> And please look outside America before talking about human history, and indeed computer.
You're too harsh on the OP. As Doug Engelbart discovered himself at some point: "One of the basic things you soon learn is that after a certain degree of quantitative change, you almost invariably go into qualitative change." (http://www-sul.stanford.edu/depts/hasrg/histsci/ssvoral/enge...).
Before Apple put everything together for the initial version of the iPhone nobody else other than technology enthusiasts (or masochists) were using their mobile phones as windows into the world. Not 10 years have passed and now I can see 12-year kids chatting with their friends on their iPhone5s while I'm taking the tramway home, or 20-something lady-drivers checking their Facebook while they're waiting for the green light.
If it matters I live half a globe-away from the States, and while I do own an iPhone 4 I still fondly remember how I used to write Python scripts for a Nokia N73 that would somehow try to pair the images I was taking with said phone with the geo-coordinates recorded by an external GPS device, both of them (the GPS device and the phone) connected through bluetooth.
People were emailing each other and secure IM'ing in 1999 on BlackBerries, I think you forget there was "internet phones" before the iPhone in 2007. This wasn't some "geek machine" it was something every wallstreet, government employee and exec had.
You're too harsh on the OP. As Doug Engelbart discovered himself at some point: "One of the basic things you soon learn is that after a certain degree of quantitative change, you almost invariably go into qualitative change." (http://www-sul.stanford.edu/depts/hasrg/histsci/ssvoral/enge...).
Before Apple put everything together for the initial version of the iPhone nobody else other than technology enthusiasts (or masochists) were using their mobile phones as windows into the world. Not 10 years have passed and now I can see 12-year kids chatting with their friends on their iPhone5s while I'm taking the tramway home, or 20-something lady-drivers checking their Facebook while they're waiting for the green light.
If it matters I live half a globe-away from the States, and while I do own an iPhone 4 I still fondly remember how I used to write Python scripts for a Nokia N73 that would somehow try to pair the images I was taking with said phone with the geo-coordinates recorded by an external GPS device, both of them (the GPS device and the phone) connected through bluetooth.