Prediction: Death of the Smartphone
“In less than 50 years, that data will feed directly into your brain, in a bloodless, phoneless experience. Until then, facts will continue getting closer and closer to your brain. Storing them inside your brain will seem as odd as wheeling all your possessions around in a shopping cart everywhere you go”
Econovation, 2011 (p 131).
This will take a while, but the seeds for eliminating the friction of phones to get us the info we want are already visible:
- Rise of Alexa and other voice assistants, just say out loud what you want and it arrives digitally or physically (that distance will decrease, too)
- Augmented reality glasses and other devices are picking up lots of investment. Only a matter of time before the right form factor and style, eliminates many of the functions phones do.
- Smartwatches and fitness trackers are siphoning away some of the functionality phones used to provide.
- Cars have integrated voice assistance that reduces phone-dependence – or uses the phone as the “brain” of a phone-less experience.
- Elon Musk and others investing in a brain-connected “neural lace” to get the info we want directly into our heads.