Wednesday, August 10, 2005

Telephones

Think about how sad our current telephone system is:
  • When you pick up the phone you get a dial tone.

  • You dial in a totally arbitrary number. And which number do you dial? The person's home? Office? Cell?

  • The phone at the other end rings. If it is plugged in, the phone will ring even if it is 3AM and you are sound asleep. Even if it is a wrong number, it rings.

  • If the person is not there, you get a generic answering machine greeting. You can leave a message if you want.

  • If the person is there, you can speak over a 3 kilohertz voice-only channel.

  • If you are on a cell phone or a long distance call you get billed by the minute.

  • And let's not even get started on telemarketing...
We take that for granted because that is the way it has always been. But look at how pathetic that is. In just 10 or 20 years it is quite likely that we see immense changes. When you pick up the phone, you will say, "Get me Tom." Your phone, or your AI secretary, will know who Tom is in your context and call him.

At the other end, you will get Tom's AI secretary. The secretary may know you, will know whether or not Tom would want to talk to you, will know which channel to communicate on with Tom (home, office, cell, computer, whatever). If Tom is asleep or busy, the secretary will not even bother him. If Tom is available, the phone will not ring -- the secretary will say, "Tom, Marshall is on the line. Do you want to take the call or would you like me to take a message?" If Tom is busy or blowing me off, I will leave a message with the secretary. If it is an emergency I will be able to tell the secretary that and interrupt Tom.

Video phones? Probably. Webcams and things like Apple's iSight make that possible and easy today. It is interesting that a long-distance video call with the iSight camera is FREE, while a normal long-distance or cell call costs money. All phone calls should be free in the not-too-distant future because of the Internet.

Going out to 2050, the idea of a telephone is a total anachronism. People will laugh at the concept. They will be meeting and greeting each other is fully immersive 3D environments all the time. It is quite likely you will be able to give your friend a hug. If Wired magazine is correct, virtual sex will be commonplace. See Manna for a description of where we end up with Vertebrane.

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6 Comments:

At 4:18 PM, Blogger Scott Kirkwood said...

I remember, back in the day, someone once asked me: "Why can't they make computers as easy as a telephone?".
And it's like, what? The phone has a terrible interface. I have to remember a 7 or 10 digit number. To get an outside line do I dial 1, 0 or 9? Over here, if it's long distance, I have to dial a 2 digit code to choose which long distance provider I'll use. Depending where I'm dialing from I may need to add extra digits for long distance, or for the country code. The phone company won't even allow me to use the long version of the number if it's a local call.
And don't get me started with all the conference calling, call forwarding and other advanced features that internal phone networks can have. I'm looking at a phone right now where all the buttons (except for the numbers) are icons, of which not one of them makes any sense to me (a Siemens Euroset 3005).
Cellphones are a big leap not just because they are portable, but because you know who you are getting (and who's calling) and you can turn them off!

 
At 3:25 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

TellMe is working on that phone tech you were talking about.

-- Lion

 
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