I have my first smart phone. I have 300 songs and 30 contacts in it.
It’s a browser, a camera, a video camera (sort of). I’m thinking of getting rid of my alarm clock, because, this ‘phone’ is a better alarm clock.
It’s a GPS too. Calendar, and heh, a pretty good phone.
I can watch movies on the thing. Or play games. Want to do a round of Trivial Pursuit? I got it. How many players?
It weighs maybe 5 ounces. I’m feeling very old. I’m not 50 yet.
My email gets pushed to the phone. I get weather alerts too. I’m looking for the laundry function. I’m sure it’s in there somewhere….
I just ordered a Bluetooth headset for music for it. My Wife is gonna love it for her tri training.
I’m gonna dive in. My dear Wife, an IronMan for cryin out loud is a little afraid of it. Google Street view? To much data for anyone anywhere. I sort of agree.
Tomorrow, the future; is today. Put on your sunscreen, your good socks and best hat.
Lets go. It will be one hell of a ride and we are lucky to be here to see it.
Yeah, ísn’t it something, this technology? This year I will finally be acquiring a smartphone, but that’s just because my existing PDA is at the end of its useful life and the available offers being what they are it makes sense that my next one be also communications capable.
OTOH I am actually getting annoyed at those who call for me to join the device/OS-specific Cult that has ensnared even the incoming Leader of the Free World.
And in every way or fashion that is within my power, I fight the expectation that I wish to be at everyone’s beck and call 24/7 on every square foot of habitable surface of the Earth. Nobody is going to be trying to reach me to tell me the Aliens are attacking or my patient is coding; so my e-mail can wait a couple of hours to be read and dealt with.
According to a developer for the iPhone, the processing power of the device (and all of the most advanced smartphones are probably running chips of similar capabilities) is roughly that of a 5 year old PC. Hard to believe that you’re carrying around so much computing power in your pocket. Given all the crap that our PCs can do now, can you imagine what a smartphone in five or 10 years is going to be like? They’re already talking about making them something like Dr. McCoy’s medical tricorder!
I’m not much of a gadget person, but my Palm Treo makes me feel like this.
The main unanticipated behaviour change I’ve noticed is, whenever any unresolved trivial factual question comes up in casual conversation, I have an urge, usually gratified, to look it up immediately on Wikipedia. I’m not sure whether to resist the urge or not.
Having Google Maps on there is pretty shibby, too.
Some speculated that the internet would bring about the end of civilized discourse and debate: instead of sitting around chatting about the merits of some idea and working out the answer through discourse, reason, compromise, and consensus, one can instead just go google the damn thing and see what teh intarweb says about it.
I always dismissed this argument because the internet is not usually immediately accessible in places where you’re engaging in conversation, and if any effort is required to get to the information, people will be too lazy to do it. But with the proliferation of fast and powerful devices that EVERYONE carries ALL the time, I am actually starting to get concerned about this.
Now, instead of calling your friend to get directions to the restaurant near his house, you just use your iPhone. Instead of arguing with your sister about who played Javert in the Les Misérables movie – and thereby finding yourself in a lively discussion – you just check IMDB on your Blackberry, and sit in silence for the rest of your time together. And instead of asking your coin-collecting co-worker – who is sitting right next to you – what the design on the Hawaii quarter is, you just do a quick search on your G1, and the co-worker goes home that night and cries himself to sleep.
These amazing leaps forward in communications technology may be decreasing the amount of communication we actually do!
But I still can’t wait to get an iPhone once I escape from Sprint. ::drools::
It is a completely-unfounded rumour that I had to be restrained from checking the Dope on my laptop while at dinner during a DopeFest. Happliy, that won’t happen anymore.
Two of my adult sons* have iPhones, and the other one has something else, I think it’s an ATT phone of some sort. What he can do on this phone, among other things–many, many other things–is scan a UPC, say at Macy’s, and find out not just what it costs at Macy’s but where he can get it cheaper, along with mileage and directions!
I love this. I would buy it for this alone. That is so cool.
Of course, first you need the UPC.
These things are amazing!
*And the 13-year-old has a Virgin mobile, pay-as-you-go, very cheap, and it still does lots of stuff.
Don’t forget FM radio, and I’ve seen a couple newer ones with digital TV receivers…
And of course the fact that you can hold a library on one that would have made a rich man jealous 200 years ago.
These things are getting truly incredible. I can’t even imagine what will be possible 20 years from now.
The reasons for arguments will change, but I don’t think arguments will… They just won’t be about easily verifiable facts. People will still argue about(forgive me, I’m not a big movie buff so my examples are rather low brow) whether the original Dawn of the Dead was better than the remake, or if the Shawshank Redemption really deserves the number 1 spot on IMDB.
