Of Cars and Phones, Motors and the Net

Today's snailmail delivered to me a confluence of articles about cell phone technology. The Economist has an article categorized under "Technology trends" and titled "Phones are the new cars." The issue also includes their "Technology Quarterly," which is always a good read. Then, the front page of the "Marketplace" section of the Wall Street Journal has an article titled "Your Own Next Top Model" about a CBS TV show that now has a cell phone extension where you can play a game involving the TV show's contestants.

I wrote about the automobile industry yesterday, as being an example of how new technology appears to burst onto the scene full of promise, then after not too long gets bogged down as it confronts a society and a non-existent supporting infrastructure, then unfolds its promised transformation of the economy and social life over a period of decades.

Another post about cars? Umm.. am I looking at the right blog?

The history of automobiles is relevant to what we're talking about today, the Internet, Web 2.0, whatever you'd like to call it, because automobiles were a very disruptive technology. No one can disagree that the modern world was completely transformed technologically by autos and all their variations (I'd even include airplanes as a type of "automobile").

Cell phones, too, had their own version of "ripple, dip, and wave." Most amateur astronomers are quite familiar with Iridium flares. Originally the Iridium satellites were a key component of the future of wireless communications. Unfortunately, the Iridium-based telephones were big, clunky, heavy, and ugly things. Ground towers and much smaller, snazzier, prettier wireless phones became popular, leaving the constellation of Iridium satellites circling the Earth without much purpose, except for providing amateur astronomers with an occasional dazzlingly bright transit across a portion of the sky when the angle between the Sun, the satellite, and the observer is just right.

Today, cell phones have advanced quite far into society and the economy. In fact, cell phones are an important baseline technology into which the Web is being inserted today. Along with instant messaging, email, etc. GPS navigation has arrived on cell phones too. That's maybe not part of the Internet, but it certainly has incredible applicability when you can easily bring GPS positional data into a software application and mash it with information retrieved from the web, for example, mapping APIs (Mapquest, Google, etc.).

So what about phones and cars?

The Internet is like cars, in being an unanticipated disruptive technology that had a boomlet, got bogged down in the mud (literally, in the case of cars), then began to slowly extend itself into society and the economy. And the Internet is being infused into cell phone technology.

Here's how the Economist article presents the phone-car link.

Phones, like cars, are fashion items: people generally replace them long before they actually wear out. Both are social technologies that bring people together and act as symbols of independence for teenagers. And phones and cars alike promote freedom, mobility and new lifestyles, with unexpected social consequences.

Of course, all of these statements could just as easily be applied to the technologies we refer to as "Web 2.0."

One thing I find particularly interesting about cell phones is that they are tiny devices that are beginning to be containers for something that used to require a big heavy box under a desk and another big box with a screen on top of the desk... Perhaps I'm just showing my age. But, my point is that when a technology is new and young, it is located in a big container that is separate from everything else, and it stands out, people see it and it looks strange because it's different, it doesn't fit in with the world people are accustomed to.

But, as certain types of technology infiltrate society and economy, they start becoming invisible. They start not existing so much as an object, but rather they become integrated into, embedded within, other objects. And at some point, people don't think much about the technologies, rather they think about the objects of which the technologies are a driving component.

Motors are a good example of this type of technology. When motors were invented, savvy technologists predicted to disbelieving audiences "someday everyone will have a motor." It sounded ludicrous. But, how many motors do you own? They're starting to be replaced today, by electronics. But even the laptop I'm working on right now has a motor. The crazy forecasters were right! But it didn't happen the way they imagined it would happen. They couldn't possibly have imagined the integration of motors into modern devices, because the devices themselves were unimaginable at the time.

Devices and embedded technologies

Motors were a great invention that turned into an embedded technology that powered devices people wanted to own, like cars, washing machines, phonographs, refridgerators, computer fans... Computers are certainly embedded in a wide array of devices (including cars, of course), but they also exist on their own, we can still go and buy a computer. The Web was always an embedded technology. Embedded within computers and network switches. One could say that it will always remain that way, but I myself don't really think of a cell phone as being a computer.

The Internet, the Web, seems to be fanning out into society in new and unexpected ways today, which is just what we should expect if, as I've predicted, we've entered not "Bubble 2.0" but the start of a period of long-term, incrementally transformative growth.

More lessons from cars

Here are a couple lessons from cars, about the future of phones, from today's Economist article:

The first ... is that features that are found only on high-end phones today will be ubuquitous tomorrow. That is what happened with cars...

... the second lesson from cars is that the direction of a technology's development depends as much on social factors as on technological ones. ... Predicting the future on the basis of technological progress alone ... gives only part of the story.

Hmm.. has anyone noticed "social factors" influencing the development of Web technology lately?

Conclusion

The evidence suggests that the Internet as a disruptive technology is very similar to cars, and phones, and, in another way, motors. Yes, there was a dip. But then, cars failed miserably too, when they had to run on roads build for horses and buggies.

When disruptive technologies enter the social realm, when it becames fashionable to have a hot car, or a cool cell phone, or a really radical MySpace page, a new economics is created. Reaching that point is a sign that the dip is over, that the long-term fanning of the technology across society and the economy has begun. It's a time for celebration (a lot of that happens on MySpace), and a time for savvy entrepreneurs and inventors to know where to engage their energies.

-- Kevin Farnham
O'Reilly Media