Iphone 3.0 . . . Better than Christmas

I can't tell you how excited I was when I rose from my bed this morning. Today is the first day of Apple's World Wide Developer Conference (WWDC). What that means is that today is the announcement for the new Iphone. I felt like a little kid Christmas morning. . . that makes me a fanboy.

Sometimes my wife asks me why I get so excited about these technology things ("Yes, I love technology. Not as much as you, you see. Still, I love technology."). I have tried to explain, but the answer never seems to satisfy her. Maybe it's one of those things . . . you get it or you don't care.

But, I care. Oh, how I care! Among other things, the new iphone has a better camera that will also include software for video recording. (Now, if you were motivated you could already do video recording, but it required a hacked phone.) Statistically speaking, you are probably more like my wife than me (on this point, anyway), and you are saying . . . "Who cares?"

Let's get into it. The camera being better means close up photos of text, barcodes, etc. One application that already exists that will now work properly is the a barcode scanner that looks up products online. WHAT! That's right! You walk into the store, take a picture of any product, WITH YOUR PHONE, and it will tell you what it costs on Amazon, Ebay, etc.

That's just one example, though. You could read any text into the phone via the camera and connect that information to any online source. Check you flight status by taking a picture of your ticket, save business cards of associates and search for keywords online, read nutritional information about your last meal from the lable on the box and keep a perfect record of all the foods you eat, etc, etc.

So, there's that. The video recording has it's own applications as well. I'm going to get a little more theoretical now. Suppose that you are at a major event, rock concert, presidential inauguration, local bar, etc. Suppose everyone has a video recording enabled phone at this event. If there are thousands of people video recording from different angles, it's possible that this could create a near perfect 3D representation of the scene. You've probably seen Batman where he hacks into everyone's phone and Morgan Freeman is like, "No man should have this power." It's kinda like that. What if something goes down? Someone is injured, or history happens, or you are arrested? There's a perfect record of what happened from every possible angle.

The thing I like about technology is that as it develops it bridges the gap between our meat brains and omniscience. I have no illusions, we are far, far away from perfect knowledge, and the progress we have made is but a tiny step towards it, but where we are now, relative to where we were say, 40 years ago, is incredibly profound.

Think about how you used to get information, and how you get it now. Do you have questions about your health or available jobs or when a movie is playing? How much effort did it take to get those questions answered 20 years ago? What about if you wanted to know the definition of an unfamiliar word? How about if you wanted to know what 30 of your not so closest high school friends were doing with their lives? Pieces of information that were simply too much effort to be worth it, are now trivial to get to. Idle curiosities can be instantly satisfied, which leads to a broader and more intricate general knowledge base. The integration of technology into our lives is accelerating, which means that the progress that we make in the next 10 years will equal what we did in the previous 30. How can you live in these times and not get excited about it?!?

Well, I suspect that those of you pre-disposed to my argument are already with me, and those who are not pre-disposed are still saying, yeah, but, so what? I get that.