Just a couple of days ago, Apple released iPhone Xs and iPhone Xs Max. The unprecedentedly expensive iPhones highlight their “largest display ever used in iPhone”, “faster Face ID”, as well as a “breakthrough dual-camera system”, stimulating people to throw away their current iPhone and rush to the closest Apple store immediately (Apple, 2018). The smartphone, as a representative technology, is not only revolutionary in its own development, but also strongly related to the revolutions in the real world.
The smartphone has penetrated into every pore of our life within a quite short time. Smartphones, the first of which went on sale to the public on August 16th, 1994, launched an unstoppable revolution. It was called “Simon”. The pioneer was based on a prototype named “Angler” developed by Frank Canova in 1992 at IBM (Sager, 2012). It was a chunky, black box with an antenna sticking out and a wireless pencil (BBC, 2014), and it contains fundamental applications such as maps and news. Unfortunately, it was not a huge success back then, due to its rudimentary design of battery and exceedingly high price. Most importantly, there was no mobile internet at that time. However, this does not preclude Simon from being a milestone in the history of smartphone. Since then, a number of products were released, getting both externally and functionally closer to the smartphones we are using today. A smartphone is featured by mobility, extendability, as well as customizability. It is established on a mobile phone, with freely and personalized extended functionality. Specifically, a smartphone integrates mobile phone or PHS devices with platforms such as Google’s Android, Microsoft Windows, and Apple’s OS etc.. But more than that, an operating system is not restricted to a certain device. The open platform usually welcomes diverse application markets, providing customers with even more possibilities. According to a survey conducted in September 2010 by MCPC / Impress R&D, 83% people use the smartphone for web browsing, 71% people use it for mail, and around 50% for map application, music, and schedule. It is quite obvious that the applications, whether pre-installed or customized, play a very important role in people’s utilization of smartphone (Shiraishi et al., 2010).
The smartphone has been always taking actions in its exploration of every pertinent field, from screen display to auditory experience, from efficient operating system to optimum layout. The smartphone has never ceased being revolutionary, but what changes is the extent of its revolutionary-ness. In the past one to two decades, the smartphone has experienced all-around updates, which leads to a relatively sluggish phase that we are faced with now. In addition, since revolutionary-ness is assessed or perceived by human beings, who have witnessed the constant evolution of the smartphone. New technologies have paralyzed people’s sensations, and make the impact of the current revolutionary-ness seem even less significant. Specifically, with a lot of brands upgrading their design frequently, people tend to take the development of technologies for granted. Even though the revolutionary-ness of the smartphone itself is at its bottleneck, the revolutions in the real world assisted by the smartphone are getting white-hot. Inasmuch as the smartphone is the carrier of social media, what lies behind the power of the smartphone is the power of social media. The Arab Spring, for example, a set of protests for democracy in the Arab World, was not only political, but also technological. With the help of social media such as Twitter and Facebook, people were actively involved in the democratic fervor (Howard et al., 2011). The concept of democracy went viral online, and people took actions against their governments. Therefore, the revolutionary-ness of online-social-mobile communication technologies is quite intense when applied to the real world.
Emergent online-social-mobile communication technologies keep being revolutionary as long as people are using them. For instance, the #metoo movement took place recently online about those who were sexually abused (Manikonda, 2018). People used online-social-mobile communication technologies to share their unfortunate experiences of being assaulted. This created a snowball effect online and got attention from all sectors of society. Since there can be millions of social issues such as equal rights and poverty, online-social-mobile communication technologies are always capable of organizing propaganda campaigns based on these issues. In that case, the more closely networked technologies are associated with human beings, the intenser people’s revolution regarding social issues will be.
As a person who was born in the middle 1990s and grew up in Mainland China, I witnessed the revolution of online-social-mobile media around me in a unique way. The government of China conducts quite strict censorship on essentially every platform of media, including TV shows, books, and social media. In this situation, mainstream social media such as YouTube, Twitter and Facebook are all blocked out from Chinese netizens. With a large population using internet, the country has developed its own online social platforms such as WeChat and Weibo, satisfying the online social needs of people. Nevertheless, the social activities are limited within the country, leading to an internet-based isolation from the other part of the world. Only people with help of hackers or computer programmers can get access to those worldwide used social media. “Netizen”, as it is suggested by Michael Hauben, is supposed to be non-geographical (Hauben, 1996). For me, personally, the “hacker-geek” technologies are an invisible bridge connecting the thought of a giant country with the rest part of the world.
In a word, new technologies such as the smartphone give rise to an ongoing revolution in both technological and real world. These will keep inciting people to endlessly pursue a higher spiritual realm.
References
Apple. IPhone XS. Retrieved September 13, 2018, from https://www.apple.com/iphone-xs/?afid=p238|sD7793Esl-dc_mtid_20925d2q39172_pcrid_294525207013&cid=wwa-us-kwgo-iphone-slid—.
Hauben, M. (1996, June 12). What is a Netizen? Retrieved September 13, 2018, from http://www.columbia.edu/~rh120/ch106.txt.
Howard, P. N., Duffy, A., Freelon, D., Hussain, M. M., Mari, W., & Mazaid, M. (2011). Opening Closed Regimes: What Was the Role of Social Media During the Arab Spring? SSRN Electronic Journal. doi:10.2139/ssrn.2595096
Manikonda, L., Beigi, G., Liu, H., & Kambhampati, S. (2018). Twitter for Sparking a Movement, Reddit for Sharing the Moment: #metoo through the Lens of Social Media.
Sager, I. (2012, June 29). Before IPhone and Android Came Simon, the First Smartphone. Retrieved September 13, 2018, from https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2012-06-29/before-iphone-and-android-came-simon-the-first-smartphone.
Shiraishi, Y., Ishikawa, D., Sano, S., & Sakurai, K. (2010). Smartphone Trend and Evolution in Japan. Retrieved September 13, 2018, from http://www.mcpc-jp.org/english/pdf/20110128_e.pdf
BBC. World’s first ‘smartphone’ celebrates 20 years. (2014, August 15). Retrieved September 13, 2018, from https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-28802053.