There have been numerous articles about how technology has changed and is continuing to change the world. I think it is the internet which has brought about the changes by putting in place the infrastructure and setting in motion the disruption of many industries and lifestyles . It has totally changed the publishing, retail , travel and the sex industry .It has also transformed the entire information technology industry through software as a service and now the cloud based services.We are now entering phase two with the drop in prices of the smart mobile phones and the supporting services including the use of apps. On a individual basis, I do not think anything has the changed our lives as much as the mobile phone - both for good and bad.
I remember when the first Motorola mobile phone was introduced to Hong Kong . It was sold for about Forty Thousand Hong Kong Dollars.The traders in the bank were among the first to acquire them and it was the senior guys in the dealing room who used to strut around with them. I remember going to lunch with my bosses and they would line up these brick sized contraptions reaching a height of almost fifteen inches including the antenna and weighing a a few pounds. It was a status symbol.
My life began changing when the Blackberry arrived. At Citibank my job required me to frequently travel across Asia and I had to lug around a heavy lap top. Reaching the hotel I then spend the next hour or so responding to emails. With the Blackberry I finished with the responses by the time I reached the hotel. With the decline in prices of the phone and the user services the mobile phone has become an indispensable item. Even though I am now retired I feel naked without it. Short of the bathroom I carry the damn thing around with me almost everywhere. My wife asks me why -" in case the children call ".
However I am not the only one - increasingly I notice that the phones have become an extension of the house maid's ears and mouth during their waking hours. When we go for our walks regardless of the time we see our fellow walkers chatting away. I constantly wonder what is it that they have to say that they can continue talking non-stop for hours ?
With the coming of the 3G and being able to access the internet on the go it has definitely increased the use of the mobile phone. I remember taking to the CFO of a Hong Kong based company which was about to introduce 3 G services on their network in the United Kingdom. He mentioned that based on a survey they had done, they expected the maximum usage would come from users for gambling and watching pornography.However I am sure that the mobile phone is being used in ways which he could not have imagined .
When the phones started coming out with a camera, my initial reaction was that it was a dumb idea. Now that it has been around for more than ten years I have to confess that I was wrong. It is a handy tool and convenient for shopping or trying to remember a particular flower or tree or some setting, not to mention taking photographs. Taking selfies appears to be very popular with politicians including President Obama and Prime Minister Modi. It is also very handy in using as evidence and identifying the perpetrator.In India almost every day the television shows clips of "stings" showing the mis-deeds of politicians and policemen or bureaucrats. Unfortunately it can also be misused. A few years ago a Delhi teenager took a photograph of his girlfriend while having sex and circulating it to his friends.It went viral and ruined the young girl's life.
Over the last few years with the introduction of the app based services we are now entering the second phase of industry disruption. The Uber app has turned the city based taxi services on its head. It enables the taxi owner to make a lot more money. It enables the user to get a taxi when needed.
According to a friend in Germany where these services are legal, there is a Uber copy cat for call
girls. In India some online shopping sites have blocked desk top based orders and now accept only
mobile based orders. Appears to be a bit extreme but perhaps they know something which I do not.
With the mobile phone the future is now here through the use of apps such Skype, Face Time and Whatsapp. It has become a boon for the self employed whether it is the plumber or the electrician or the part time cleaning lady. With the help of applications such as Whatsapp, they are able to send out marketing pitches or communicate free of cost or talk to their friends and relatives in their villages and overseas. It has certainly reduced our long distance calling bills . The added bonus is that you can see them as well . Now the phone is replacing the desktop.You see young people looking at their tablet sized phone in the elevators and on the Metro sending out email or even working spread sheets. As has been said often enough your average mobile phone now has the same amount of computing power which was used to send Neil Armstrong to the moon.
The financial industry certainly on the retail banking side is seeing a lot of development in terms of online payments. Vodafone was one of the first to start mobile transfers through their MPesa services in East Africa. In Kenya where it all started individuals use it to buy a single banana from a street vendor.
The mobile phone started out big then started to shrink and now has been gradually increasing again. However with the 3 G and now 4 G your phone is not just a communication device. It is your computer, your entertainment center ( audio and video ) , your credit card, your camera, your digital diary, your novel, your prayer book, your health monitor and the list goes on. Previously when you were traveling you had to carry these items separately. Now its just one device which fits into your pocket - almost.
The next item in my mind which is due for extinction is likely to be the credit card. With biometric
identification now becoming more reliable there is no need to carry around a card with a magnetic strip or a chip and having to remember a personal identification number.
What has been holding back the development is the slow service. 3G and now 4G is supposed to be faster but the problem is the service providers never deliver the speed which they promise. Apparently Korea is the most advanced and its internet allows you to download entire movies within seconds. IBM has just developed a processor chip which is going to be four times faster than the fastest chip presently available.
Not sure whether this is suitable for mobile phones, but I am sure that it will be a matter of time before you will see a mobile version which will give you even greater computing power in your hands. The question is what will you do with it ? Will it be like the video player you used to have? We all were quick to buy the advanced versions which came loaded with features allowing you to record a year in advance, it tracked what programs you liked and then automatically recorded similar programs, but most of us used only three or four features - play,record, fast forward or rewind.
This time around the mobile phone designers have been smart in a number of ways. Google, Firefox and now being followed by others started offering their operating systems for free. You do not have to pay royalties which reduced the costs. Secondly their architecture welcomes the use of apps by third parties which allows the users to play games, make free video and audio calls, check the weather, check your map for directions,send you notices whether your son's flight is arriving on time and so on. The beauty of it all is that even for non-technological savvy persons like myself I can use a lot of these apps. However with all the features and the thousand of apps which are available I wonder if the mobile phone is going the video player way to be replaced by another device ?
I remember when the first Motorola mobile phone was introduced to Hong Kong . It was sold for about Forty Thousand Hong Kong Dollars.The traders in the bank were among the first to acquire them and it was the senior guys in the dealing room who used to strut around with them. I remember going to lunch with my bosses and they would line up these brick sized contraptions reaching a height of almost fifteen inches including the antenna and weighing a a few pounds. It was a status symbol.
My life began changing when the Blackberry arrived. At Citibank my job required me to frequently travel across Asia and I had to lug around a heavy lap top. Reaching the hotel I then spend the next hour or so responding to emails. With the Blackberry I finished with the responses by the time I reached the hotel. With the decline in prices of the phone and the user services the mobile phone has become an indispensable item. Even though I am now retired I feel naked without it. Short of the bathroom I carry the damn thing around with me almost everywhere. My wife asks me why -" in case the children call ".
However I am not the only one - increasingly I notice that the phones have become an extension of the house maid's ears and mouth during their waking hours. When we go for our walks regardless of the time we see our fellow walkers chatting away. I constantly wonder what is it that they have to say that they can continue talking non-stop for hours ?
With the coming of the 3G and being able to access the internet on the go it has definitely increased the use of the mobile phone. I remember taking to the CFO of a Hong Kong based company which was about to introduce 3 G services on their network in the United Kingdom. He mentioned that based on a survey they had done, they expected the maximum usage would come from users for gambling and watching pornography.However I am sure that the mobile phone is being used in ways which he could not have imagined .
When the phones started coming out with a camera, my initial reaction was that it was a dumb idea. Now that it has been around for more than ten years I have to confess that I was wrong. It is a handy tool and convenient for shopping or trying to remember a particular flower or tree or some setting, not to mention taking photographs. Taking selfies appears to be very popular with politicians including President Obama and Prime Minister Modi. It is also very handy in using as evidence and identifying the perpetrator.In India almost every day the television shows clips of "stings" showing the mis-deeds of politicians and policemen or bureaucrats. Unfortunately it can also be misused. A few years ago a Delhi teenager took a photograph of his girlfriend while having sex and circulating it to his friends.It went viral and ruined the young girl's life.
Over the last few years with the introduction of the app based services we are now entering the second phase of industry disruption. The Uber app has turned the city based taxi services on its head. It enables the taxi owner to make a lot more money. It enables the user to get a taxi when needed.
According to a friend in Germany where these services are legal, there is a Uber copy cat for call
girls. In India some online shopping sites have blocked desk top based orders and now accept only
mobile based orders. Appears to be a bit extreme but perhaps they know something which I do not.
With the mobile phone the future is now here through the use of apps such Skype, Face Time and Whatsapp. It has become a boon for the self employed whether it is the plumber or the electrician or the part time cleaning lady. With the help of applications such as Whatsapp, they are able to send out marketing pitches or communicate free of cost or talk to their friends and relatives in their villages and overseas. It has certainly reduced our long distance calling bills . The added bonus is that you can see them as well . Now the phone is replacing the desktop.You see young people looking at their tablet sized phone in the elevators and on the Metro sending out email or even working spread sheets. As has been said often enough your average mobile phone now has the same amount of computing power which was used to send Neil Armstrong to the moon.
The financial industry certainly on the retail banking side is seeing a lot of development in terms of online payments. Vodafone was one of the first to start mobile transfers through their MPesa services in East Africa. In Kenya where it all started individuals use it to buy a single banana from a street vendor.
The mobile phone started out big then started to shrink and now has been gradually increasing again. However with the 3 G and now 4 G your phone is not just a communication device. It is your computer, your entertainment center ( audio and video ) , your credit card, your camera, your digital diary, your novel, your prayer book, your health monitor and the list goes on. Previously when you were traveling you had to carry these items separately. Now its just one device which fits into your pocket - almost.
The next item in my mind which is due for extinction is likely to be the credit card. With biometric
identification now becoming more reliable there is no need to carry around a card with a magnetic strip or a chip and having to remember a personal identification number.
What has been holding back the development is the slow service. 3G and now 4G is supposed to be faster but the problem is the service providers never deliver the speed which they promise. Apparently Korea is the most advanced and its internet allows you to download entire movies within seconds. IBM has just developed a processor chip which is going to be four times faster than the fastest chip presently available.
Not sure whether this is suitable for mobile phones, but I am sure that it will be a matter of time before you will see a mobile version which will give you even greater computing power in your hands. The question is what will you do with it ? Will it be like the video player you used to have? We all were quick to buy the advanced versions which came loaded with features allowing you to record a year in advance, it tracked what programs you liked and then automatically recorded similar programs, but most of us used only three or four features - play,record, fast forward or rewind.
This time around the mobile phone designers have been smart in a number of ways. Google, Firefox and now being followed by others started offering their operating systems for free. You do not have to pay royalties which reduced the costs. Secondly their architecture welcomes the use of apps by third parties which allows the users to play games, make free video and audio calls, check the weather, check your map for directions,send you notices whether your son's flight is arriving on time and so on. The beauty of it all is that even for non-technological savvy persons like myself I can use a lot of these apps. However with all the features and the thousand of apps which are available I wonder if the mobile phone is going the video player way to be replaced by another device ?
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