Getting Back to Basics

We all have cell phones. Though to more accurately describe their widening capabilities it is better to refer to them as “mobile devices”. I remember my first mobile device was a car phone that was installed to the underside of your dashboard. And whose antenna was run under your car to your back window where it connected to an exterior extension.

These devices have come along way since then. First they became portable, then lighter, then with camera’s, then with email and organizing systems. The phone today is not just a phone. The components are very sophisticated, then the phone as a whole, is manufactured. These devices then require a platform such as Windows or Android for example. After you have the device and its components (taken together as hardware), you then need the platform (software), and then you need a carrier for voice and data. Can you still call them phones? Is the device still primarily used for telecommunications or has it transformed to omnicommunications? Is this our version of the Star Trek tricorder?

I lay this out not just to exhaustively protract the innovations and overall strides that have been made but to ask a broader question. Are we better served? Look at what all these devices can do. But do they do them well? It is said of governments (municipal for example and not to get political), but all you really want from your town is for the police to respond, for your trash to be picked up, and for your roads to cleared and drivable. Look at New York last week. Again, not trying to get political but just to prove a point, New York government services provide a great deal more than the basics. Yet when it came to clearing the roads they couldn’t get it done. When governments set out to do more, the quality of what they should be doing goes down. Can the same be said of mobile devices and the service providers?

How many of us still get dropped calls? Should this really be happening? And how many devices require service? And when you take them for service do you get a repair or do they simply give you a new, replacement device? I guess what I am asking here is “are we settling for mediocrity?” Are these devices the 21st century embodiment of the expression “jack of all trades, master of none”?