There is a pervasive theme, due somewhat in part to Andreesen Horowitz’s bold statements regarding the future of mobile, that since the invention of the iPhone, mobile is eating the world and hence everything should take a mobile-first approach. This is definitely true, but this is not a good thing. I have often heard that the invention of the smart-phone is the single greatest technological leap forward.
Personally, I find this hard to accept. In fact, I find the move from land-line to mobile that happened at the turn of the millennium to be infinitely more impactful than the move from mobile phone to smart-phone. The move from mobile to smart-phone, in my opinion, is probably causing more harm than good due to its misuse.
I have a smart-phone and I do get a lot of use out of it. My top 5 use cases are as follows:
These fall in to two categories:
The key take-away for me in all these activities is being on the move, mobile. Necessary communication increases my flexibility while on the move, if I am late or trying to coordinate schedules with another person who is mobile. Responding to emails and chats can also free up time that otherwise would have been spent while not mobile replying to those messages. Finding information about places I am going, things to see or do is another way of increasing my mobility. Importantly, everything is merely a replacement for something I would have done some other way 10 years ago:
I think this is when the smart-phone is most useful - when it improves a functionality that was already in use. Perhaps this is true of all software.
Of course, there is so much you could do with your phone. After all, it is more powerful than the desktop computers we had a decade ago. But that doesn’t mean you should be doing everything you can with your phone. What did we use to do a couple decades ago on the train in the morning or waiting in line at the supermarket? Smart-phone vendors and tech-enthusiasts would have you believe it was time wasted. Time you that could have been spent viewing ads and being influenced for someone else’s profit. In actuality, that time was spent either engaged, possibly, in a live conversation with someone or lost in your thoughts and your imagination. It is true, there is a lot of this so-called “down-time,” but in reality, that down-time is where great ideas come from. Creativity, stemming from dislocated neurons firing in random directions and making strange connections. Greek philosophers, literary greats and scientists like Albert Einstein are know to have taken [long rambling walks with colleagues][einstein-walks], discussing the deep ideas of society, philosophy, physics and life. Imagine if they lived now, checking their phone every 15 seconds. Deep ideas simply do not have time to form with constant interruption and the smart-phone is a device built to disturb.
It is no doubt a great tool. But like any tool, it does not and cannot solve every problem. The problem is that nowadays, mobile is glorified as a hammer for every nail which just means you see a whole bunch of people hammering screws. Hopefully, in the future, looking ahead won’t mean looking at a crowd of people looking down.