The Fourth Wave

by Dennis Green

We are entering a new era of technology. We’re moving beyond the PC and the Mac to SuperSmart Phones and Tablet computers, all of which work with the touch screen and gesture OS, and offer “Facetime” video conferencing, thousands of apps, and will soon include 3-D screens with super-high resolution, above 300 pixels per square inch. And multi-tasking.

A new operating system, with 200 new features, including multi-tasking, will be available free to iPad and iPhone owners in the Fall.

What’s so significant about all this? Well, for one thing, people will soon be carrying these new “mini-computers” with them at all times, with access to the internet, emailing, social networking, gaming, and all the rest. That mobility changes our lives, and could not have been imagined 30 years ago when the first desktop personal computers became available.

From GPS to Google Earth to The Wall Street Journal to an app that you can use to point your SuperSmart Phone at a radio and it will tell you the name of the song that’s playing, as well as the artist and recording company. There are 225,000 apps available for the iPhone and already over 100,000 designed specifically for the iPad. About half of all apps are free, and very few cost more than a few dollars.

In terms of high-speed internet and Wi-Fi availability, the U.S. ranks 18^th among industrialized nations. Americans without SuperSmart phones or tablets are being left even further behind. And Microsoft — once the dominant player in personal computing technology — is absent or at the back of the pack in all these new innovations. Its tablet computer was a failure, its cell phone has a tiny market share, Bing doesn’t seriously threaten Google, and even Windows 7 has been problematic. Microsoft will not be a player in the Fourth Wave.

Interviews with Steve Jobs reveal that he serves not only as CEO but also as Product & Design Manager. And he had set out originally to develop a tablet computer before a SuperSmart phone, but when he saw the potential of the tablet OS, the touch screen, the gesture sensor and multiple applications, he immediately put the tablet on the shelf and put his teams of engineers to work adapting those features to the iPhone, which easily dominates the SuperSmart phone market.

Once the iPhone was launched, Jobs put his engineers back to work on the tablet computer, and just this year the iPad was launched and sold three million units in its first 60 days. While it will not entirely replace the laptop and netbook, it provides a whole new computing experience in many locations where we might not bring one of those devices. Or places where the tablet is simply more convenient, like on board an airliner, for example, or in a Starbucks.

Meanwhile, the apps themselves change the way we do things. Texting, Tweating and chatting on Facebook change the way we communicate. It seems odd now to think back to a time when the only way we could communicate at all across any distance was by talking on the telephone, and one tied to a landline at that! Remember phone booths?

Stuck in dialysis for three hours at a stretch three times a week, I would go nuts without my iPad. On it, I can email, compose poetry and essays, scan the Net, use all the latest news apps — including Newsweek, the New York Times and Wall Street Journal — or just entertain myself with the many apps designed for that, from musical instruments played by touch to an app that shows me the Tokyo skyline, live at any time of day.

Next time you’re stuck in an airport, or in line outside the Apple store, or waiting for a Giants game or a concert to begin, let’s just hope you’ve got your mobile device with you too.

©2010 Dennis Green