Welcome to our second edition of the iPhone 5 Sunday Coffee Break! This is our end-of-week chance to sit back on a Sunday morning with our coffee (or tea for our Brit readers), stop stressing about the iPhone 5, and wax poetic about some ideas and impressions about technology, lifestyle, and culture. We hope you’ll stop in and leave a comment or two.
There’s no doubt that smartphones have completely revolutionized the way people communicate, shop, do business, and have fun. In fact, you can argue that mobile computing has put social networking like Facebook, Twitter and yes, even this blog, on the map by allowing people to keep in constant contact with their network of friends. And given the popularity of blogging and social networking, you can take this thinking one step further and argue that smartphones have contributed to a total redesign of community and society as we know it.
For better or for worse, traditional communities have been replaced by virtual communities, and our iPhones, Androids, and other smartphones are the crucial link to those communities.
With that being said, have you ever considered what it would mean if mobile computing came to a screeching halt?
It’s probably hard to imagine; our virtual lifestyles are omnipresent. Thanks to the 3G — and soon to be 4G — network, our connection to the Internet, email, music, media, voice and video calls are near-instant, seamless, and fluid. Because of this, the iPhone becomes like an extension of our selves — much like what driving a car becomes for many. As a result, if mobile networking was suddenly cut off, it would mean losing a critical aspect of our lives.
Life Before the iPhone
I remember the good old days of pay phones. I remember my 2600 baud modem. I remember my Dad getting that huge cell phone that plugged into you car’s cigarette lighter and came in a small suitcase. Those were the waning days of traditional community and culture.
Those days are long gone.
For my part, I use my smartphone for work, leisure, and keeping in contact with my family. For work, in addition to monitoring and keeping in contact with my clients, I can also easily moderate and track the iPhone 5 News Blog from anywhere — even if I was in the middle of the Gobi desert. I can also keep in contact with my wife throughout the day, share links to interesting articles, make plans for the evening, adjust our ever-changing, kid-centric schedules. And sometimes it’s just nice to have a diversion when traveling for business or waiting for an appointment.
It isn’t as though life without the iPhone is an impossibility; many of us have done it before, and we went without smartphone technology for a lot longer than we have with it. But it might be interesting to share some of the ways that smartphones impact our lives — and what kind of impact it would have on our lives if mobile computing suddenly disappeared.
It could happen. Wikipedia “solar flares” or read about Senate Bill S.773, which, by the way, became law on June 28, 2010.
How about you? What are some of the ways that the iPhone makes a big difference in your life? And how would it impact your life if smartphone technology was shut down?
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