Self-Reliance 2008 – The Atlantic (November 2008):
It’s worth remembering that the iPhone represents the best embodiment yet made of what will be an entirely new technological platform, the first designed to be connected all the time. The PC, and its luggable cousin the laptop, are direct descendants of room-sized computers which stood on their own, connected only to dumb terminals, and which did “processing” – crunching massive amounts of data, which was then churned back out.
Phones are something very different – they are designed from the start to be communication devices, rather than processing devices. The assumptions and roles which machines like the iPhone will take will also be about communications: who you are, what you want, how you want to do it.
