December 30, 2004
Simplicity sets tone for cell phones
Recently a manufacturer of mobile phones advertised one of its products as having the feature of "no camera." Is this the beginning of a trend? You bet it is: less will soon be more. A must read article by Nicholas Negroponte for The Straits Times (Singapore) Asia News Network, published in The Korea Herald.
"The continued packaging of yet one more function into a cell phone frustrates many of us, especially since most of these features are unusable unless you are 15 years or younger and have excellent eyesight and tiny fingers. But do not despair.
The technological development of mobile phones is at a turning point, and soon we should be seeing trends away from complexity. Simplicity will be king.
An unadorned cell phone can be manufactured for less than US$15, which would be of interest to the next 1.5 billion users, from kids to people in developing nations.
Excerpts:
[...] The function of a telephone, for example, might be embedded and distributed in both your wedding ring and your watchband, enabling you to receive or place a call by putting your hand on your cheek and talking into your wrist - allowing you to whisper, a benefit not only for you but also for the rest of us.
"The vibrating signal might come from your belt. You could even generate power with your shoes, simply by walking.
[...] A scenario even more futuristic might be a mobile phone that neither rings nor vibrates: instead it answers itself or reads the message and takes appropriate action, like a well-trained butler who knows when and how to interrupt you.
Nicholas Negroponte is the author of "Being Digital" (Knopf, 1995), the founding director of the Media Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge and a founding Wired contributor.
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