A Brief History of the Smartphone

A Brief History of the Smartphone

 

This quote is often attributed on the Internet to Marshall McLuhan, although this never actually appears in any of his writings or speeches. Instead, the quote comes from Father John M. Culkin of Fordham University in a 1967 article in The Saturday Review, titled “A Schoolman’s Guide to Marshall  with this line, especially since its author, Father Culkin, essentially was paraphrasing McLuhan’s views when he penned it. Culkin and McLuhan were contemporaries, and this perspective was referring broadly to communication technologies of the era—radio, television, and landline phones—not smartphones. More recently, Nicholas Carr has softened the determinist view by saying, “Sometimes our tools do what we tell them to.  is referring to our dependence on the Internet, specifically, but his thesis rings true for all technologies. Whether it is Culkin, McLuhan, or Carr, the message remains the same, and it could not be more germane to this book. Technology reshapes the ways in which we interact with others and the ways that we see ourselves. Like the printing press, the steam engine, and the Internet, smartphones represent much more than the next step in a long line of technological development; they are giant leaps of blind faith. Our total investment in the smartphone represents a hope that they will transform our lives in mostly positive ways and an optimism that overshadows any trepidation we might have. But cosigning ourselves to technology often leaves us with more questions than answers, as the novelty begins to wear off and we peel back the curtain to reveal our true relationship with our devices. If you are your phone, then it may be worthwhile to consider your ancestral roots. It has been a decade since the launch of the first-generation iPhone, which is widely believed to be the most important innovation in smartphones. In his 2007 keynote address at the MacWorld expo (which you can view on YouTube), Apple’s CEO Steve Jobs publicly demonstrated the groundbreaking technology for the first time. He showcased many of the features and affordances that would be considered baseline for today’s smartphones, and the audience marveled. The original press release from Apple described the iPhone as “a revolutionary mobile phone, a widescreen iPod with touch controls, and a breakthrough Internet communications device.”3 Ten years ago, the smartphone arrived at a perfect confluence of our societal wants and needs: to be able to communicate freely, to be networked, to be informed, to be entertained, to be mobile. In his closing remarks of the keynote address, Jobs emphatically stated that the iPhone is “a revolution of the first order.” And he was right—to an extent. Certainly, the debut of the iPhone marks an important technological landmark, but a slightly deeper investigation into the annals of history will show that the first-generation iPhone was an amalgamation of the visions, ideas, and conquests of the many who came before Steve Jobs. As Brian Merchant writes in his definitive book on the iPhone, The One Device: The Secret History of the iPhone, although the success of the first-generation iPhone was unprecedented, the template for the smartphone definitely was not. Opinions vary on when we can pinpoint the development of the first smartphone, as it was a slow evolution of design. As Merchant recounts in his book, the first device to be marketed and packaged explicitly as a “smartphone” was launched seven.