It’s not just phones. It’s microwaves, and computers, and the fact that next Wednesday I am going to have eye surgery that, God willing, will allow me to see without glasses or contacts for the first time in fifty years. My 81 year old mother is going to get a new shoulder in October. I talk every day with people in four different countries.
My kids take this all for granted, but I will never get used to it.
Regards,
Shodan
I was thinking about this the other day. The first proper PC I ever owned was a 133 Mhz screamer of a system with an ample 32MB of RAM and a capacious 2 GB hard drive. While the phone in my pocket has a 1 Ghz processor, 1GB of RAM, and 16GB of flash storage, plus a slot that can take another 32GB.
As a kid who started dinking around with Vic 20s and Apple IIs, it boggles the mind how quickly technology has advanced.
Screw the flying car, I can play a first-person-shooter while sitting on the toilet. Now that’s progress
Reminds me of an episode of Family Guy where they go to a technology EXPO and they have an old guy flipping a light on and off. The crowd looks bored and he says, “This doesn’t look like much to you but I wrapped myself the first time I saw this.”
The video that my freakin’ phone takes is better than that of the video camera I bought 12 years ago for $3000.
This is pretty minor but this topic occurred to me earlier today for this reason:
In 1998 I applied to college. Collecting all the necessary documents and filling out the application took me over a week. Mailing it in and waiting for the application fee check to clear took another two weeks. Getting an acceptance letter took 2 months. From start to finish, the entire process took almost 3 months.
Two weeks ago, I applied to another college. Filling out the application took about 30 minutes. It would have taken less time but I had to write a personal essay and I hate those. Getting transcripts from 3 colleges and 1 high school took me 4 days, even though all the colleges had to cash checks and snail mail was used to request and send transcripts. Actually submitting the application took about 30 seconds and that included the time to electronically pay the application fee. Getting an acceptance took 1 week. From start to finish, the entire process took me just under two weeks. I still haven’t even received my official acceptance letter. The email that told me my application was received had a link that told me I was accepted. I could pay my admission fee and be an officially enrolled student before the acceptance letter gets here. 
Technology is so awesome - especially for impatient people like me.
But you have to go to Japan to get access to the really advanced toilet technology. Pretty soon the toilet will interface with role playing games and we won’t need a flying car because no one will leave the house.
The funny thing to me is that we call them smartphones.
Think of the term PDA. What does that conjure up? Failed '90s technology, most likely, a niche market used by tech-happy businessmen and other early adopters. PDAs are in the same boat pagers got put in when cell phones became ubiquitous.
But by providing a link to the internet through the cell network or wifi, smartphones really are genuine personal data assistants. Sure, they do a lot of stuff in themselves, with the phone, camera, and other offline apps, but that portable link to the internet is the real game changer. You are never without necessary data and information (provided you’re somewhere with 3G access, anyway), and at the same time you have an outgoing information link.
It’s a little funny, but the thing that makes me go, “Holy crap, I’m in the future” is the ability to access telnet services through the phone. Cell phone tech, 3G internet, Twitter, all of that’s pretty new and easy to take in stride, but the ability to turn an old, pretty-much-outdated technology portable blows my mind.
Thoughts I had when I read this:
First-person pooter
There’s a crap for that
As usual, Randall Munroe said it best.
I’m on my second iPhone. I could go on forever about how much I love it. Simply said, it is magic.
It is not magic. It is the result of engineering and talent and skill and hard work by thousands of brilliant people. I find that when people describe products as ‘magic’, they’re generally trying to pull the wool over my eyes by directing attention away from the details of their products.
‘Magic’ as described by various religions, if it existed, would be another form of technology.
I have a MS in Mechanical Engineering from a top university and have had a hand in the design of many high tech, world class products over a 20+ year career so far. I don’t need to be schooled by you.
I have decades of experience in building technological devices and I still feel magic when I use something that is well designed. I don’t mean in the supernatural sense, but it feels mysterious and wonderful when a device does something that was never done before, even when you designed it.
Of course, that wears off in about 5 minutes and you are figuring out how you could have done it better. That is why the patent office stays in business.
I also am a new arrival on the smartphone scene. When I use the word “magic”, it is meant as high praise to those who design and build such objects.
What’s magic to me is that I can tap on this device in a particular manner, and a person will appear at my door with a pizza.
Surely that’s magic?
My mp3 player is magical when you consider that you had to carry round cds, extra batteries headphones or even an adapter to listen to music whenever, and it wouldn’t always fit in one’s pocket. Now I have a gadget that’s basically the size of a pack of gum that has 1300 songs on it and space for MORE and I don’t have to fuss with batteries
My digital camera has plenty of space for pictures, or i can take video with sound and I can instantly delete any lousy pictures instead of having to pay for developing and hoping they turn out.
My sister has an iPhone, she loves it, has 1000 apps and it has more power than this desktop computer i am using now.
Funnily enough I made this point to my family a couple of months ago. This little device in my pocket has the complete works of William Shakespeare on it (actually on the phone, not via internet). It can tell me the nearest Mongolian restaurant to me right now, or let me listen to a radio station in Lincoln, Nebraska while sitting on a train in London, England. I can tune a cello with it, turn it into an airplane boarding pass or use it as a flashlight. These things are fabulous.
Part of why we can have these cool things is that Moore’s “law” isn’t the only thing that’s been happening with computer chips. Efficiency has gone up with every generation too.
How do you do that? I thought Facetime only works over WiFi networks. Does London have WiFi everywhere, and do the networks have handing-over capabilities?
Arthur Clarke said, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”