Technology is so ingrained in our lives that many of us carry more than one piece of electronic gadgetry for work or for everyday life. We started out with one-song records in victrolas—these days, you can cram thousands of songs into a single iPod.
Personally, I still remember when everyone had to have beepers so they could stay connected. Any form of cordless phone (they still used that term back then), whether it’s the bulky business phone, or the still-boxy personal cellular phone—and this was the metropolitan nineties, we’re talking about, not rural 1950s—would have the most diminutive screen, just enough to see the numbers.
These days, our chief occupation is trying to figure out which screen on a smartphone suits us: do we go for the sleek functional iPhone with its “standard” screen size, or do we need something huge, like the Samsung Galaxy Tab screens? Even computers are getting smaller, with bigger and bigger file storage sizes.
Today’s iPod touch can hold more than the bulky white CPUs running on diskettes while displaying on a CRT monitor back in the 90s.
Less size, more functionality
These days we like our tech like we like our swiss army knives: small and compact, but impressively versatile. One of the best examples is the Apple iPod. It started out as a simple music player. You put songs in it; it can skip a song and pause a song—like what Walkmans (things that apparently kids born in the late nineties onwards will now fail to recognize) could. Now they can play podcasts, connect to the internet, play movies, apps and games (the iPod touch), and, with smallest of its forms being the iPod Nano, it can hold thousands of songs. Having a smaller gadget that can do so much more is what everyone wants now, because everyone has come to rely on technology so much so that we can hardly imagine ourselves without them. “Companies that manufacture gadgets are always looking for ways to make sure that not only is their technology ever getting smaller, but also capable of doing more than its predecessors as well as the rest of the same gadgets on the field” explains Issa Asad.
The Technology
Watch company Garmin, for example, has recently developed the Garmin 10, which is a sport watch that can do much more than tell time.
It has its own training features to aid sportsmen, which include a virtual pacer and Run/Walk settings. Electronics giant Samsung recently also made a move to invest in laser company Raydience, which will enable them to develop smaller, and more precise parts for their electronics. Even laptops are coming in as thin as possible. With more ultrabooks inundating the market, thin is in. This doesn’t just mean the Macbook Air, which is well known for all its capabilities and its thin specs. The Asus Zenbook is recommended to students looking for something functional and thin, and so is the Lenovo Ideapad.
What could be the next step? Minimizing electronics as much as we can, how far away are we from even less, and more functions, that might dissolve major hardware altogether? Read more about Issa Asad here.
