Comments on: Does cell phone's impact outweigh PC's?

IBM software developer and blogger says mobile phone takes prize for most influential technology in past 25 years.

[sean_o_n]

What do kids know

Kids use IM because they have nothing to say and the attention span of a gnat. The phone is definitely doing to the PC what the PC did to big iron 25 years ago, no two ways about it. Integrating stereo bluetooth and wifi makes the mobile phone a killer app. The only hassle is pumping the display out to a monitor or TV wirelessly.

[herby67]

Wrong analysys

OK, let's imagine the world without cellphones. It would be more difficult to communicate, we would still use payphones when on the road and would pay more for calls while on local travel.
Most business outside that particular industry would not be changed much, though.
Now imagine a world without personal computers.
The web wouldn't exist. We wouldn't have access to the information we do have now at work and at home. We would still access most news through the TV and the newspapers, and would have access to a limited number of often controlled news. We would still be writing letters and waiting for weeks to hear news from far away friends and family. Lots of today's business would not exist, as many business models are not viable without computers, and many others are technically impossible to run without PCs.
We would still buy CDs to listen to music and would rely on magazines to learn what's hot and what's not.
And you wouldn't be reading to this post.

Finally, relying on children's behavior as a predictor of the future is fundamentally flawed. Kids don't use email because they tend to have much shorter messages to communicate and the communication is not used to build something collaboratively. Try to do a financial analysis report over SMS.
If this kind of analysis were right we could predict that, in 30 years, we will all have pimples and use skateboards as our main method of transporttion

[cpipkins]

Kudos

It's nice to know that there are others out there that are just as competent as the proffessionals! I especially like the part about the pimples and skateboards.

[heritagejd]

Ruby analysis

Some of the comments don't consider bandwidth. Sometime, sooner than later, electrical deployment (BW) will be available at just less than 1 ghz......Ummmmmm to all the naysayers.

[markdoiron]

No Way!

The PC has killed dozen's of businesses, jobs and paradigms--albeit often by replacing them with new businesses. Look at real estate, brick/mortar stores, tax collection, travel agents, music industry, booksellers, photography, graphics development, and on and on and on. When was the last time most of us used a travel agent to buy tickets? How many books have you bought from a brick/mortar booksellers? When was the last time you carried a roll of film down to the one-hour processor to get crummy, unedited images back? The last time you bought an expensive, new product, where did you get your reviews and opinions? The cell phone is a minor blip in the road of progress. It's a silly supposition to suggest otherwise!

mark d.

mark d.

[JeffW42]

Wrong question

Where would the cell phone industry be today without the PC?? (not to mention, a host of other industries)

[justmo]

Chicken or the Egg

What came first the chicken or the egg, I don't know. What I do know is that the PC has spawned countless numbers of new inventions one of which is the modern day cell phone. In essence the PC gave birth to the modern cell phone "a portable, connected mini computer". By listing all the functions of the cell phone you have to ask yourself would that be possible without the invention of the PC? Especially "software", would we even know what that word means without the existence of the PC? How would the cell phone perform all these task without software?