Welcome to the ‘Connected Learning Device’

Smartphones are so 2011. The definition of what constitutes a smartphone varies depending on who you ask but that’s not the point of this post. There are many definitions as to what consitutes the ‘smart’.  It has a modern OS, can access the web, is extensible via apps etc….

But what comes after the smartphone? Google introduced the notion of the ‘Superphone’. To me this sounded like a faster smartphone? But that is not really revolutionary but rather evolutionary.

What I really find interesting is what the next generation of connected mobile devices and computers will provide as a personalized experience to me at an individual level in addition to a distilled aggregated view of the network.

What happens when the entire world is connected? Everything has an IP and can read and write to the network?

As more and more data is created and shared and more objects come online,  my device must move into a learning mode where it get better with MY use in addition to the aggregate use of the network. I imagine a world where I don’t even need to take out my phone to open or close an application?

What happens when we solve the tasks and problems and people have at a system level and not at an app level?

Why do we need an alarm clock APP, a Weather APP, a Payment APP, an app for this or that?

Why can’t the phone learn my sleep pattern, know where I shop, where I travel, what I am interested in via observable data points created everyday? It can and will.

The current term of ‘application’ is redefined to mean the contextual application of mobile technology to solve a problem, perform a task seamlessly without the need of my interaction in the 2011 sense of the word ‘interaction’.  Touch revolutionized input and interaction but this is just the beginning.

Here are a couple of the characteristics that, in my estimation, would describe the next generation of connected devices.

• Moving from apps that are pre-programmed to execute specific use cases to a task oriented system that answer the query according to context.  I don’t even need to take out my phone to pay for my bus ticket. I just walk on the bus.
• Ability to instantaneously bring any object ‘online’ and write to it.
• No more share or send to buttons. The phone knows who is important to me in what context. Sharing is automatic.
• Sensor rich notification system that continuously ‘listens’ to the real world and reacts on the inputs received.

It becomes the true PDA (Personal Digital Assistant). A sensor rich, contextually sensitive, truly personal device that gets better the more I use it. Things would be automated.

So the question to me is, what happens when the phone knows you better than you know yourself?

Welcome to the Knowledge Phone.

p.s. I wonder what Apple is planning on introducing with ‘Assistant’. More on that later.

Keep your stick on the ice.

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