The Mobile Revolution is Upon Us

Reading an article on the Harvard Business Review written by none other than Eric Schmidt, chairman and CEO of Google, I found that quite a few bells were ringing in my mobile-wired brain. This article took the future of our planet and the globalization of the societies upon it and said the the key to a positive future, essentially, is to deliver the goods to make it possible. This set of keys, he says, start at mobile devices and their geolocation capabilities and ability to give the user both information about where they were at the moment, “what they could do there right now,” and etcetera, all of this delivered at scale.

The first of three keys, Schmidt notes, is the development of underlying fast networks, which of course will of course bring with them creative new applications in mostly the entertainment and social realms. Can you imagine a world completely covered by a network or networks that are 10 times the speed we have in the most well-covered areas in the USA today? This world would most certainly become a place where mobile devices aren’t only enticing to the general population, they’d become essential. Using these devices to send and receive requests for every need and want we have outside (and inside) the home. This of course leads into the next key…

Attending to the development of mobile money. Schmidt notes that Phones are used as banks in many poorer parts of the world. This is going to blow the minds of the people who are proponents of getting rid of the Federal Reserve here in the USA and making sure there’s a correct amount of actual gold sitting in a safe somewhere should everyone want to trade in their dollar bills. Can you imagine a world where we’re working with a single standard perhaps? Credits that are good past all borders and governments, and on this tip, all devices working on global networks, having what the DVD business calls Region Zero. Of course, this sort of situation can basically never go 100% global, as there will always be ultra-poor areas where “your Republic Credits are no good here, I need something more real.”

Finally, there’s the increasing of the availability of inexpensive smartphones in the poorest parts of the world – Google, Schmidt says, envisions “literally a billion people” getting inexpensive, browser based touchscreen phones in the next few years. If these devices can all connect to the internet in one way or another, can you imagine the change it will make, at least in those areas? There’s challenges, of course, in areas where the internet is routinely blocked, webpages and whole sections of countries are blocked, but there’s always the possibility of satellites, right?

Then I’d like to add a point – and I don’t want to seem like I’m trying to be on-par with the CEO of Google in the way of predicting or wishing for certain things in the future, but take a gander: a single, globalized network connection to the internet, a single internet, not country-based, one that cannot be blocked. Possible? If it is, it means world peace. That’s my word. Of course then the producers of the devices we browse this one internet with would become the new government. Hmmm…

Eric Schmidt’s original article can be found on the Harvard Business Review blog, and I must compliment the artist who did his portrait – it’s spiffy! Android Community approves.