Consider previous technologies: planes went from the Wright Flyer to the 747 in 50 years or so. But there's little "next gen" for airliners after the 747, other than well, fuel efficiency, operational efficiency, safety, etc. Which made riding in one a lot more approachable to anyone and eventually made low cost carriers possible and world tourism and Instagram influencers, etc... But a modern jet engine would be recognizable tech to an engineer from 50 years ago.
That's not necessarily a bad thing. But it's no longer a gold rush, it will be an evolution-driven industry just like, well, everything else.
I think he said / describe it as below;
but well over 4bn people have a smartphone today and there are only 5.7bn adults on earth. We can’t unlock a radically bigger market on that axis - we’ve run out of people.
For context, the Author ( BE ) was AFAIK the first person to put numbers together and reach that conclusion long time ago. The recent one in 2019 is here [1], the platform war in 2016 [2] and his twitter mentioning it go as far back to 2014 or earlier. And arguably his work on Mobile Phone analysis started in the early days of 3G, before the whole Smartphone revolution.
> As with other technologies, the next waves will be about efficiency, price and
Which is part of the reason why Apple is pushing for Services Revenue. Strategically speaking it was definitely the right move, some of its execution though, leave a lot to be desired. ( Apple TV+, Apple Arcade.... )
[1] https://www.ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2019/5/28/the-end-of...
[2] https://www.ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2016/7/25/platform-w...
There nearly was, with spaceplane projects such as HOTOL and NASP entirely within the technical potential of the 1990s. But the industry pushed for slow, efficient mass traffic instead.
So instead of Mach 25 through low orbit we have Mach 0.76 at 41,000ft. But oh such cheap stag weekends to Prague.
Boeing first flew the Dash 80 (the 707 prototype) in 1954, with the first commercial service in 1958.
The 747 program started in 1965. The age of jet transport went really fast!
I wonder if we could have a comparable article written in the 1960s wondering what the next revolution in transportation technology would be. Trains, cars, planes, next is hover cars? Space craft? With this example we have the benefit of hindsight and understand there isn't a new "automobile" right over the horizon.
I beg to differ. Its sort of like watching old scifi movies and people go into the "future"... where there are no cellphones.
Just off the top of my head:
- ar and vr are not really solved
- look at ctrl labs (bought by facebook, unfortunately) where they can decode neural impulses in your forearm with a wristband
- look at Elon Musk's Neuralink where direct brain i/o is being developed
You will certainly still have a phone in your pocket, but you can treat it more like a portable screen with touchscreen for input. There will be no "apps on your phone" or "data on your phone", but your phone provides that for you, just like all devices give you access to them. The big question will be where the code runs. I wouldn't count on a complete cloud solution like Stadia, because you can't guarantee a permanent network connection on your phone. My guess would be that the data and code will be synced with the cloud, but code can still run on those devices that are powerful enough. For all others, it runs in the cloud.
I also think that the app model will sooner or later cease to exist, because it limits what an AI can do. If you have separate apps for spreadsheets and music, the AI can't complete a seemingly trivial task like 'take the list of songs in that spreadsheet and play them'. There will be something more like recipe, to explain the AI how to read a spreadsheet and how to find and play a particular song on a music service, but all the logic that is now hidden in apps must be available to an AI to allow it to combine it.
everything stored and running on the network (which will be made up of the unused storage and cpu cycles on peoples devices, and maybe some servers as well) so your devices will mainly just be a portal or a window to the network
The main driver has always been mobility and minaturization. From mainframes, desktops, laptops, tablets and smartphones. Also we had ethernet to wifi and cellular.
Kevin Kelly had a great talk about screens being pervasive almost a decade ago. The leap from bulky crt to flatscreen resulted in an increasing number of displays to display all the data we’re receiving. Not only that, but because the displays have become bigger there is more data to be displayed. Ar/Vr seems like the next thing since the screen is (paradoxically) even larger!
IoT is interesting because it is a new form of computing (let me know if you think otherwise) as it’s not necessarily meant directly for human-computer interaction, instead it’s machine-machine computing.
Voice is another interesting aspect since this type of computing does not utilize the traditional screen.
Apple’s upcoming smart glasses seem like the next logical step (minaturization of mobile computing with an expanding immersive display)
I've never really got into the iot thing (apart from two smart bulbs) because of how many batteries you would go through in a year if you had a house full of iot devices. its crazy to think of everyone going through the same amount of batteries each year, especially those coin cell ones that can't be recycled
Phones can’t get much bigger, but we want more real estate for interfacing. The glasses certainly have the most long term potential, but imagine the phone becoming more about wireless radio and less time in hand. The watch loses some functionality to become smaller and have longer battery life. Maybe you move heart rate or blood sugar monitoring to a separate device, like a ring, and people can cherry pick which ones they like.
Or the phone merges into the watch and goes away entirely, some of it into the band. Apple had a patent on incorporating batteries into the watch band, but they never did anything with that. Pity.
And actually there are some ways that could start to replace laptops and desktops as well as phones.
Also wondering when there is going to be a real competitor for Neuralink. Or if it's just up to Elon to prove everything first.
Another crazy idea might be something you wear on your head that has a microprojector.
Or we just start wallpapering every room with OLED screens so your work follows you as you move around.
I think AI has a ton of potential as far as realizing the dream of the personal assistant.
Your smart-glass will replace your TV, Laptop, Console, Watch, Camera, and of course Phone.
When people first started using cellphones, from the outside, it didn't look much different than looking down at a book or portable gaming device.
and ... yourself. By capturing all your input-output signals over your lifetime it can upload your personality so your digital self becomes immortal. Of course, smart glasses will be only part of your digital self logging.
Implicitly, I think, Ben assumes that Moore's law is slowing or coming to a halt. That's probably the case but I think that the honest answer on the question that Ben asks is that we don't know until we know how Moore's law will pan out over the next 10 years or so.
And current status of research in physics doesn't give me hope that some affordable breakthrough is coming soon.
Edward Thorp had built a wearable computer in the early 1960s to beat the dealer in casinos.
Seriously. Banking by smartphone between other people with smartphones.
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Maybe more free computing like the pinephone will be what's next.