A Narrow Miss
Ashley‘s employer had a deal on getting a cell phone from Verizon Wireless and I was almost thinking about getting a cell phone. Note that I said almost.
Anyone who knows me well knows that I avoid cell phones like the plague. I don’t know why, but I seem to have a pathological aversion to them – despite being a blabbermouth, I can’t seem to stand talking on the phone. And the prospect of having a phone on my person at all times strikes me to be about as appealing an accessory as a cyanide tooth. When I’m away from the office or the apartment, I’m gone – I may be perpetually connected at home or at work via my laptop, but once I step away from the computer, I don’t want to be interrupted.
Cell phones come with a bunch of grief that just doesn’t interest me at this point. It requires a whole new level of dedication to gathering archaic and esoteric information (and I’m a technologist – I breathe pure, uncut archaic and esoteric information): Who are the providers? Where do they have the best coverage? How many free minutes do you get with a particular plan’s provider? The average American’s knowledge of carriers’ networks and capabilities is second only to their knowledge of prescription pharmaceuticals.
But I’m a geek, right? Shouldn’t I want one of these devices? Why would I want to cause Russell Beattie to have another aneurysm?
The short answer? The current generation of cell phones, frankly, simultaneous suck, lick, and blow, if such an action is actually physically possible. The cameras in them are low resolution, their memory is limited, and the network connectivity is constrained. And getting your data on or off the phone usually involves gymnastics to avoid going through your provider’s tollbooth to the outside world and pay through the nose.
A couple months ago, I saw a great idea: a virtual privacy machine that fits on a USB drive. The idea is that you can carry all your applications and data with you wherever you go. Simply plugging the USB drive into a standard Windows or Linux machine will boot up a private virtual machine onto which you keep everything you regularly use. But why stop there? Imagine something like this integrated into your Bluetooth-enabled cell phone – you put down your cell phone on your desk at work and instantly all your applications and data are mapped and available on your desktop machine. Hell, if the cell phone processor were powerful enough perhaps you wouldn’t even need a desktop machine – just a Bluetooth monitor, keyboard and mouse. It’s not like you really need a killer amount of processing power to do email, surf the web and create Office documents.
Now if you take that device, slap 100GB of memory in it, bolt on a four-megapixel camera on top, and package it in something the size of the Hiptop, then I might be interested. But not because it’s a cell phone.
The concept is known as an Information Cloud. Mike Kuniavsky talks about it http://www.orangecone.com/archives/000109.html along with a link to another article http://www.fxpal.com/publications/FXPAL-PR-04-273.pdf
Jun Rekimoto, of Sony Research, talked about a device that accessed a central repository such that all you were carrying was an ID and you could use any enabled devices to access data. For example, any Sony TV could be used to display your photo album or as you stated, retrieving docs in an internet cafe.
I too was rabidly anti-cellphone until I started working at Nokia and they gave me one. There are definite advantages. When I’m at work and I want to take calls, it’s on, albeit with a single inoffensive quiet ring. When I’m away and I don’t want to take calls, it’s silent or off. So far so good.
When I want to make a call, I have a huge list of people’s numbers, I have a list of calls that I missed and I don’t have to hunt for the endangered species pay phone. So far so good.
Meeting somebody in an area with few defined landmarks or an area that neither of you know too well? Piece of cake.
There are other toys that I sometimes use like having a calendar and todo list so I actually remember the things that I usually forget. It has a camera which I don’t really use. They can bring them up to 100 megapixels and they will still be crap because quality pictures come from quality lenses with large light gathering capacity, which runs directly counter to miniaturization. Oh well.
My advice? Get something cheap and make it silent. All of the advantages, none of the disadvantages, except for cancer and other unproven biorisks. Limit your usage and you’ll be fine (you do eat vegetables, don’t you?)
As far as your mobile device idea goes, it’s on a lot of people’s minds and it’s probably not far off. It’s just the answer to the “what now?” after digital convergence happens. Give it 5 years.