Your iPod Is Your Cell Phone Is Your PDA Is Your Life
New Scientist reported a few days ago that Motorola’s new E1060 mobile phone will come preloaded with Apple’s iTunes software. This is a fine example of convergence, something my too-enthusiastic lecturer in K201 Business Computers talked about all the time. The basic idea is that eventually all electronic gadgets will do everything all the others do. And so, for instance, iPods have become digital cameras, PDAs have become cell phones, cell phones have become Internet devices, and digital cameras are soon to become GPS locators. GPS locators, presumably, will become coffeemakers.
By the end of the year, New Scientist speculates, cell phones will come equipped with hard drives. (Motorola’s E1060 and similar devices will use Flash cards.) Toshiba has already designed a two-gigabyte, 2.1 centimeter drive “designed specifically for cell phones.” Using third-generation (3G) communications technology, the news service reports, phones will be able to download mp3s at 400kb/s, or theoretically one song about every eight seconds.
So by the end of 2005, the iPod and the iPod Mini and the iPod flash and all the others will be obsolete already. The real hipsters will have moved on. What, then, will 2006 bring? And 2007? Brad DeLong predicted some time ago in Wired that by 2012, terabyte–terabyte!–hard drives will cost less than $100; in my personal computer planning, I’ve already determined that I may well need two of those discs, because at that point I’ll have started to treat video files the way I already treat my 2,895 mp3s (13.9 GB, 8.3 days): As an integral part of my computing lifestyle. If I’m carting around eight or nine hundred gigs of Star Trek episodes and Wong Kar Wai films, then that’s just the way it’ll have to be.
And by 2020, I fully expect to have all of that on my watch, which will also make a killer cappucino.
10 Responses to “Your iPod Is Your Cell Phone Is Your PDA Is Your Life”
It’s interesting how I can read the title to any given ITA post and know immediately who the author was. This one had “Paul Musgrave” written all over it.
Let me play devil’s advocate, and suggest that convergence is a very bad idea: Imagine that all of our kitchen appliances were merged into one. The toaster is the coffee maker is the microwave is the fridge is the dishwasher is the stove is the oven.
What do you do when the damn thing breaks? There is a reason for specialization; it is not merely an artifact of our technological limits.
“What do you do when the damn thing breaks?”
Ah, Jason, you should know the answer to this: You buy a new one, with the wealth capitalism has given you!
I’m more concerned about what happens when I misplace my 20-terabyte watch….
…and by 2025, I expect it will be implanted directly into my brain. Probably everything, not just the coffee.
While all of these convergi are possible, it’s going to be the lack of an elegant human interface that will keep them from really catching on. Which is why, as my media options get broader, I have to keep adding more remote controls to my coffee table. And why drilling down through menus on a cellphone/PDA/whatever, or getting my fat fingers to work on a micro-keyboard, is more frustrating than time-saving.
Get yourself a good fountain pen too.
I try to avoid convergence with electrical equipment for more or less Jason’s reason. It’s cheaper to replace components than a large device.
Take, for instance, the case of the Swiss Army Knife with a jump drive inside. Now, that sounds cool, and someone who knows me well nearly got me one for Christmas. But I use Swiss Army Knives for all sorts of things, some of which may involve using a hammer on the knife. Those aren’t conditions in which a jump drive thrives.
Great post…
I was WAY ahead of the game on this one. I’ve been using my refrigerator as a PDA and a radar detector for years.
Paul,
I could always buy a new one, but in the meantime, while I wait for it to arrive, I am without coffee, clean dishes, warm food, et cetera. And no amount of wealth is going to make up for it.
Charlie also has a good point, I think, about the need for elegant, easy-to-understand user interfaces. This is why the iPod has been so successful, even though it essentially only does one thing.
I’ll address these issues more fully, but for now let me just point out that iPods are capable of doing more than just playing music: They’re also calendars, file transportation devices, cameras, and microphones. And the New Sci article linked in the post suggests that we shouldn’t view the iPod as the wave of the future–rather, mp3 players are like the mitochondria about to be assimilated by the eukaryotes that are cell phones, if I may use a tortured analogy.
They’re also calendars, file transportation devices, cameras, and microphones.
No one I know uses the calendar function, few use it as a external HD (even I havent done that), and the latter two require external add-ons.
Im also in the divergence rather than convergence camp when it comes to my toys. I could be moved by PDA-eque phone, but I havent seen one that actually works well…