There is no doubt to the fact that smartphones have caused major revolutions in our tech world. As a matter of precision, they have revolutionized the way we interact with technology.
But as ubiquitous as this technology seems to be in this era, it is not at the zenith of the potentials embedded in emerging technology. And as such, the next few years could see the permanent replacement of smartphones. But let's find out what it will be replaced with.
Transcending from Smartphones
Before we look into the future of communications; let's take a little survey down the history's memory lane of smartphones.
The idea of designing smartphones can be dated back to the mid 1970s, but the idea remained theoretical until 1990s, when IBM designed the first model of phone that was integrated with some PDA (personal digital assistant) features.
And since then, advances have been made to further incorporate complex technology to this. As the day passed, smartphones became smarter. Until 2007 when major revolutions arrived in the world of smartphones: Steve Jobs unveiled iphone, Google made Android OS open sourced, and all that. But this is not exactly what we're looking at; I just felt like enhancing our prior knowledge of this.
Just like we have already known, we are evolving alongside our devices. But permit me to say that humankind is actually evolving faster than the devices seem to be. Just like Computer replaced Typewriters, and Fax and Beepers disappeared with the advent of phones; sooner than we imagine, smartphones would trail the same path and go into oblivion.
But there are many things that would lead to this. I'll just drop a few of them.
Cybernetics replaces smartphones
Yes I know; this title sounds inferential, but let's hang on and read on. With the advances in technology, you won't be totally wrong to infer that humans are fast becoming cyborgs (Cybernetic organism).
Without missing words, this has already begun. We all know about Neil Harbisson (the guy that has an antenna implanted in his brain to "hear" sound). Does it strike you? Talk about Viktoria Modesta (the bionic pop artist and singer). In the nearest future, it would be almost impossible to find an absolute (un-augmented) organic human.
So, if humans are tweaked to perform the functions of smartphones, do we still need smartphones?
I think Elon Musk has an answer to this:
Elon recently cofounded a company; "Neuralink" which is set to blaze the trail in this. They have already made plans to develop a "neural lace" technology. This technology would allow humans to communicate directly with the computer systems, and other machines (just like linking machines with the human brain).
The other time I mentioned "brain-to-brain telepathy", some saw it as mere fiction. But behold, this technology would surpass the aforementioned telepathy. In this case, the "human sender" would communicate with machines, and the machines would relay the information to the "human recipient" without passing through any third-party medium (like smartphones). So it could be farewell to smartphones; and welcome to smart cyborgs.
Here's how the "neural lace" tech would work; according to Elon Musk:
With Neural lace, people would be able to download their thoughts into machine, through electrodes implanted in the brain. And it would also enable people to upload data directly from machines. - Elon Musk [Paraphrased by me]
This advances could be fast-tracking the future in which the existence of humans would be machine-dependent. But on a very fair side of it; it would improve the cognitive, efferent, and psychomotor domains of humans.
That means, we are evolving from having devices as properties to having devices as part of us. But this is not even the zenith of technological advancement. Believe me, the apex of technology would be reached when humans finally merge fully with machines, and singularity arrives.
When that era comes, the future "us" would look back at this era and say: "What da heck!! I can't believe they used smartphones; how primitive".
Conclusion
The future of our technology is to ultimately blur out the line dividing humans and machines. But until then; let us enjoy our smartphones as they last.
Thanks for reading
References for further reading: Ref1, Ref2, Ref3, Ref4, Ref5
