I'm just old enough to have experienced life without cellphones and the internet, and now I have the internet on my cellphone. Yes, I still complain. It's slow, the screen is small, there's no Flash, etc. But every now and then I really do step back and recall how amazing technology is.
Recently, my brother-in-law (who's from a different country) came to visit. He saw the small differences that having the internet in your pocket can make - get a map of downtown right away, figure out the best route to that lot you parked on, figure out the phone number and closing time of that restaurant two blocks away, find out that it's not going to snow tomorrow so you can plan accordingly, all while having coffee at some corner store.
Is it life changing? No. But it's that incremental step that just makes some things a little bit easier, a bit more convenient.
Yes, the goal posts keep moving. And all of us here want to create the next thing that moves it just a bit more once again.
In many places, these same technologies are lifechanging. Here's an "I love technology. I love capitalism. I love technocapitalism" story for you: many 3rd world fishermen lead a close to subsistence existence by catching fish and then having to take it to market. Market conditions at towns A, B, and C vary on a day to day basis. If you pick the wrong town to deliver your catch to, you lose out on earnings and some other town loses out on cheap fish. In the worst case, you may be unable to sell your fish at all, in which case the fish rot while someone else starves.
But now, you have a cell phone.
So you can call ahead to towns A, B, and C and ask them "Hey, what is the going price for fish today?" Then you head to the one that reported the highest price. Problem solved.
This means that you can sell your catch, every day, and never go home to the family empty handed. It also means that no one ever goes to the market and comes home saying "Sorry kids, no fish today."
All because of a little technical doohickey that is practically disposable in the Western world these days.
I should clarify, then, that my statement was specific to getting the internet on my cellphone, not about the cellphone itself. The scenario I specifically cited was how having access to the web from whereever I may be may not have changed my life, but it is an incremental improvement.
I have no doubt about the life changing effect of cellphones. Where I come from, cellphones fulfilled, and exceeded, the promise that landlines failed to meet.
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I'm just old enough to have experienced life without cellphones and the internet, and now I have the internet on my cellphone. Yes, I still complain. It's slow, the screen is small, there's no Flash, etc. But every now and then I really do step back and recall how amazing technology is.
Recently, my brother-in-law (who's from a different country) came to visit. He saw the small differences that having the internet in your pocket can make - get a map of downtown right away, figure out the best route to that lot you parked on, figure out the phone number and closing time of that restaurant two blocks away, find out that it's not going to snow tomorrow so you can plan accordingly, all while having coffee at some corner store.
Is it life changing? No. But it's that incremental step that just makes some things a little bit easier, a bit more convenient.
Yes, the goal posts keep moving. And all of us here want to create the next thing that moves it just a bit more once again.
Is it life changing? No.
In many places, these same technologies are lifechanging. Here's an "I love technology. I love capitalism. I love technocapitalism" story for you: many 3rd world fishermen lead a close to subsistence existence by catching fish and then having to take it to market. Market conditions at towns A, B, and C vary on a day to day basis. If you pick the wrong town to deliver your catch to, you lose out on earnings and some other town loses out on cheap fish. In the worst case, you may be unable to sell your fish at all, in which case the fish rot while someone else starves.
But now, you have a cell phone.
So you can call ahead to towns A, B, and C and ask them "Hey, what is the going price for fish today?" Then you head to the one that reported the highest price. Problem solved.
This means that you can sell your catch, every day, and never go home to the family empty handed. It also means that no one ever goes to the market and comes home saying "Sorry kids, no fish today."
All because of a little technical doohickey that is practically disposable in the Western world these days.
http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/qjec.122.3.8...
I should clarify, then, that my statement was specific to getting the internet on my cellphone, not about the cellphone itself. The scenario I specifically cited was how having access to the web from whereever I may be may not have changed my life, but it is an incremental improvement. I have no doubt about the life changing effect of cellphones. Where I come from, cellphones fulfilled, and exceeded, the promise that landlines failed to meet.