The Portable Internet
Continuing with my review of the recent NY Times article covering TeleFlip. Towards the end of the article, Howard Rheingold is interviewed to provide an alternative perspective on the benefits of a service like Teleflip's. As the article states:
But Howard Rheingold, whose book "Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution" (Perseus Publishing, 2002) examines how people are using wireless technologies, discounts that explanation. "In America, from the beginning, cellular voice calls were cheaper than they were in the rest of the world," he said. "If we'd had the same pricing structure they had in Europe, where text was cheaper than voice, we would have been using text on our cellphones too."
Mr. Rheingold said that systems like Teleflip represent the first wave of a significant cultural shift. "Taking the kind of communications that the Internet provides, untethering it from desktop and putting it in your pocket creates something more than just the Internet on a telephone," he said. "It changes where the Internet is, and who uses the Internet. The cellphone is now the poor person's Internet terminal."
Indeed, a cultural shift is underway. While I would wholly agree that the cellular phone has become the next-generation Internet terminal, quickly surpassing the handheld/PDA's potential to rule that position through ubiquity and convergence, I have to wonder if the Teleflip service is truly the first case where the Internet was "untethered" from the computer.
A simple look through history shows a wide range of products and services that have served as gateways to the Internet. I would clarify that this "untethering" need be nothing more than an unconnected or occasionally connected device or application that provided links or directions to a specific URI. In this regard, all of the following ideas served the cause:
- Business Cards
- Advertisements
- Newspaper Ads
- Loyalty Cards
- Cue Cat
These devices were important because they brought mindshare to the Internet at times when it was not the point of focus. Although Teleflip does connect one medium (cellular) to another medium (e-mail), the net effect is the same. An end-user with knowledge of a URI has always had to resort to a Internet-enabled device (which Teleflip is not) to make that connection.
Not to mention, if I wanted to be historically correct, I would point that one of my companies own inventions predates the Teleflip service by a significant amount of time while providing a far more extensive repository (on par with the Web as a whole vs. a single node of the web). In October of last year, we released the OnlineCameo Card, an anonymous, portable identification system designed to assist singles in establishing connections with real-world suitors. The device, a simple plastic key-tag, provided what we called "Reverse Internet Dating" by which people meet in the real-world and complete connections online. Despite this knowledge, I would still not refer to even the Cameo Card as the first "Portable Internet Device" simply because I believe that the items listed above easily predate both Teleflip and OnlineCameo.
Additionally, if we are really changing where the Internet "is" then that prize would most likely be in the hands of Satellite, Wi-Fi, and Broadband Cable (mostly in that order). Each of those technologies took the Internet as far as the ends of the Earth, to the lounge of the airport, to the coffee shop on the corner, all the way right into our bedrooms and living rooms. In fact, I think it's only fair to think of systems that widen the reach of the Internet as "Portable Internet Devices" whereas the other technologies, from paper to plastic to pixel that simply re-direct or bookmark are most like advertisements of the depth and benefit afforded us by the Internet and its little brother, the World Wide Web.