Wireless Communications

Tenets: SMALL, PORT, custom, worse

Central concept: Cheap, effective, portable communications make for the next "killer app."

Compared to landline telephones, cell phones aren't very efficient. They make lousy speakerphones. They drop off in the middle of important conversations when you're zipping down the expressway. Their batteries seem to need constant recharging as compared with their semitethered cordless brethren found in the home. But we all know why we love them: portability.

Cell phones are perhaps the best example yet of the value of portability over efficiency. The fidelity of the cell phones isn't the greatest, and yet people find that they are increasingly using them instead of their home phones. People who have problems programming a microwave oven know which buttons to push on their cell phones to bring them into submission. It's not because cell phones are easier to understand than microwaves. They're not. It's just that the need to communicate is so great, apparently even greater than the need to eat.

Cell phones have also pushed the small-is-beautiful tenet of the Unix philosophy to the extreme as well. My first cell phone was a clunker. It weighed as much as a brick. It had mediocre reception outside of the primary coverage areas. It cost a small fortune in phone charges. And it was worth every penny I paid for it. Nowadays ultraslim, ultrasmart phones may be purchased for less than a night out on the town, and many are offered gratis from wireless providers' licensed agents.

What is even more interesting with cell phones and other wireless communications devices is the issue of convergence. It is not enough that we use cell phones to talk to one another. We want to be able to do everything with a cell phone that we can do with a home computer. This means sending and receiving live video, playing games, converting spoken messages to email, translating foreign speech on the fly, reading email, accessing the Internet, watching streaming video, and so on.

No, cell phones will not be able to do these things as well as desktop computers. But they will be just good enough. It's the worse-is-better tenet again. That which is cheap and effective is more useful than that which is big and expensive. People will not care that the little screen on their cell phone isn't as large as the one on their laptops. What they want is something good enough that is also portable.

Do you doubt that cell phones are up to the task? If you just look at the … er, please excuse me. I have a call coming in.