It’s Friday evening, and as usual I’m meeting somefriends, John and Rana, for dinner at 6. In a text message, John suggestsAlborz, a Persian place I’ve never been to, located in Pac Heights. The clockstrikes 5:45 as I step into the elevator and launch the app Magic Taxi. I tapthe “Book ride” button, and the app says to expect a cab to pick me up at Wiredheadquarters in about three minutes. The driver’s name is “Raj S.” and theestimated cost of the fare is $12.
While I wait on the sidewalk for Raj to arrive, Ilaunch the Yelp app
hp dv2000 battery hp nc8430 battery to look up the address of Alborz. “1245 Van Ness Ave (betweenSutter and Hemlock).” It’s 5:48, and I look up as a cab pulls in front of me. Thatreally is pretty damn magical, I think to myself.
“Hey, Raj,” I say as I openthe car door. He looks mildly disturbed. “Can you take me to Van
Ness and Sutter please?”
“Sure thing, boss,” he says, withjust a hint of an Indian accent.
My phone buzzes. There’s a text from Rana sayingshe’ll be a few minutes late. (Typical Rana.) “No worries,” I type in response.
“So where do you work?” Rajasks.
“Oh, I write for Wired, thetechnology publication,” I chirp.
“Wired!” he says. “I loveWired! So that means you get to play with a lot of cool gadgets, huh?”“Sometimes. I mostly cover Apple, actually, so I write lots of stuff about theiPhone. It’s lots of
fun—documenting how this technology is impacting us ona big-picture level.”
Raj’s tone of voice changes. “OK—so bear with me for asecond. You’re a good guy to talk to about this.”
I hit the power button on my iPhone to put it to sleep.“Uh huh?”
“So I think it’s incrediblethat the iPhone has changed everything, and technology has done some prettyamazing things for us. But consider this: It’s making us stupider than everbefore.”
I laugh. “Go on.”
“No, really! It’s making usidiotic. We rely
on all this technology to tell us where things are, what toeat. We don’t really know how to do anything on our own anymore. We’re becoming
anti-social, self-absorbed. We have all these problemsthat we create for ourselves. Bad reception, expensive phone
Hp hstnn-ib45 battery Hp hstnn-q33c battery bills. None of itis real!”
“Now consider this,” hecontinues. “The Amish are the smartest people on the planet.” I laugh again, harder.“What?”
Raj goes on to explain that he’s currently working tobecome an assistant professor in social science at San Francisco State, and foryears he’s studied the Amish. At the age of 16, Amish teenagers, he says, aregiven the freedom to leave their community to experience our “modern world” ofsex, drugs, alcohol and high technology. It’s part of a tradition called“rumspringa,” in which Amish teens can decide whether they wish to be baptizedinto the Amish church, or to abandon the Amish life for everyday society.
“Ninety-five percent of themgo back to their Amish life,” Raj says. “You know why?”
“Well, I think it’s naturalto gravitate toward what you’re used to,” I retort.
“Sure, but what they’re usedto is a more wholesome lifestyle than what we have. These people have realhuman skills and real knowledge because they rely so little on technology. Andthey have real connections, real love and even real problems, because they’renot communicating through all these digital barricades.”
The light turns green, and we reach Van Ness andSutter.
On my iPhone I punch in a $3 tip for Raj and press the“Pay” button, and I hear my receipt printing from the cab’s machine. “Well, hey—Ican’t say I agree with you for the most part—and I’d argue with you if we hadmore time—but what you say about what we lose is pretty intriguing. I just needto think about it some more.”
“The Amish,” Raj repeats. “Really,look into it.”
I thank Raj as I shut the car
Hp pavilion dv5 battery Hp probook 4510s battery door behind me. It’s sixo’clock sharp, and I greet John inside Alborz. While we wait for Rana, I ordera cabernet and reiterate the conversation I had with Raj.
“That’s absurd bullshit,” hesays. John, a forty-one-year-old iPhone software developer, has never beengentle with his words. “There are plenty of Amish who use cellphones, sothey’re fucking hypocrites.”
I chuckle. “Clearly he’s generalizing, and if the cabride were thirty minutes longer the conversation would’ve been less silly. Butwhat we lose—that other side of the coin is certainly worth pondering on more, isn’tit?”
Indeed, for the months following that night, I spenthours and hours conversing with friends and technologists on the topic of whatwe gain and what we lose in the iPhone future. As a technology news reporterfor Wired’s website, every day I write a story about how the iPhone, and thetechnologies inspired by it, are changing our world. But why stop there? It’sfairly obvious what the iPhone and always-on gadgets can do today. The far morefascinating question is, what does it all mean going forward? How will thisphenomenon change society and business? What will our world look like in a fewyears? And perhaps even more importantly, how is this revolution reshaping eachof us individually?
It turns out the pros are about as fascinating as thecons are disturbing. The iPhone introduced the App Store, an experience whereyou can instantly download and use new apps that add to the device’scapabilities. With the tap of a download button, your iPhone can become a flute,a medical device, a high-definition radio, a guitar tuner, a police radioscanner and 150,000 other “things.” With the iPhone and the App Store, Appleunlocked what I call the anything, anytime ,anywhere future, which has far-reachingimplications for everything. If we have accessible data everywhere, the way welearn in classrooms, treat medicine, fight crime, report the news and dobusiness are all going to have to transform.
For individuals, the iPhone is turning humans intoalways-on, all-knowing beings. Even without medical training, a person with aniPhone
Hp elitebook 8530w battery HP pavilion dv2000 battery can use a first aid app to learn to treat a victim’s injuries in anurgent situation. (A near-death earthquake victim in Haiti, as a matter of fact,used a medical iPhone app to treat his wounds and, ultimately, survive.) Withthe same device, he or she can use a real-time traffic monitoring app to findthe quickest route to a destination. Data has become so intimately woven intoour lives that it’s enhancing the way we engage with physical reality. Finally,the physical and digital worlds are coalescing to turn us into the all-knowing,always-connected beings we’ve always dreamed to be. And it took just one“phone” to push the industry in this direction.
And in the world of business, the benefits forconsumers are fairly obvious. The iPhone changed our standards for what weexpect from technology, and businesses are being forced to give us more for ourmoney. We don’t want seven pieces of hardware to perform seven different tasks;we want a single gadget capable of doing anything-anytime-anywhere. Soon, itwill be impossible for manufacturers to sell single-function gadgets lacking aninternet connection, because they’ll soon be made obsolete . And duly, a largenumber of companies and industries find themselves threatened, because nearlyany dedicated single-use product can easily be replaced by a downloadable app.
But as ideal as it may sound to have anything-anytime-anywhere,it’s particularly concerning that Apple—a company famously obsessed withcontrol—is leading this revolution. Apple not only controls the manufacturingof the iPhone hardware; the company also oversees everything that appears inits App Store. Apple approves, rejects or retroactively pulls any apps it sopleases. It’s almost as if Microsoft not only sold you Windows, but also ownedevery computer
Dell vostro 1520 battery Dell studio 1555 battery and every store in which it was sold, and controlled everydeveloper that wished to sell software for the computer. That sets a troublingprecedent of censorship, which can stifle innovation and fosters conformity. Astechnology becomes more intimately woven into our lives, the implications of asingle point of control over our digital experiences are threatening creativefreedom.
On top of that, we must also consider what we give up asindividuals in exchange for the incredible perks of anything-anytime-anywhere. Inevitably,the more we immerse our personal lives into digital media, we give up privacy. Businessesmaking apps have more information about our personal lives than ever before. Also,the application of basic civil rights is not keeping up with the rapid pace ofhigh technology: Police officers, for example, have the legal right to snatchour phones and look through all our personal information without question.
Furthermore, after repeatedly sending text messagesand e-mails in between checking Facebook and hopping on phone calls, it’sworthwhile to look in the mirror and ask ourselves, “What is the i in iPhone?”That is, how am I changing as a result of being bombarded with all this data? (Iactually found myself asking this question a lot while writing this book, holedup in my office in front of a computer for a year.) Are we really gettingstupider, like Raj suggests? The answer turns out to be much more complicatedthan Raj thinks.
Make no mistake: All the aforementioned implicationsgo far above and beyond the iPhone.
Everybody is copying Apple’s
sony vgp-bps8a battery closed, verticalbusiness model in hopes of replicating the success of the iPhone. Every majorsmartphone maker has rolled out iPhone clones and app store alternatives oftheir own, and their fundamentals (i.e., vertical control) are mostly the same.Apple’s influence is even seeping outside the smartphone market. TV makers arealready sellingweb-connected televisions, including app stores, and Ford willsoon ship cars with app stores, too—all with the common goal of trappingconsumers inside their product lines.
Thanks to the iPhone, the future of business is lookingshockingly vertical. Our products will enable us to do more than they ever havebefore, as their capabilities will be expandable with the tap of a Downloadbutton. But there are consequences: censorship,digital conformity, and loss of freedom and privacy apply.
Clearly, the future of anything-anytime-anywhere isunavoidable, because it’s impacting every facet of our lives, and it’s aterrifyingly beautiful and exciting time to live. In an era where printedletters seem hopelessly limited when pitted against billions of minds postingon the internet, this book is merely my attempt to paint a realistic portraitof our future, with the help of some of the most intelligent technologythinkers, innovators and researchers I’ve interviewed throughout my career. Letus explore together what it means to be always on.
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