I meant about the privacy issue. You really couldn’t figure that out from context?
Except that human society is a product of its technology. We live the way we live and behave the way we behave because we have things like fire and wheels and the printing pres and televisions. Now we have smartphones, so society will change accordingly, which includes the lack of privacy. If some new technology gives us privacy back then maybe the “pendulum” will swing back that way, but I don’t really see that happening.
The ONLY thing that could conceivably replace the smartphone is some futuristic version of the “EYE phone”
Some sort of overlay over human vision through some advanced contacts, with a direct brain interface for precise controls and the human body as a power source... perhaps with some cybernetic implants.Hey, pal, I don’t know about you but if I’m gonna let them chop me up and chrome it up, I expect more out of the deal than weather updates, YouTube and on-demand Wikipedia. Cyberdick’s the bare minimum, bench pressing cars and underwater breathing distant second and third :D.
…I would suggest that maybe you are the outlier, not everyone else. As soon as I make an appointment or schedule a meeting it goes immediately into my diary (used to be pen and paper, now directly into google calendar.) because there is no way I would remember it after I walked away from the meeting.
I have been a manager. Now I’m retired. Back in 1985, when I became a manager, my secretary (who I shared with a few other managers) did things like book travel, fill in time cards for snow days. Being a computer scientist I was never allergic to typing my own memos and papers, but some people were. Most of the stuff she did has now been put on line. Back then there was one secretary for 25 or so workers, now my VP has one for 130 or more and she is usually bored. She planned my farewell lunch and was happy to do so. She is not lazy, just under worked. I think it would suck to be an admin these days.
And yes, a secretary for some of my personal life would be quite nice. I don’t need a full time person, of course. But reminders of doctors appointments, due dates for columns, meetings, etc would be nice to have without me remembering to put them on my phone calendar. (Which is kind of a dumb secretary - remember PDAs?) And I’m not all that busy.
You can rest after you eat, if you have time. If you don’t (running, late traffic) cooling your heels for half an hour won’t be restful. This gives you more information and more control.
When I was 10 I lived in Africa, and we had a servant. My mother had plenty of conversations with him.
For some things typing is appropriate, but for others a conversation beats typing and clicking.
Out here that ship has sailed. But the secretary of yesterday could be the project manager of today. Same skill sets, and most of the secretaries I knew had plenty of brains.
Guess so, but I was looking at a bit further out than the next generation of Google Glass. Remember the first laptops? Clunky, heavy awful things with tiny screens. Google Glass was like that. Doesn’t mean it will always be like that. They are not about to pass up a pretty big segment of their market.
Right about the time people reject microwave ovens and cellphones.
Our privacy is a function of the inability of technology to track us. When I was a kid (20)where I went was pretty private. I didn’t have a credit card. If I used a toll road I paid cash. I might have passed a cop car, but it is unlikely he’d notice me.
Now our credit card companies know where I am, CalTrans knows when I crossed a bridge over the Bay and in some cases which road I used when, and license plate readers can tell them where my car is. I’m not even on Facebook - those who are tell their friends way too much stuff. And Safeway knows what I bought and give me electronic coupons for when I buy more.
To a large extent we get paid for lack of privacy. If Big Brother offered tickets to bars for being observed, the inhabitants of Oceania might have been more happy.
My WAG, FWIW is that all those devices will converge, along with (or in conjunction with) smart watches and smart jewelry/smart clothes, so that you’ll have basically one device to rule them all…and that this device will seamlessly integrate with your new smart house network, your car(s), your work network, the gym network, the network at the mall, grocery store, etc etc. What the interface will be is open…maybe it will be smart contacts, or some sort of holographic HUD, or an external eye-ware device (think Google Glass or Microsoft’s Hololense). WiFi (or maybe LiFi) will be basically ubiquitous, IMHO, in this time frame, and the integration of the internet of things will just increase.
Remember, smartphones represent a convergence. A while back the electronics trade mags talked all the time about how people were fed up carrying a phone, a music player, a PDA, and having a GPS in the car. The smartphone converges all that stuff, and more, in one device, so that no one carries two.
The reason it can’t all get small is the UI. And the battery.
Nearly half my income is derived directly from smartphones and apps. I’m an Uber driver. That is not a toy, though it MAY be a powerful enabler of drunken college students. 
That’ll never fly; only total dorks will want to wear glasses and gloves for everyday use. Maybe in offices or homes, but not out and about. It’ll be the gloves that are problematic, not the actual over-the-ear “glasses” part.
I bet we’ll go to some sort of pupil movement/blink style user interface, with some sort of retinal projection technology, with adjunct voice input. I doubt it’ll be projected onto glasses either.
Smartphones aren’t going to replace PCs any more than tablets will; what they will do is supplant them in some areas, and be useful in ways that PCs are not. For example, I check my home email on my smartphone probably 90% of the time, when say… 7 years ago, I checked it probably 70% of the time on a PC, and 30% on my flip-phone.
But if I want to check my water bill, pay my electric bill, etc… I prefer a bigger screen, and a real mouse and keyboard to mashing at my screen with a big finger. Same goes if I’m actually writing an email of any length or import, or writing something more than a few sentences in length. PC software is also better overall for doing things like photo and video manipulation and other productivity type applications.
Yes, you CAN install Word on your phone, but it’s absurd to try and use, versus using a mouse and keyboard on a real monitor. Same for Excel and most other similar apps.
I wouldn’t call smartphones toys though; they are very useful, but not in a work productivity kind of way. I find mine indispensable for quick research at stores, navigating, keeping informed, severe weather monitoring, communication via voice, text or email, and yes, amusement, mostly through the Kindle app, but also via entertaining websites. (if only they’d come up with something less wretched than Tapatalk, I’d come here on my phone as well)
As was said before, smartphones didn’t really replace anything themselves. It’s just a more portable computer with a terrible interface, and options you didn’t pick for your laptop. I could get GPS, 4G wireless, etc. with my current laptop that is sending you this message.
My guess? We’ll come up with a smartphone sized computer with a decent interface, and call it something else.
Once upon a time I had a PDA only slightly larger than a modern smartphone that had the option of attaching a keyboard to it, and using a memory card. I think a smartphone that could “dock” on a unit with a keyboard and larger monitor could work as a sort of “universal device” (scare quotes because I doubt anything is likely to become truly “universal”). On the go you use voice or touch screen inputs on a small screen. At home or in the office you hook it up to larger but more useful input/output devices.
Augmented reality. Naturally the fashion and technology need to clash first but it’s the most likely near future scenerio where some form or method of producing large screen information in a convenient field of view will dominate the markets.
If you can imagine everything you view on your phone to be brought up to your field of view whichever direction you are looking. It might not have to be glasses either but that’s likely the first but eventually won’t require any eye wear.
Sensitive eye gesture and facial gestures can provide actions as well as voice.
It’ll also provide personal and private entertainment when you are anywhere…although our society has to become accepting to watching people talk outloud and laugh…etc to themselves without giving each other weird looks. But our culture will change as a result of such technologies.
I also expect our clothes to have technology too, such as ability to alter colors or texture appearance perhaps by manipulating voltage to special fibers that would alter their shape or appearance. Also imagine alternative energies where your shirt could heat or cool depending on ambient temps.
in 50 yrs from now, a lot of every day things will seem like magic to us now.
I already call my smartphone my “exobrain”. I imaging it will become more “endo” in the future.
The future belongs to the synergy realized between locational awareness, augmented reality, and automated image recognition.
Sent from my SM-G930V using Tapatalk
We already do that - plenty of people wander around talking to people not physically present on Bluetooth or whatever.
I think the heating/cooling thing is more practical myself. The other things with color and texture is more of a gimmick. I can see that being a fad, but really, there’s a lot to be said for a basic, low-tech shirt.
A big problem with techno-clothing is powering it. Especially for the heating gimmick.
People past the age of 50 I confirm, sure - a lot of everything things today would seem like magic to the kid me. On the other hand, not everything has changed. There’s still a lot of stuff in today’s world someone from 100 years ago would recognize.
I don’t think the glove would need to be uncool. I’m not talking about a leather of cloth glove. Really all you’d need is some method of monitoring the position of your fingertips in relation to your wrist. Really it would probably be easier to not deal with fabric. I’d imagine the initial run could be tracking chips on stickers for your finger nails and the. American smart watch. Once you know where the finger tips are in relation to a fixed point you’d be able to do a lot from there you’d use the watch to monitor the hand position on your keyboard or whatever. It seems much exist then trying to figure out how to move your eye to zoom.
I think the smartwatches / fitbits are moving technology in the direction to solve this. With a sensitive enough accelerometer in a watch I think you could get there without finger involved. Position, rotation, direction of movement, velocity, acceleration, pitch, yaw, etc. Marry that with inconspicuous google glass type technology that gives you forward perceived visuals, and a virtual user interface tied to the accelerometer, that’s the ticket!
At some point the interface is irrelevant, because your environment will be saturated with potential interface options, and you’ll just choose the one that’s most convenient at that moment. Driving? HUD projected on the windshield and voice. Walking? A small screen you carry in your pocket. At work? A giant display and ergonomic keyboard. And carrying around the processor in your pocket won’t be necessary, all you need is a high bandwidth connection to whatever processing power you want. And so your phone shrinks to a radio and a screen of whatever size fits in your pocket, and you only use it when nothing else is around.