Steve jobs was able to rise two tech revolutions: bring PC to market and reinvent the cell/smart phone!
What is the next step?
I spent some time in Paris, France, with my mom. I decided to give her this “trip gift” and got advantage of that, to clear my mind and prepare myself to make fresh stuff.
I have a lot tech friends, but the “non tech” friends like when I wrote this kind of article… with ideas about world and technologies. But it is difficult to achieve, I need to have an insight to write something useful.
So I was walking with my mom across the Paris streets, and she said: The telephone was a revolution, but the cell phone rocks!
OK, I’m more than 30yo and still able to learn with my mom.
She was right, I looked around and saw a lot of people in calls, typing… maybe use the map or another app.
And with that I started to think: what were the tech revolutions and what will be the next?
Let’s try to resume a bit, what happened with tech to achieve what we have nowadays. Lets begin with the telephone.
Revolutions from the past
Telephone
Because of the phone we can communicate properly and quick… in “real time”, breaking the geo distribution and delivery the more recent info across the globe.
In order to delivery a simple message, we don’t need to wait for horses or ships to delivery a simple mail.
Transistor
Because of this really tiny thing, we can have digital devices, microprocessors and other things that can compute, or even store data in microchips, without a big room with a couple of valves.
Definitely, it become PC a reality and also your cell phone!
PC
Ok, I quote the transistor, but Microsoft, Apple, IBM (and others) made possible the Personal Computer. That machine was able to make a revolution in the way we work, study and communicate.
Even for me, PC it is a bit strange, because, think about that: it is not a appliance, like a mixer or freezer… but a lot of families choose to have one (or more) in their houses.
Internet
The telephone was important to bring people together… talking!
The Internet is responsible to exchange data. I can send documents, moving money, provide services…
Smartphones
I skipped the cellphone, because that was just a more convenient way to talk or chat.
But the apps, mainly the way of interaction introduced by Jobs, basically kill the regular PC use. I mean, if you need to pay something, send a mail, find a job, make a video conference… you can simple do all these things with a smartphone.
Now, the next revolutions
We achieved a lot with technologies. And we saw a lot of important revolutionaries products, such as: Apple II, Excel, Windows, Intel microprocessors, iPhone… Services like Google, Facebook, Netflix, e-mails…
But with a lot achieved we rise some gaps, for instance: Power (energy) and Communication.
Yes, two topics from the past, now are “outwear”.
Basically CPUs are becoming more energy efficient (making more operations with less power), and we always find a way to send new kind of data. But we are facing challenges. So let explore them:
Energy
In my vision, battery is the weakest part of a smartphone. We’ve been experiencing a lot of “revolutions”, year after year… but not!
It is just a new case, with more lines of code inside and maybe a screen more colorful.
But nowadays the batteries poorly can hold a whole day.
So definitely we will have some real revolution with a better power or some effective way to recharge (like a WI-FI recharge).
This problem of batteries is worse than you think. For instance, if your car run out of gas, you can get a gallon and refuel in some minutes. But if your car is electric?
Communication
It is a mess, and expansive! We have 3G, 4G, WI-FI, Bluetooth… and our devices make a mix of all of this, spending money and battery.
And worse, the companies make all based on packages: So you will have a limited amount of data to traffic.
Sincerely: the communication are not available for everyone, and when it is, can work poorly, for instance: WI-FI access-point in airports, or other crowded place, simply does not work… and 3G/4G can suffer the same problem!
Sometimes you start your WhatsApp call using 4G and the call dropped, so you realize now your cell phone has a poor EDGE connection.
We need to type WI-FI password in every single new restaurant that we enter… that is such irritating and stupid.
A real shared full connection is necessary.
A global and accessible connection can become true with initiatives like Google Balloon and Facebook Aquila… But the challenge here is: a 100% connection without package limitation…
wrap up
In my vision, the next revolutions still are in who solve these Power and Communication issues. What do you think?
Spaki
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