Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff production of I Heart Radio. Hi
Speaker 1: brain Stuff. I'm more in vogel Bomb and this is
Speaker 1: another classic episode from the brain Stuff archives. We first
Speaker 1: aired this one back in which feels like a million
Speaker 1: years ago, but wasn't really that ancient. Nonetheless, some of
Speaker 1: the predictions it made are already outdated. But I still
Speaker 1: think the question that this episode poses is an interesting one.
Speaker 1: What technology is going to replace the smartphone? Hi brain Stuff,
Speaker 1: Lauren vogel Bomb. Here. Today, nearly eight in ten Americans
Speaker 1: own a smartphone, and we've become accustomed to using them
Speaker 1: for everything from listening to podcasts, taking pictures, reading news,
Speaker 1: and posting on social media, to shopping and making financial transactions.
Speaker 1: For many people, smartphones have even taken the place of
Speaker 1: once common everyday implements like tape measures, flashlights, maps, and
Speaker 1: wrist watches. Smartphones have transformed everyday life so much that
Speaker 1: it's easy to forget that they only became popular a
Speaker 1: little bit more than ten years ago. That's when Apple
Speaker 1: released the iPhone, which combined mobile internet access and computing
Speaker 1: power with a multi touch screen interface, making it possible
Speaker 1: to do pretty much everything by tapping and flipping with
Speaker 1: one fingertip or two. A recent survey found that smartphone
Speaker 1: users now spend about five hours a day using their devices,
Speaker 1: which is why it's tough to walk down a crowded
Speaker 1: sidewalk in any major city without bumping into someone fixated
Speaker 1: upon hit or her screen. But with technological process moving
Speaker 1: at broadband speed these days, we have to think that
Speaker 1: the smartphone as we know it has a limited life expectancy.
Speaker 1: Survey of smartphone users across the world by Ericsson, the
Speaker 1: Swedish communications technology and services company, found that one in
Speaker 1: two people expected that the smartphone would become obsolete by
Speaker 1: which leads to the big question, what's going to replace
Speaker 1: the smartphone? Prognosticators predict that advances in technologies such as
Speaker 1: virtual reality, augmented reality, artificial intelligence, and wearable electronics will
Speaker 1: spawn a new generation devices that could change our everyday
Speaker 1: existence even more than the smartphone did. We spoke with
Speaker 1: Jack Aldrich, a futurist who helps business people figure out
Speaker 1: how to understand and benefit from emerging trends. They said,
Speaker 1: the transition we're about to experience is that we're going
Speaker 1: to go from accessing the internet to living in the internet.
Speaker 1: We don't have a suitably zeitgeisty name for those gadgets,
Speaker 1: but it's a pretty safe bet that they won't be
Speaker 1: palm sized rectangles with glass screens, or with any screen
Speaker 1: at all, for that matter, and they may not even
Speaker 1: be a single gadget. Brad Barons, the chief strategy officer
Speaker 1: for the Center for the Digital Future at the University
Speaker 1: of Southern California, predicts that the smartphone will give way
Speaker 1: to personal area networks, clusters of tiny gadgets concealed in beads,
Speaker 1: in a necklace, or built into eyeglasses or contact lenses.
Speaker 1: Such devices will use VR and a R to project
Speaker 1: information into our field of vision, eliminating the need for
Speaker 1: a screen. And just as we control apps on today's
Speaker 1: smartphones by moving our fingers, will be able to manipulate
Speaker 1: our next generation personal area net works through voice commands
Speaker 1: or by gesturing in the air, perhaps with the help
Speaker 1: of haptic technology like that buzz when you get a text,
Speaker 1: to help sipulate the sensory feedback of touching actual objects.
Speaker 1: Typing may not ever become a completely extinct skill, but
Speaker 1: it may someday become as rare as someone who writes
Speaker 1: an elegant Longhand with calligraphy pens. But increasingly we won't
Speaker 1: have to input as much information as we once did.
Speaker 1: That's because next gen intelligent assistance, imagine a vastly more
Speaker 1: intuitive version of Siri, Alex or Kirtana, will learn to
Speaker 1: figure out what we want to know or do, sometimes
Speaker 1: before we realize it ourselves. Aldrich predicts that in the
Speaker 1: near future, our personal gadgetry will study our eye movements
Speaker 1: in order to make predictions. Staring at something for two seconds, say,
Speaker 1: might prompt it to give us more information about that thing.
Speaker 1: Barrens and visions that the intelligent assistance of the future
Speaker 1: will continually whisper in our ears and project messages that
Speaker 1: only we can see that might help us in a
Speaker 1: lot of ways. If we encounter a person and can't
Speaker 1: recall their name, for example, doctor John Smith might flash
Speaker 1: before our eyes to remind us. It's also conceivable that
Speaker 1: our future devices and intelligent assistance may interact with other
Speaker 1: people's digital assistance, possibly taking the place of some of
Speaker 1: our interaction with actual people. That's a prospect that Baron's
Speaker 1: finds both interesting and disturbing. He points to current trends
Speaker 1: like texting instead of calling or using apps like Tinder
Speaker 1: to avoid having to walk up to that cute person
Speaker 1: in the bar with no introduction. Baron said, some of
Speaker 1: this is good, but it also means that people can
Speaker 1: increasingly live in their own little worlds inside what author
Speaker 1: Eli Pariser has dubbed filter bubbles, where you don't need
Speaker 1: to recognize that there are other points of view about things.
Speaker 1: But next generation personal communication devices may also change us
Speaker 1: in other ways that we haven't yet envisioned, as with
Speaker 1: the smartphone, we'll have to start using them to find out.
Speaker 1: Today's upisode was written by Patrick J. Kaiger and produced
Speaker 1: by Tristo McNeil and Tyler Clang. For more on this
Speaker 1: and lots of other tech topics, visit house toff works
Speaker 1: dot com. Brain Stuff is production of I Heart Radio
Speaker 1: or more podcasts My heart Radio visit the heart Radio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Speaker 1: H