Emergent Digital Practices

"Consider that there are about 7 billion people on the planet, and about 5.6 billion mobile phones. Today most of those phones are feature phones. (The smartphone installed base is approaching 1 billion.)

But at some point, maybe in a decade, virtually every phone will be a smartphone, if only because the parts required to make one will become so cheap and commoditized. Today’s smartphones are already as powerful as a mainframe computer from 1990. In 10 years they will have doubled in power five times.

What are the implications of a world where virtually everyone on the planet carries a mainframe-class computer and has a constant connection to the Internet, and where people have easy access to all of the world’s information, and to each other?"

Dan Lyons (via crookedindifference)

(via crookedindifference)