Blog - Daily Thoughts

09/05/2011

They have entered our daily routine in a pushy way, without asking permission, and shortly – like the SUV downtown, eating “Chinese” on Friday, the sunglasses at night – we have turned them into a necessity without which it would seem difficult, even impossible, to survive in this world.

 

Of cell phones, that simply calling them cells has become reductive, we are going to talk.

Symbol of Progress

Owning two, still means being nonconformist; having an unlimited number, with unlimited functions (but all the same) and a not better defined quantity of SIM cards is a “must” for those who, instead, of the cell, make use as a work tool or for the status symbol that cannot be renounced. If from one side the more and more frenetic development and performance of our economy, makes it an indispensable tool for distance communication, simple, fast and efficient; it’s also true that the market, aims not only at professionals and not only professionals it captures, in its “net”.

We surely are not here to make moral on the excessive use of the cell phone, on the contrary. This does not interest us or at least not as much as dealing with phones in terms of evolution, design and functions, linked to the new needs of the public or, otherwise, or to the force of imposing, to the public, the proper new functions, as needs previously superfluous.

Whether you like it or not, it is recognized: the cell phone is the technological device that has modified the life of the contemporary man the most, but not always simplifying it, as we will demonstrate.

The Coin

In principle, the necessity for a mobile communication, little felt among the population, became easily satisfied by the use of coin phones, first in the interior of clubs, then along the streets, with the appearance of the phone booth, still present today in our cities. Fiches, coins, cards, till the almost total unuse dictated exactly by the new way of understanding and use of mobile telephony.

Change is already here, in the interpersonal relations, less and less “fixed” and more “mobile”; no one asks for 200 liras to his fellow anymore, the request “can I make a call?” has become obsolete in bars same as with the notice “there’s somebody in line for Mr. John Doe”. For every problem we apply to the pre-registered disc already known by heart, but which doesn’t know us, and never will. It seems a little, but it isn’t, the only human intermediary between one end and the other of the line having collapsed.

The Origins

The first call from a completely “mobile” device was made in 1973 by Martin Cooper,director of the Motorola R&D department; an American giant already specialized in communications by then.

However, the first exemplar of the cell phone could be seen in the market only ten years after and, due to cost effects, 4000 dollars, was aimed only and solely for company managers and professional figures that would have gained, thanks to the service offered by the cell phone, a lot more than what was invested in the acquisition of the latter (enough to think about brokers).

And it is not by chance that it was an American firm to notice, before anyone else did, the impulse of investing something close to 100 million dollars in the mobile telephony. The years ‘70/’80 see America stand as an economic reference point for the whole Western world, capitalism boosts competition, consumerism reduces a product’s lifespan in the market, thus success/failure margins of competing firms whose competitiveness factor becomes the access to always up to date information, always faster, as more frenetic and final are the market’s responses.

800 Grams

That’s the weight of the DynaTec 8000x, the first cell phone in the market. Few exemplars produced, then a waiting list of up to a month made the management of Motorola aware that they had in hand the hen of the golden eggs.

Beside the weight, huge if we consider that a modern phone can weight even 43 grams, peculiarity that would make such gadget obsolete, for modern needs, and the autonomy in calling, merely 30 minutes for a 10 hour charging; only after that a table battery charger hit the market, which took one hour to charge but highlighted phone overheating problems.

Getting to the functionalities, it was a phone and nothing more. When it was needed it was what it was for not to say less, given that it was everything but pocket-size. In its 13 centimeters of height (without the aerial) there was room for only 12 digits, from 0 to 9 with # and asterisk, and then another 9, for particular functions like “re-call”, “power”, “volume”, and a luminous led screen, something futuristic for the epoch.

Unexpected Predicted

In the ’80, the Mc Kinsey & co. estimated for the year 2000 a diffusion of the cell phone up to 900.000 units sold in the global market. In 2010, there are 900.000 the units sold in every 3 days. What has happened in these years to justify such an increment of sales, well above the most optimistic expectations? What has changed in the cell phone and what in the human needs?

Not much up to the year 1992. The phones got optimized more in dimensions than in functions, left to those basics of the DynaTac class 1985, going against the needs of practicality, the weight as such.

Then , in the middle of 1991, the entry of the GSM network, a call protocol that permitted, the different national networks, to broadcast according to a common alphabet, that rendered the singular devices useful out of the national borders, too.

Nothing happens by chance, and it’s not by chance that the GSM protocol originated in Europe, just when, after the falling of the Berlin wall, work for a united Europe is starting, without borders and with a common economic strategy, rather, communitarian.

Soon, the GSM became adopted by most of the countries in the world, subsequently private telecommunication firms determined the definitive consecration in the market.

But something less technical, of a much more revolutionary importance that without the GSM network wouldn’t have existed, happened in the same year, just on December 3, 1992. Neil Papworth, engineer in service of Vodafone (English phone company), from his own PC, sent 22 days in advance his “Merry Christmas” to a work colleague; there would have been nothing revolutionary in it if, such greeting, hadn’t been delivered as text on a cell phone’s display. It was the first SMS of the history, the one that, few months later, an intern engineer at Nokia, Riku Pihkonen, was able to send from cell phone to cell phone.

In a few years, what would have been considered as an ”idiocy” by many, that is the exchange of written messages through a device meant for vocal contact, became a so called “killer-application”, that is one of those functions that not only respond to the public needs, but are able to be perceived as something that cannot be renounced up to the point of modifying the very same behaviour of those who use them.

Synthetic, immediate, practical, economical. The GSM network cleared the SMS, the Finish Nokia, that up to that time produced PCs for the URSS with scarce success, surfed the lengthy wave of this discovery as much as to become, with the advent of the years 2000, absolute leader of the mobile telephony.

The share of the market becomes much profitable, competition increases, the race beside Motorola, Siemens and Nokia, is joined also by Sony, Ericsson, Philips, Pioneer. The cell phone prices, eventually, could do nothing but decrease, becoming accessible to even more pockets, also in terms of size.

The New Market

But if the free professional, ready to pay 4.000 dollars for this device, was interested in only for calling in freedom, the extension of the market toward a bigger slice of possible buyers makes it necessary to diversify the offered functions to win the attention of the buyers and acquire competitiveness.

In 1996 Motorola comes with StarTac, the phone that “opens and closes”, reducing in half the encumbrance of traditional phones; other peculiarity, the vibracall. Meanwhile, in 1997, for the dimension of traffic produced it was necessary to adopt a new data transmission frequency, thus the Dual Band phones are born, that travel even at 1800mHz.

The life of the cell phone, even for autonomy and dimensions, has considerably increased, a very important technology but largely diffused as to not incise more on competitiveness. The “functional” revolution, that continues to our days, is guided once again by Nokia, which is were it is today, here’s the reason explained.

It’s the year 1997 when Nokia comes with its N9000i, introducing the concept of “smartphone” in the market. Computer and phone get unified, exchanging functions. With N9000i you can call, receive SMS but also connect to the Internet, send fax. A device for professionals, undoubtedly. The next year, always Nokia, will launch a model as revolutionary that will permit the conquering of a market band till that time taken out of context from the necessity of having a cell phone; the youth. The cell is the 5110, the “killer-application” it’s a genial banality, “Snake”, a game created in 1977 that, combined with the interchangeable “cover” makes it the most diffused cell phone in history (in relation to the time’s percentages). With 3210, its successor, farewell also to the external aerial and welcome to the T9, the “intelligent” dictionary for the SMS composition.

Internet Gates

It’s the year 1999, and almost everything can be found on cell phones, from games to calculators, passing from the currency converter to call registering. The same call, the reception’s quality, the autonomy, get lost in hundreds of functions, between a cover and another.

The principal market target is the random guy, not the professional. Alphabets and grammar get contorted from SMS’s immediacy, of the necessity of saving a message in 160 characters. Distances virtually get shorter for getting bigger humanly; owning a cell phone it’s not any more a status symbol, it’s owning the newest that makes the difference. The launching time in the market between a phone and another, of the same producer, get reduced from years to months, to weeks.

Nokia says it’s not enough and with its 7110 inaugurates the WAP technology, cell phones own now their own browser, to connect to the Internet and navigate in the net.  After the spread of the chat communication embraced internet even more tightly, information navigates in real time, to stay connected to the world one needs to be connected to the net; and with the phone, you can do it.

The network of friendships amplifies, extends over half of the internet, communication becomes a more and more frequent need and always less tangible without the use of a cell phone. Life shifts from home to open spaces, because of human nature and enlargement of the labour market, modifications for which competes and from which takes advantage the cell phones diffusion, become now mass object. Looking for the cell phone, when you have to make a call, becomes more than an habit, the cell even substitutes the home phone, getting against its primordial input, or rather enables communication in absence of a fixed device.

From now on technologies that make connections by phone always faster will blossom, up to the protocol HSDPA/HSUPA, which transmits in 7mbps. In the constructor’s scenery appears the RIM Blackberry, that in 2002 launches its first “smartphone”, the 5810, QWERTY keyboard and JAVA support.

And Beyond

With the cell phone you can hear now also music, ringtones have become more than polyphonics, real orchestras, around the constructor’s world has originated another one, parallel, service supplier; community sms, sms news, logos, screen saver and personalised ringtones, certainly with a charge attached. And saying that the cell, on itself, has affected the range of functionality that one would have expected to find in what, in the end, originated like a phone.

And this is not the end, because the cell phone is no longer a phone, it is something like what in the past, for our grandparents, was represented by the Swiss knife. Becomes, in general, the object accompanying us in everyday life, the one always around, that is utilised more frequently, and then, once in the pocket, than better being equipped with all that can be useful, even only once in life. Like compasses, screwdrivers, pliers, scissors, saws, tin-openers, bottle-openers appeared in the Swiss knife, in the cells, in the year 2001, made its appearance the internal photocamera; Sharp J-SH04.

Communication from spoken, becomes written, becomes, photographic and videographic. Begins the era of 3-rd generation cell phones, the UMTS. In the displays appear pictures and new kinds of message, the MMS, enters in the common vocabulary. In 2003, Nokia, with its “poor” 1110 model, wins the markets in the third world countries, making the cell phone an open service to everyone on earth, more than 200 millions are sold of this model. The numerical answer is incredible, if in 2001 the sent SMSs, in the world, are 17 billion, getting to 500 billion in 2004, 1.900 billion in 2007.

We already are in the era of videophones and Youtube, the camera is now a must, everything has to be recorded, or at least be ready to that. In the cell enter Skype, Messenger, Facebook, and even TV; and here it is the new lexical stress, getting to the TV-Phone, with the Sky channels that broadcast live, just raise the aerial. And than, there is also the “Satellites Navigator” mode, just download the program or connect to GoogleMaps. There is no time to digit numbers, go to the vocal call, and answer with the bluetooth headphone.

Until 2007, Apple decides to put an end to the rigmarole Tele-Video-Smart-Tv-phone; creates and launches in the market the i-Phone, the non plus ultra of mobile technology: touchscreen, with applications that go from level to the bookmarker, to the GPS, to pasta thermometer; and yes… even makes calls. To make it theirs, the day of its debut in the shelves, in NY, there’s a queue, there’s camping outside the shop’s portcullis, even 72 hours before hour I, i-Phone.

Conclusions

Without standing further on this point, dealing some studies about contraindications and an excessive exposition to the electromagnetic waves produced from the cell, we end up talking of the social phenomena generated from its use.

Psychologists of our epoch see, in its excessive use, a fake way to cope with solitude and isolation and rather, isolates even more who trusts it cause it nullifies the perception of the importance of human relations lessening them with virtual pills, the SMSs, that generates the illusion of having people around instead afar and not only, leads even to “dependence”, called “keichu” from the chinese, the first to have had troubles with the problem and deepen on the topic. And than, how to forget that half road’s codexes in the world forbid the use while driving, being by now one of the principal causes of road accidents.

A last thought: if we used everything, for the reason that has determined its existence, and only that, we would not be talking about this; not everything gets indulged, non every need gets satisfied; but the market says other, and we, this market, we make or we endure, we give it new form, or do we get the form that it gives us?