Question
Will the iPhone be viewed as historically important, and if so, to what degree in comparison to other inventions of historical significance?
Answer
I think it will be viewed as extremely significant for a non-obvious reason. It is not about touch. It is about the moment when the mainstream finally gave up the hopeless attempt to understand how technology works, and when technologists gave up the attempt to try and raise the broader level of technological awareness and understanding.
It will be viewed as the moment when polished and opaque user interfaces began to comprehensively shut out the techno-illiterate from the innards of technology. To use Neal Stephenson's terms from In the Beginning was the Command Line (
http://www.cryptonomicon.com/beg...), it will be the moment when the Morlocks will be forever separated from the Eloi.
In history -- if there are any historians left in a 100 years -- the iPhone will be viewed as the harbinger of Idiocracy, when people began to stop thinking entirely.
For the record, I do own and like my iPhone. But I'd be much more worried about using it if I didn't have other, less perfectly insulated, windows into the technological world (heh heh, pun intended).
It will be viewed as the moment when polished and opaque user interfaces began to comprehensively shut out the techno-illiterate from the innards of technology. To use Neal Stephenson's terms from In the Beginning was the Command Line (
http://www.cryptonomicon.com/beg...), it will be the moment when the Morlocks will be forever separated from the Eloi.
In history -- if there are any historians left in a 100 years -- the iPhone will be viewed as the harbinger of Idiocracy, when people began to stop thinking entirely.
For the record, I do own and like my iPhone. But I'd be much more worried about using it if I didn't have other, less perfectly insulated, windows into the technological world (heh heh, pun intended).