).
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