By Peter Cochrane, 22 November 2007 15:55
COMMENT
Written at London Heathrow airport and dispatched to silicon.com from a hotel in Nice, France, via a free wi-fi service offering serious bandwidth
Not so long ago all we had was the telephone, radio and TV. Today we also have the internet, mobiles, email, text, instant messaging and social networks. So here is a simple question: if you could have only four of those nine facilities, which of them would you be prepared to give up?
For me the telephone, radio and TV could go instantly, without even a second thought. They occupy an insignificant part of my attention and are of ever-decreasing value.
But after that it becomes more difficult. I don't think I could live without my mobile, text messaging or the internet. What about email and social networking? Right now email wins, but social networks are coming up very fast.
Of course most youngsters are ahead of me and see instant messaging and email as so yesterday. For them social networks are the focal point of their attention.
Think for a moment about which technologies really matter to you. What's your take? And remember to consider this question again when you get video conferencing that really works.
It seems to me our technology journey has only just started and we have a long, long way to go. Like Morse code, telegrams and Telex before them, a lot of today's hot technologies will eventually fade in importance.
Comments
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1. MusicFan
Order of importance for me:-
Cant live without:-
1. Internet
2. Mobile
3. Instant Message
Can live without but might have some withdrawal symptoms:-
4. TV
5. Text Messaging
6. Myspace (not facebook)
Dont use at all:-
7. Telephone
8. Radio (by air)
2. anonymous
Peter, you are missing the point because of the milieu you live in. In truth all "technologies" /tools whatever you want to call the climb a curve to wide use and then decay to a background level and eventually may die away (paper doesn't seem to be dead yet??)
Point is that the growth curve and decay curves are longer than technorati imagine or care to notice.
You are old enough to know that IM (in a very acceptable early form!) existed and was used long ago within "mainframe" operating sytems such as IBM's VM. Similarly the pre-cursors of social networking existed long ago in less evolved forms.
It's just that the people using them today are too young to know or choose to forget, perhaps to conceal their vintage?
3. John H Woods
You guys need HD, PVR and a decent television. Only the internet is more important than TV. Anyone who tells you otherwise is simply unable to filter the 1% of pure gold (still several hours per week) from the other 99% of pure xxxx.
However the signal to noise ratio is even worse on the internet, so you have no excuse: read reliable TV reviews, record what you want to hard disk and watch it at your leisure. On a 60" 1920x1080 display. Then tell me that the internet means TV isn't necessary any more.
4. Rory Choudhuri
I think you're getting the delivery mechanism mixed up with the content. I want: video content, social interaction, information, music and enterntainment.
For video content, I don't care whether it's delivered to a television monitor, computer monitor, handheld device or anything else. What I want is the quality of the content.
For social interaction, I want to be able to keep up to date with a range of people; family, friends and business associates and colleagues. I'll use whatever technology is easiest to do that. For friends down the street, I'll saunter over to their house and talk to them; for family and friends on the other side of the world, I'll use Skype, with video if possible, or a telephone. If a web based service like Facebook or LinkedIn can enhance that experience, I'll use it. Email and IM serve their purpose, too. What I use is often dictated by where I am and what I’m doing. If you're driving, a social interaction web site isn't much use!
Information will come from various sources, some of which will be traditional organisations like the Beeb, CNN, newspapers - either on paper or RSS feeds or direct visits to web sites, plus broadcasts (see video above).
And, personally, I love radio, but that’s probably just an age thing!
5. Mark Hosey
Mobile phones. They’re a natural successor to fixed line phones. My own has a voice memo facility I use to record meetings.
Texting? Rarely use it, a complete waste of my time. I prefer phone calls. They allow much more expression with greater exchange of information in much shorter time. (When on a sports related trip to London I shared a hostel room with a number of friends. One of them was woken repeatedly during the night to reply to texts received from one of his friends. He and everyone else would have got a better nights sleep if he had just phoned his mate and held a brief conversation. It would also have been cheaper, it transpired that he had long since used up his allocation of “free” texts! What a junkie!)
E-mail. Instant gratification. Correspondence which would normally take weeks by post can be conducted from start to finish within a day.
Internet. Though the search capabilities have been absolutely ruined by Google for academic searches and it has been reduced to a glorified bill board it is still a marvellous tool for buying and selling. Christmas’s and birthdays have been made easier as I can purchase items from outlets in the home countries of the intended recipients. It’s also great for moving documents about from place to place without requiring memory sticks and CDs………. But I’ll not dwell on that point lest I embarrass some of your less tech minded readers at HMRC.
Social networks? I get the feeling they’ll go the way of hoolah hoops, yoyo’s and clackers.
You forgot laptop computers or PDAs!
For me my PDA is a must, I have a memory like a lumber room. When I get a USB port installed in the back of my head it will become an even more useful prosthetic.