Quote from: Marleycat;539031I disagree with your assessment of cellphones. As a woman the advent of them both made life more safe and more dangerous at the same time.  It literally changed where I live,  travel and do business much like having a debit card.

And making it a smartphone altered the equation further both for good and bad.

Don't get me wrong, cellphones have had an impact on daily lives.

But they are merely a convienence evolution of 'long distance communication'.  The ability to talk to 'anyone in the world' in real time is the truly evolutionary leap in technology, at least linguistically.  The ability to do it from any random park bench is comparatively minor.

This is distinct from computers, the invention of which didn't alter society nearly as much as the move to cheap personal computing. Smart phones and Ipads are merely an evolution of that as well, but in this case the evolution in portability and convienence is very close to the initial innovation on the timeline.


EDIT::: To clarify a point on cell phones. Where I am at it is not cost effective to use a cell phone to contact anyone I know. Yet I can still 'call home', either using cheaper land lines or even the internet, via skype, with only a minor loss of convienence.  The net effect on my interconnectivity for loss of cell phone use is extremely minor.  Can I conceive of instances where it would be less minor? Absolutely, but those are both personal, rather than societal and allowing for extreme circumstance only.