Mobile phone phenomenon

I think that mobile phone is the biggest phenomenon of the last decade. Well, I perfectly know that mobile phone is a thing of TWO last decades, but last decade it emerged into a real phenomenon.

It's just amazing that soon after people started to use mobile phones, they can't imagine their lives without them. People wonder how they managed to meet, date and do business without being constantly on-line. For most mobile phone users, being out of coverage is a disaster and having empty phone battery is one of the silliest things ever.

Mobile phones are changing our life, and it seems that 100% penetration is inevitable. I wonder will mobile phones ever get implanted in human body? Obviously, in some decades number of people using mobile phones will be greater than number of literate people. Voice dialing and showing a picture of caller with a personal ringtone is reality nowadays. Adapting a phonebook to needs of illiterate person would not be a difficult task at all. Maybe there already are developments of this kind?

The one thing that amazes me at the moment is a huge popularity of phones with built-in cameras. Today we have a lousy quality of pictures made by these cameras, but still camera phones are sold in millions, and mostly because of the camera. I understand that all these people pay off the development of technology, but I do not see any reason in purchasing a camera phone now. I prefer to keep apples separately from oranges and I picture with a real camera with a real optics and I speak with real phone which has no useless features...

Digital technologies and paper consumption

Interestingly, worldwide consumption of paper increases every year, despite of the fact that digital technologies win share in our everyday activities.

The fundamental reason for it is that people do not trust silicon and do trust paper. In most offices, most of the information is duplicated on paper and digitally. I have seen people that print out all their e-mails. Even more people print out all documents they are working with. People do not think that paper is done from the trees, the lungs of Earth. Some people are aware, but argue their position by the fact that paper is one of the best recycled material used nowadays. This is true, but imagine, if there would be no reason to make that much paper as it is manufactured today? We would save forests.

Many will say me that deforesting occurs also because selling wood is a good way for people in develping countries to survive. But demand decides everything. Deforesting will take place while demand for the paper persists. Actually, helping foresting industry in those countries to decline, you will only help those people that depend on it. Because those countries will search for other source of income rather than just using the nature resources. Resources are scarce, and shrinking forests is a threat to wild nature. People can survive by moving to another place, to another industry. Wild plants and animals can only extinct if their habitat is lost.

I beg people to think before they hit "Print" button, do you really need it to be printed? Use double-side printing if your printers allow. Increase margins in your word procesing application. Read news on the Internet instead of buying a newspaper. Recycle your stuff, and start with paper, because it is the easiest first step you can make to save the Planet. Use digital technologies as a replacement to your paper works, not as an addition to it!

Digital abuse

When good things are available to everyone, bad guys start to abuse them. It's a well-known fact. Lot of things that were invented to make life easier are now doomed by misuse. How much do you enjoy ads on TV? Are you happy to receive all this crappy catalogs and free papers in your mailbox? How many spam messages are going through the mail filters every day? Good things by intention of inventor are becoming annoying in some decades or even sooner.

Is it possible at all not to have abusive persons? I think it's not. Unfortunately. For me right no it is more interesting who will win in a battle between Spammer vs Other World. I think that e-mail in form as it exists today will die in couple of years. Unless death penalty will be introduced and CIA will search for spammers all over the world. Which sounds weird.

Well, will we survive without e-mail? Yes, we will. Messaging systems evolve quickly and in combination with decent mechanism of digital signatures can replace e-mailing need for personal use. Blogging and aggregation through web-based forms is the answer for those who waits for feedback. The more manual tasks involved, the better we are shielded from spam.

But some restricting law should be developed to fight digital abuse before e-mail dies. Otherwise spammers will find another vicitim and destroy it even quicker...

What this blog is about

It is well known that wealth is not distributed evenly on Earth. This means that things that are now usual in so-called `developed world' can be rarely affordable in most of other world. So it is difficult to define what things are reached a worldwide must-have status.

Sometimes it is even philosophy question. Is it moral enough to discuss gadgets when billion people on this planet is starving? It is what you can post comment about, but purpose of this blog is to share thoughts about how new technologies are coming into our life and how it is possible to use them to make our lives easier and more interesting.

Often I hear from the people, especially older ones, that `all this technology makes everyday tasks more complicated'. Really, migrating from hand-writing to typing in word processor software is much more complicated than migrating from manual to machine washing. This does not mean that not everyone benefits from ability to type electronic documents. I see main problem that in our digital age the price of `entry ticket' is quite high. I would like to lower this cost and discuss how we are able to make digital revolution in everyone's mind. To reach "technology to people" stage of development, because right now it looks more like "people as consumers to money-hungry technology giants".

What is really useful, practical and neat? What are next big things? Is it possible to use technology to fight inequality in the word rather than enlarge it? Everyone is welcome to share his/her thoughts!