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This Seems Like Good News
Here’s a chart from tech investor and journalist Benedict Evans I came across:
And here’s why I think it’s good news, aside from the magnificent progress of five billion people being able to ask to join their professional network on LinkedIn. Smartphones are individual, personal, and powerful. Smartphones will drive — and are driving — the move to distributed and personalized real-life services, from small things like commuting to work and buying food, to bigger things like monitoring your health and teaching new skills.
Smartphones are conservative, because they liberate the individual. And what’s more, they empower the individual to make choices, rate services, talk back; all of the things top-down, Bernie-Sanders-style government won’t allow.
This is an imperfect phrase — would be happy to hear an improvement — but one of the ways we can describe, to people who are genuinely curious, the difference between being a conservative and being a liberal might be to say that we’re the Smartphone party and they’re the Post Office party.
Published in Culture, Science & Technology
I agree with the idea and commend Apple for their encryption technology. We decided long ago that the rights and liberty outweighed the intrusiveness of the state even in the name of some faux security.
One thing important to consider in the chart is that smart phones and to a lesser degree touch screen tablets are not good or efficient for creating content. PC’s still play a vital role in creating the content that is consumed via mobile platforms.
This calls for a Ricochet app: for the Smartphone Party.
Since the idea of having instant pornography in my pocket doesn’t particularly appeal to me, I guess you can go ahead and start the revolution without me. I don’t know what all this “empowerment” involves, but based on watching people endlessly and vacantly stare into their phones, I would call this more of a zombie apocalypse.
I don’t know if your logic holds. Individuals currently already have enough communication. What the Smartphone does is increase the speed of access to communication. Is that a game changer in terms of freedom and ideology? It doesn’t strike me as such. With all the communication we have now, we are still getting the Bernie Sanders’ generation, countries are still reducing freedom of speech, and Islamic terrorists still convince Muslims to join their archaic organizations. Communication isn’t all it’s stacked up to be. If anything it becomes a single point of control by a repressive state.
As a slight aside, there is a wireless provider called Patriot Mobile that supports conservative causes, not Planned Parenthood, etc., as the large providers do. They use the same networks, and the coverage is very good, as are their prices.
In less industrially advanced societies, the smartphone could be miraculous for political change. It is an amazing tool. As a friend of mine said, “I have the whole world at my fingertips.” Fine, but I don’t really want the whole world at my fingertips all the time.
The smartphone is a tool of individualism, I agree. But too much of anything ultimately leads to the collapse of the very necessary structures that surround it, and you’re left with something most unpleasant.
Since the iPhone’s debut in 2007, I have seen a total transformation in the way most people communicate with each other. It is the blending of the virtual with the real, and the virtual can never ben real. If people knew this, it might not be such a problem, but…
I’m holding out as long as I can:
http://time.com/3318573/flip-phones-millennials-iphone6/
When you’re talking about people going from no access to a computer/internet, yeah, this is a big deal. At least in the near term, the desire by many people in the First World to have the latest hi-tech phone is going to drive down the cost of older, but still powerful smart phones that will become accessible to people in underdeveloped countries.
5 billion people with a smart phone. And not one of ’em will answer when I call.
I’m afraid I won’t be one of the 5 billion.
Buy Candy Crush stock now!
I read the other day that in the near future, the number of people in India who use mobile data (either on a smartphone or tablet) will outnumber all of the people in the United States. That’s insane.
It is good news and the growth/application of mobile technology to transfer information and funds in undeveloped areas of world is astounding:
http://www.mobilepaymentstoday.com/articles/top-3-benefits-of-mobile-payments-in-africa/
Is it good news? That’s the thing about the future, we can’t know. It might be better if we were educating our kids and instilling some discernment to help them wade through the flood of bits. But who knows, maybe that would make them even more dangerous.
No, but half of them are bumping into me on the sidewalk or walking out into traffic.
I’m doing that. Aren’t you doing that?
Rob,
I certainly agree with the premise of the post that personal technology is a great boost to the conservative point of view. However, I would comment on this particular prediction.
We are talking about 5 billion people planet wide instantaneously connected to the internet. Most of those smartphones will be more powerful than what is out now. The latest generation of 5-6″ phones really are far more than a phone. These are powerful micro tablets with full tablet capable operating systems. Anyone capable of tapping into this market will experience a tidal wave of business.
Far out.
Regards,
Jim
There’s a great irony here, in that the GOP is stereotyped as the party of old, white fuddy-duddies and the Democrats are full of young, hip foodies who use Instagram.
Good news for this guy:
To all the naysayers: the smart phone will have much bigger impacts in the third-world than it will in advanced economies. Even older cell-phone technology has already greatly impacted poor farmers and fishermen in the third world as it gave them instant access to market information. Do they bring their goods to the nearest market, or do they go 10 miles down the road and get 20% higher prices?
In addition, the smartphone is going to be deadly to totalitarian regimes as more and more people have access to unfiltered information.
I couldn’t help but to think of this in terms of narrow-casting. The proliferation of smartphones and video on demand has exploded the number of outlets and types of content available to us all.
Lefties lament this because they see it as leading to further polarization (and a democratization of a message they once controlled). We on the right see it as Rob described, as a personal and liberating development.
It’s no wonder people love and appreciate their smartphones, they are an oasis of individuality in an ever expanding desert of collectivism. After all, you wouldn’t trust anyone to arrange your icons or create your playlists.
I am saddened by the oft-repeated belief that smartphones, or technology in general, contribute only to the degradation of society. There is an iphone app that allows parents in rural India to track the vaccines that have been administered to their toddlers. Sure, plenty of Americans bumble through life staring at a vacant screen, but that is hardly the fault of technology alone. You are free to sit out on the revolution if you so choose. But please don’t tell me that iphones are only useful for watching porn.
I don’t blame the technology. I blame the people. But you make my point for me pretty well. Parents who can’t keep track of their toddlers’ vaccines without the computing power that would have barely fit in a football stadium at the time those vaccines were invented? Jeez.
When we were little, we had shot records on cards.