Phil Smeeton's Tech Thinking Blog

Amongst my varied and interesting academic life I have studied psychology and social science. When I do a comparison of the way people appear on tv and the internet I see that tv seems stale and the rising internet stars seem energised and motivated.   On a technical basis the tv is old tech and I believe that one of two things will happen to tv long term. 1. A reinvention 2. Devolution into a news service only for less technically able groups.   As my elderly mother told me recently the same thing happened to radio many decades ago.   Seems like the truer interactivity the internet provides leaves fans feeling closer to their celebrities more than tv ever could.

In 2026 the smartphone is an indispensable device supporting the users digital life, messaging, payments for goods and services, entertainment, business, location and directions, some limited productivity, shooting movies for services like YouTube. Battery life used to be very limiting but no longer, screen resolution used to be limited but is now excellent, the touch interfaces work superbly with high reliability in all conditions. Even the audio is pretty strong on modern smartphones, easily producing music and sound for movies. The apps ecosystem provides extensibility for the device, along with nearfield protocols to add hardware easily. Voice recognition is quite strong as is the language translation offering. In 1990 my mobile phone could make voice calls for 30 minutes per battery charge and that was it, no other functionality. Excellent progress in 35 years!