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In the tech world, six years is a long time. People are starting to get restless and bored.
My colleague Nicholas Carlson, for instance, is itching for the Next Big Thing. He believes the smartphone era is going to die almost as quickly as it began. He is betting that something like Google's Glass Project is going to nuke the smartphone: "I think something like Google Glass or whatever Microsoft is working on could end up replacing the smartphone as the dominant way people access the Internet and connect to each other."
Carlson isn't alone. A lot of people believe wearable computers will be the next wave of computing. These wearable computers are supposed to make smartphones obsolete.
I do not agree. I believe the smartphone as we know it will essentially remain in tact forever. If anything, the smartphone will become more powerful and more integral in our lives.
Forever is a long time, and I grant that it's possible some other technology comes along that I can't foresee. Perhaps computer chips in our brains, or something that's not a computer is invented.
The smartphone represents the perfect distillation of communication and computing. The smartphone as we now know it delivers email, news, games, and just about anything else you could want in one small package.
Wearable computers like glasses or internet-connected watches would only work as peripherals to a smartphone, not replacements. Even if glasses could deliver emails or take photos, you'd still want a bigger screen to view those emails or photos. A smartphone is unobtrusive enough to handle that task.
Arguably, in 1985 someone could have made the exact same case saying no one wants to see their email on a 4-inch smartphone screen. I think there's something different about glasses, though. As some one who doesn't wear glasses, I have no interest in suddenly wearing glasses. I don't think I'm alone, which is a big part of the reason 3-D televisions have failed to catch on. People feel like goofs wearing glasses unless they have to wear them.
I believe we're only getting started with smartphones. They have the potential to replace our wallets and our cable boxes. They could control our homes and our cars. They could power our desktop computers (though this hasn't worked in the past).
Smartphones take all the things we have done through history and neatly packages it into a tiny little box that is completely unobtrusive. It's hard to believe something better is coming along to change that.