WEBVTT - What Tech Will Replace the Smartphone? 0:00:02.040 --> 0:00:07.200 Welcome to brain Stuff from How Stuff Works, Hi brain Stuff, 0:00:07.240 --> 0:00:11.119 Lauren Vogel bomb here. Today, nearly eight in ten Americans 0:00:11.160 --> 0:00:14.120 own a smartphone, and we've become accustomed to using them 0:00:14.120 --> 0:00:17.880 for everything from listening to podcasts, taking pictures, reading news, 0:00:17.880 --> 0:00:21.840 and posting on social media, to shopping and making financial transactions. 0:00:22.200 --> 0:00:24.520 For many people, smartphones have even taken the place of 0:00:24.600 --> 0:00:28.120 once common everyday implements like tape measures, flashlights, maps, and 0:00:28.160 --> 0:00:31.880 wrist watches. Smartphones have transformed everyday life so much that 0:00:31.920 --> 0:00:34.120 it's easy to forget that they only became popular a 0:00:34.120 --> 0:00:36.640 little bit more than ten years ago. That's when Apple 0:00:36.680 --> 0:00:40.040 released the iPhone, which combined mobile internet access and computing 0:00:40.080 --> 0:00:43.400 power with a multi touch screen interface, making it possible 0:00:43.400 --> 0:00:46.040 to do pretty much everything by tapping and flipping with 0:00:46.120 --> 0:00:49.559 one fingertip or two. A recent survey found that smartphone 0:00:49.600 --> 0:00:53.160 users now spend about five hours a day using their devices, 0:00:53.600 --> 0:00:55.480 which is why it's tough to walk down a crowded 0:00:55.480 --> 0:00:58.480 sidewalk in any major city without bumping into someone fixated 0:00:58.560 --> 0:01:02.040 upon his or her screen. But with technological process moving 0:01:02.080 --> 0:01:04.679 at broadband speed these days, we have to think that 0:01:04.720 --> 0:01:06.959 the smartphone as we know it has A limited life 0:01:06.959 --> 0:01:11.560 expectancy survey of smartphone users across the world by Ericsson, 0:01:11.720 --> 0:01:15.720 the Swedish communications, technology and services company, found that one 0:01:15.800 --> 0:01:19.199 in two people expected that the smartphone would become obsolete 0:01:19.319 --> 0:01:23.520 by which leads to the big question, what's going to 0:01:23.600 --> 0:01:28.240 replace the smartphone? Prognosticators predict that advances in technologies such 0:01:28.280 --> 0:01:32.800 as virtual reality, augmented reality, artificial intelligence, and wearable electronics 0:01:32.920 --> 0:01:35.320 will spawn a new generation of devices that could change 0:01:35.319 --> 0:01:38.880 our everyday existence even more than the smartphone did. We 0:01:38.920 --> 0:01:41.880 spoke with Jack Aldrich, a futurist who helps business people 0:01:41.920 --> 0:01:44.760 figure out how to understand and benefit from emerging trends. 0:01:45.400 --> 0:01:47.960 They said, the transition we're about to experience is that 0:01:47.960 --> 0:01:50.640 we're going to go from accessing the internet to living 0:01:50.720 --> 0:01:54.440 in the Internet. We don't have a suitably zeitgeisty name 0:01:54.520 --> 0:01:56.840 for those gadgets, but it's a pretty safe bet that 0:01:56.840 --> 0:02:00.320 they won't be palm sized rectangles with glass screens, or 0:02:00.360 --> 0:02:02.840 with any screen at all, for that matter, and they 0:02:02.880 --> 0:02:06.080 may not even be a single gadget. Brad Barons, the 0:02:06.160 --> 0:02:09.000 chief strategy officer for the Center for the Digital Future 0:02:09.040 --> 0:02:12.280 at the University of Southern California, predicts that the smartphone 0:02:12.280 --> 0:02:15.960 will give way to personal area networks, clusters of tiny 0:02:16.000 --> 0:02:18.720 gadgets concealed in beads, in a necklace, or built into 0:02:18.760 --> 0:02:22.680 eyeglasses or contact lenses. Such devices will use VR and 0:02:22.800 --> 0:02:25.240 a R to project information into our field of vision, 0:02:25.560 --> 0:02:28.400 eliminating the need for a screen, And just as we 0:02:28.480 --> 0:02:31.400 control apps on today's smartphones by moving our fingers, will 0:02:31.440 --> 0:02:34.400 be able to manipulate our next generation personal area networks 0:02:34.520 --> 0:02:37.840 through voice commands or by gesturing in the air, perhaps 0:02:37.840 --> 0:02:40.120 with the help of haptic technology like that buzz when 0:02:40.120 --> 0:02:43.040 you get a text to help sipulate the sensory feedback 0:02:43.080 --> 0:02:46.600 of touching actual objects. Typing may not ever become a 0:02:46.639 --> 0:02:49.720 completely extinct skill, but it may someday become as rare 0:02:49.760 --> 0:02:52.639 as someone who writes an elegant longhand with calligraphy pens. 0:02:53.560 --> 0:02:56.760 But increasingly we won't have to input as much information 0:02:56.800 --> 0:03:00.360 as we once did. That's because next gen intelligent stants, 0:03:00.600 --> 0:03:04.680 imagine a vastly more intuitive version of Siri, Alex or Kirtana, 0:03:04.760 --> 0:03:07.000 will learn to figure out what we want to know 0:03:07.120 --> 0:03:11.520 or do, sometimes before we realize it ourselves. Aldrich predicts 0:03:11.560 --> 0:03:14.200 that in the near future, our personal gadgetry will study 0:03:14.200 --> 0:03:17.200 our eye movements in order to make predictions. Staring at 0:03:17.200 --> 0:03:19.760 something for two seconds, say, might prompt it to give 0:03:19.800 --> 0:03:22.800 us more information about that thing. Barons and visions that 0:03:22.880 --> 0:03:26.200 the intelligent assistance of the future will continually whisper in 0:03:26.200 --> 0:03:29.040 our ears and project messages that only we can see 0:03:29.440 --> 0:03:31.359 that might help us in a lot of ways. If 0:03:31.400 --> 0:03:33.960 we encounter a person and can't recall their name, for example, 0:03:34.280 --> 0:03:37.280 doctor John Smith might flash before our eyes to remind us. 0:03:37.960 --> 0:03:40.880 It's also conceivable that our future devices and intelligent assistance 0:03:40.960 --> 0:03:44.640 may interact with other people's digital assistance, possibly taking the 0:03:44.640 --> 0:03:47.600 place of some of our interaction with actual people. That's 0:03:47.600 --> 0:03:51.120 a prospect that Baron's finds both interesting and disturbing. He 0:03:51.240 --> 0:03:54.160 points to current trends like texting instead of calling, or 0:03:54.240 --> 0:03:56.800 using apps like Tinder to avoid having to walk up 0:03:56.840 --> 0:03:58.840 to that cute person in the bar with no introduction. 0:03:59.400 --> 0:04:02.000 Baron said, some of this is good, but it also 0:04:02.040 --> 0:04:04.400 means that people can increasingly live in their own little 0:04:04.440 --> 0:04:08.320 worlds inside what author Eli Pariser has dubbed filter bubbles, 0:04:08.480 --> 0:04:10.360 where you don't need to recognize that there are other 0:04:10.400 --> 0:04:14.520 points of view about things. But next generation personal communication 0:04:14.560 --> 0:04:17.000 devices may also change us in other ways that we 0:04:17.040 --> 0:04:20.240 haven't yet envisioned. As with the smartphone, we'll have to 0:04:20.240 --> 0:04:32.520 start using them to find out. Today's episode was written 0:04:32.520 --> 0:04:35.560 by Patrick J. Keiger and produced by Tristan McNeil. For 0:04:35.640 --> 0:04:38.400 more on this and lots of other technological topics, visit 0:04:38.440 --> 0:04:51.640 our home planet, how Stuff Works dot com.