Future Phone

June 24, 2007 · Comments

Phone Futures I just read a great article by Bruce Sterling that’s so new it’s not even on the Wired Magazine site. A lot of the future Sterling envisioned matched my views and thoughts. For instance, he talked about a mobile computer that replaced laptops and the like, very much a Neuromancer “deck”. It got me thinking of services I want sooner than later.

Contact Proximity Services

I want my mobile deck to know that Chris Heuer and Eric Rice are in the same airport as me, at different gates, and I want it to warm up my “buddy list” to reflect it. I want the deck to know I want to ring Chris Heuer, and that I have 5 active email threads with Eric, and then ask me if I want to do it.

Travelers All

Similarly, I want the phone to know I’m in Stockholm, and accept only my A+B-list people from my contact list, and not the credit card company looking for my late payment. I want the deck to know I’m at O’Hare, and ring up the Chicago crew to let them know (Dopplr in real time).

I want to leave radio graffiti, such that you’re coming through the same airport as me, and you read my added tags about the “cereal bar” stand (pricey, slowservice), and my virtual networking business card swap (I’m heading to Gnomedex. Are you? Get in touch!)

Yelp Aware Settings

I want the deck to Yelp the surroundings and pop up the most likely choices for food, beverages, etc, based on the database of my preferences matched to the reviews. And I want the phone to cross-ref phone numbers or website addresses that let me make reservations, if they’re needed, while prepping to dump maps and GPS coordinates without me asking.

Oh, and apply all my various discounts, price-compare, and thread this all up.

Virtual Portal Services

Accepting that some kind of virtual life is forthcoming, perhaps Second Life 3.0, but that I might not always be on a powerful enough deck to rez in, I want a portal into the world, like a floating head that comes out as a VoIP/IM/Camera on my side, and translates to a presence placeholder in-world. And I want it to slide across whatever virtual worlds I subscribe to, and not just one.

Tesla Coils

I want wireless deck power-ups, such that when I’m in an area that offers free travel-juice, I want them to load me up with power. Sure, send me the free bluetooth spam that says, “Your deck powered by Philips!” Perfect! I love that, because it means I’ll be ready to go. (This one’s not *yet* ready to go, but MIT announced wireless electrical transfer a week or two ago).

Keys and Wallet

Sterling talks about this, too. I want my deck to be my keys and my wallet. Why bother carrying around a magnetic card when I can beam a point-of-sale from encrypted Bluetooth (or some 3rd gen product)? Ditto my keys, my frequent flier clubs, my hotel room keys, tickets to movies, and whatever else is a transient transaction.

Game System

Why isn’t my deck (my N900, say?) synonymous with my XBOX-GO! or my PS4Now? Sure, I might have to rock the Moto headset with earbuds and jawbone mic to get the full experience, but why not? My new deck will have mercury and six-way gyro awareness.

Thing Is, It’s All Mostly Here

Very little of what I wrote about above doesn’t exist. It just doesn’t really exist neatly and cleanly in the same place. People smarter than me will come up with the reasons why, or the explanations for the shortcomings in the tech. But it’s close. VoIP providers could be working on some of this. Handset vendors could pick up even more of their dominance, turning carriers into big-dumb-pipe vendors even more than already. Content flows like manna, and we’re all happy, right?

What Did I Miss?

That’s my future phone/deck. What would yours have that I missed in my little fantasy?

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  • And I look at all this and wonder (in addition to how cool would that be)...how do we secure it so that the wallet isn't lifted, and a restaurant tagging or free power-up doesn't infect your system and make it unreliable or inaccurate.
    I still feel like security needs a paradigm shift, but other than sensing the edges of it I don't see it yet - and that makes the securing of the deck hard. Especially because the security should be transparent to the user, yet still protect them. And if it isn't designed in from the beginning, that transparency becomes very hard to do.
  • beckymccray
    Oh, and I want a keyboard, and not for thumbs! The old Sharp Wizard OZ got close to this. HP did some, also.

    So that means we need choice in form factors, to meet different desires of different users.
  • You missed something in your fantasy. When you block your credit card company from contacting you about your late payment they'll have a few options. What's to stop them from being connected to other businesses/industries the same way we as consumers are connected via our chatty social networks? Through an agreement with your communications carrier they'll know you're in Stockholm and want to have a word with you before you use your account with them to check-in to your hotel.

    Your insurance company gets pinged of your new whereabouts, also. Oops, you're in Sweden...a country currently on their restricted list due to the recent ethnic violence breaking out there. Don't get hurt while visiting 'cause they just limited your coverage for knowingly entering an area of civil unrest.

    Oops...someone just stole your deck. Your keys, credit, and identity are gone. Cash? Jack, no one accepts cash anymore. What are you, a criminal? Hey, what are you doing without a deck? What are you hiding? Officer, hold this terrorist for questioning!!

    Ok, perhaps a bit too far. :-) After all that I, also, look forward to the day I can carry my digital self around with me. It'll need huge leaps in AI and bandwidth transmission, and I hope we live to see it.

    However, we tend to make these predictions given the current state of our societies as they are today, no? We assume that our culture will stay the same even though our tools for culture transmission will evolve. It's a bit like wishing for the power of a automatic machine gun during the Old West days. You see Gatlin guns on the horizon and know you'll be powerful, indeed. However, when our society actually got to the point where anyone could get their hands on a machine gun the advantage was nullified 'cause everyone had them...and not long after other folks had nukes.

    Just remember, soon everyone will have a deck. Everyone.
  • Killer points, Jim. Killer. You're right. I presume culture limps along. But you're right. A phone that knows where I am is a phone that tells my insurance company how fast I'm driving. It's a phone that tells the boss I'm at the beach and not at the meeting. Privacy and law and security and all kinds of other things have to be taken into account.

    But won't they? Won't we find our way there?
  • "But won’t they? Won’t we find our way there?"

    Yeppers. Cultures evolve. Over the past few years I've enjoyed reading more about history than anything else. I ask myself if anyone alive 200 years ago successfully envisioned the world of today in anything but the broadest concepts, and my answer is always no way.

    The societies that exist when we're using decks will not hold the same feelings toward corporations or advertising or privacy that we do now and we may not have to work around them.

    For a good perspective here rent the PBS documentary Horatio's Drive and compare the US of 100 years ago with today's ingrained car culture. Pretty wild!

    http://www.pbs.org/horatio/
  • Need to add on the fly currency conversion. Actual budgeting of your travel expenses, business expenses and personal expenses as you make purchases. (No receipts to sort).

    Update credit card companies that you are in a new country and it's not credit card fraud when its you going through customs at the border.

    In terms of the "but everyone knows where you are" stuff- They already do. We have to make it okay for someone performing well on the job, for working long hours when needed, to also have the freedom to sneak out to the movies in the middle of a Tuesday afternoon- if only to recharge their batteries and come back to work refreshed and energized, not worried someone will find out and dock them for it.

    We need to develop some rough boundary between work and play,(public and private) and work for employers who know you are the best employee when the line between work and play is not distinguishable. When your play- ie meeting people for dinner, seeing friends- also means talking about your work, and in this age of hyper-connectedness, it's easy for this to become a business opportunity or networking opportunity for the future.
  • I still think we need a lighter and a rasor to shave inside my qtek...still missing basic needings, and maybe a swiss knife :-)
  • LEMills
    Great ideas, Chris, but no amount of cool kit will be of use if the websites and apps restrict access through it.

    Case in point: With no DSL access this weekend, I tried to get some work done through my Treo's web browser. Specifically, I wanted to change parts of my Facebook profile. The mobile version of the profile on Facebook is pretty much read-only, with very few exceptions. I only succeeded in making changes on mine by searching for the Facebook blog site, signing in through there, and NEVER requesting the 'Home' page (which I learned took me back into the mobile version immediately).

    I was admonished by Facebook that I had to make profile changes on a computer. And so what was I holding in my hand? I'd call it a computer that just happened to have a phone in it. All I can say is "smarten up"!
    -LEMills
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