{"id":8381,"date":"2019-10-16T12:29:05","date_gmt":"2019-10-16T16:29:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/?p=8381"},"modified":"2019-10-16T12:29:05","modified_gmt":"2019-10-16T16:29:05","slug":"the-many-functions-of-a-smartphone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/?p=8381","title":{"rendered":"The Many Functions of a Smartphone"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Remember back in the original Star Trek series how <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Spock\">Spock<\/a> carried around a <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Tricorder\">tricorder<\/a>? I always wanted one of those. Now, of course, I have something even better: my iPhone. Smartphones are general purpose devices that perform many functions, certainly more than the original tricorder. Today\u2019s smartphones are actually more like the \u201cterminals\u201d from Iain M Banks\u2019 <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Culture_series\">Culture series<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>I was reminded of all this by the recent XKCD <a href=\"https:\/\/xkcd.com\/2212\/\">Cell Phone Functions cartoon<\/a>. The cartoon is a timeline of present and future functions subsumed by our phones. The most recent function to be assimilated is \u201ccar key.\u201d Those functions not yet performed by the smartphones are all jokes: things like dog leash and band-aid.<\/p>\n<p>That got me wondering what else we could have our phones do. They already provide an interface to the world\u2019s knowledge\u2014including things like the current state of the stock market and the weather\u2014so any additions to that category aren\u2019t really new. Smartphones are, of course, really computers first and communication devices second so again any additions to general computing or communication capabilities don\u2019t count (although I can\u2019t think of any communication function they don\u2019t already perform).<\/p>\n<p>The only obvious thing I can think of is suggested by the band-aid joke: health monitoring. Smartphones are already doing some of that and I\u2019m sure we\u2019ll see more such functionality in the near term. We could, I suppose, add some trivial sensors like a thermometer but I can\u2019t think of any major functionality they don\u2019t already have. What about you? Can you think of some plausible function smartphones could perform that they aren\u2019t already doing?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Remember back in the original Star Trek series how Spock carried around a tricorder? I always wanted one of those. Now, of course, I have something even better: my iPhone. Smartphones are general purpose devices that perform many functions, certainly &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/?p=8381\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[37],"class_list":["post-8381","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","tag-tech"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8381","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8381"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8381\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8382,"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8381\/revisions\/8382"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8381"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8381"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8381"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}