"How the World is About to Get Even Smaller" 

Forty-one years today the first call from a cell phone was made, making it hard to imagine that in the past four decades the world has gone from enormous handsets to pocket-sized portable devices. Martin Cooper changed the world when he made the first cell phone call at Motorola, which is now taken over by the dominating company of the industry, Google. (Cheng, 2013) Although we feel like the world of technology has already evolved so much, in reality technology is not anywhere close to how developed it will be in the future. Director of consumer technology analysis and research, Ben Bajarin anticipates that technology's growth will be strongly driven by mobile-connected devices such as smartphones and tablets. (Bajarin, 2012) 

To have an idea of where mobile computing is heading a recent Cisco report states: 

• There will be over 10 million mobile-connected devices in 2016

• Global mobile-data traffic will increase between now and 2016

• Mobile-network connection will increase by 2016

• Two-thirds of worlds mobile data traffic will be video by 2016

(Shetty, 2012) 

The truth is that computing can be done on a great number of devices all in the hands of humans in the matter of seconds. It is rather difficult to imagine what the future will be like, but with the statistics of the Cisco report not only will humans be more connected but what they use to connect to each other will also expand. 

The way we consume technology and use our mobile devices to connect and communicate with each other all around the world will drastically change in a matter of years. To some people this is scary, but to others it is intriguing.

Is the continuous development of technology scary? Will it completely eliminate the need for manual labour and only drawback the evolvement of the world? Of course not, technology has only become a benefit to humans with opportunities for business, trade, commerce and providing profound economic opportunity for developing countries such as China, Mexico and South Africa. (Bajarin, 2012)  Although, all this technology does carry a disadvantage with it. Us Canadians are use to being able to communicate with anyone at almost any time because of mobile devices but, the more people all over the world get their hands on a connected mobile device, the smaller our world is going to feel.

Below is a video of Electrical Engineer Tom Coughlin briefly talks about the future of technology and connected devices: 

http://youtu.be/x1pMFrBpdaQ


So, why is technology so important to our future? Ben Bajarin says, " This global vision is, of course, larger than Canada, but Canadian innovation will be a catalyst to drive global connectivity forward." (Bajarin, 2012)



References

Bajarin, B. (2012, February 21). Mobile-connected devices will make the world even smaller . Retrieved from http://techland.time.com/2012/02/21/the-connected-human-how-the-world-is-about-to-get-even-smaller/

Cheng, R. (2013, April 3). The first call from a cell phone was made 40 years from today. Retrieved from http://www.cnet.com/news/the-first-call-from-a-cell-phone-was-made-40-years-ago-today/

Shetty, S. (2012, February 14). Cisco visual networking index forecast. Retrieved from http://newsroom.cisco.com/press-release-content?type=webcontent&articleId=668380

By: Ashley Couto