The iPhone is the new transistor - 4 March 2024

Human history is a series of quiet periods interspersed with revolutions.  So, too, science is a series of quiet periods interspersed with revolutions.  In the 1947, the invention of the transistor changed the world and in 2007, the iPhone smart phone changed the world.  It took a while for the transistor to go from laboratory curiosity to common use, but the iPhone moved into common use more quickly.  More recently, people have thought virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), bitcoin (BTC), blockchain, and artificial intelligence (AI, LLM) would be the next revolutionary step.  AI may yet change the world, but the others are racing for the dust heap of history.

Some would claim that the Internet, the World Wide Web (WWW), or computing have changed history, and these have left their marks on life, but nothing has become as pervasive and as impactful as the smart phone.  The Internet, the WWW, and computing have contributed to the march of the smart phone, but so have many other technologies such as NFT, Bluetooth, and Wifi, but the smart phone is the agent of change.

In my smart phone, I can carry my wallet (except for cash, and even Venmo would object to that exception), my keys, my identification, my theater tickets, my shopping list, my maps, and the only things I need carry now are a pocket knife and a handkerchief.  Most people do not even carry handkerchiefs anymore.  And all this fits in one pocket.

We do not always recognize the revolution when it starts; in fact, we rarely do.  Transistors were big, chunky things with poor gain (a measure of transistor quality).  Horseless carriages were hard to start and broke down easily - and they needed roads to get somewhere.  Steam trains were noisy and smelly, too.  Medicine was glorified speculation until germ theory.  

The transistor continues to change our modern world, but the smart phone has surpassed it.