The invention of the wheel is
believed to be the greatest invention of all time. I wouldn’t dispute that. However, the ‘innovations’ in mobility have proven to be amazingly exciting! Who
would have thought that one fine day a cell phone would actually help us reach
our destination with ease! Or a device, initially conceived for making voice
calls would actually talk to you when given the right commands! Fingerprint
sensors, heart-rate monitors, 41 megapixel cameras (seriously??!!), gesture
recognition... mobility has been taken to a different level!
In July 2011, Teched2day made
some predictions w.r.t. trends in mobility. Some of them didn’t really pick-up
(although I would still put my money on them) and we hit the nail for some.
Here’s an addition to that list based on my understanding of trends in ‘Mobility’.
This form-factor just ain’t good enough! We have seen the cell
phone evolve from a bulky ugly black brick with a ‘thing’ called antenna
awkwardly popping out of it to a sexy looking glass body phone which is used
for making a fashion statement more than anything else. But all of this
so-called evolution has been on the cell-phones. In-other words, mobility, for
a very very long time has meant cell-phones. Then ofcourse, came tablets, an
extended version of cell-phones which according to me is more of a
quasi-mobility device. Why does mobility have to be addressed through a block
shaped device? And then came Google Glass and Smart-Watch, giving mobility a
new definition, or I would say, a new form-factor. Critics and technology experts
have had a love-hate relationship with both these devices but I would reckon
that this is just the beginning. The smart-watch seems too lame in it’s current
state to me, since it has a dependency on a cell-phone, but the concept of Glass is WOW!! I see a lot of potential
in the area of our day-to-day wearable items being replaced with devices
enabling mobility. Glass, I’d say is just one of the possible form-factors.
Steven Spielberg is the new Einsten! I am a huge movie buff and so
often tend to draw analogies through movies. I was watching a Steven Spielberg
movie recently called A.I..... Brilliant!!!! Way ahead of its time!
Coming straight to the point, when
we look around, we see everyone connected to the internet. This enables us to
track every damn thing one does on the net. Yeah... you heard me.. Every single
thing we do on the net is being watched!! This provides us with a lot of data.
Data about what we do, or how we behave. Ask someone working on ‘Big Data’ and
they will tell you the size of such data they deal with and use for predictive
analysis.
One such example of A.I. is
Google Now. For those who haven’t really used it... USE IT!!! It is brilliant!
It anticipates the information you would want to see based on your past
activities and show you results before you even know that you need it!
Biometrics is no longer safe! So, it seems cool to unlock your
phone using the new fingerprint scanner. But isn’t it scary? Your fingerprints,
which are unique to you are being stored somewhere!
There is this fad about using
these gimmicky features to attract customers to buy their phones. But we fail
to understand the risk in letting OEMs store our biometrics. This trend of
using biometrics to access mobility devices will increase. Isn’t the retina
scanner a very obvious feature for Google Glass? What next? We start using our
DNA as well???
Let me know your views on this
article through your valuable comments. Don't forget to Get Teched!!!
