Mobile Mania

Always on. Always with you. Always connected. The world is changing as the cellphone becomes the computer. By Simon Silvester.

When computers were first invented, they were the size of a room.

By 1970, they had shrunk to the size of a car.

By 1982, they would sit on a desk.

By 1995, they were portable.

Today we have reached the age where a big, powerful computer fits neatly inside a cellphone.

Small enough
This latest stage is the most important.

For the past fifty years, using a computer has always meant sitting down in front of that computer.
Followed by a start up process.

And then launching applications.

This desk-centric process has been so fundamental to computing, it has defined the way people think of them.

The first menu command in 80% of computer software today is still the desky word ‘File’.

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