Disruptive

Cell phone companies in this country charge between 20 and 40 dollars a month for data connections, and so far people seem mostly unwilling to pay that much for it. That makes me concerned. Why would this concern me you ask? Because in places that lack traditional forms of connectivity, they will jump on wireless and skip the intermediate form of wired internet connections. Take the telephone example. While we here in the west had easy access to landline phones for nearly a century, those in the third world never did. So as we westerners quibbled about cell phone etiquette, and whether we wanted such luxuries, the developing world jumped on the wireless train. It was the first form of telecommunications most of these people had. In the past there may have been only a couple of phones in even large cities in Africa, now cell phones are available to everyone. Those places effectively skipped landline service and went straight to wireless. Now the same thing is happening with the internet. Those places that the internet revolution passed over will leapfrog the west in terms of mobile internet. Cell handsets are very powerful small computers in fact the phone I am typing this on has more computing power than the computer I took to college in 1995.
So what? There are perhaps a billion people in the western world (the US, Europe, and Japan) while there are almost 5 and a half billion people in the developing world. Those people will quickly surpass the west in terms of not only mobile data usage, but the emphasis will shift to meeting their needs over ours. Everytime you take your phone out of your pocket or purse think about how this small piece of plastic and wires will make you obsolete. Think about the way that that phone will betray you because you failed to see its potential. I plan on being on the inside of the coming shift while most of my countrymen will get left behind, fail to evolve, and become extinct in that context.
The good news is there is still time, not much time, but we can begin to halt our slide into cultural obsolescence. We must act quickly. So don't let the 21st century be the century where the west loses out. The way to do that is to start checking your email on your phone, or get movie times, or settle a bar bet by using google from your handset. It really is tat easy. The choice is yours. On the one hand suffer the fate of technological dinosaurs in the other a future bright with possibilities wherever you are.

Sent via wireless device from the future of computing