Quote:
Originally posted by Opti@Jan 11 2005, 09:05 AM
Imagine a time when Cellphones cost less to use than landlines... cell-cell is free for many services... live video calls on cellphones are possible.. TV on your cell phone is possible.. java applications start being released by every company you deal with... every day you see new services that you can Only get by wireless.. every TV show has some PAY offer to buy something related to that show by SMS.
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With all of this in mind, I watched a biography thingy last night on Alexander Graham Bell.
When the first phone's came out, everyone thought they were a toy. The phone came out of Bell's first trying to create a multiplex telegraph system. The best up til that point had been Edison's 4X (four messages could be telegraphed over one wire.) Bell, with a background in music, was trying to create the multiplex and stumbled over the "harmonic telegraph" as the answer, a way of sending, for example, multiple musical notes, but each receiving telegraph would be able to only get the message of that "note". That lead to whole thing with "voice over a wire."
First, his backer kept telling him to stop this phone nonsense and get back to working on the improved telegraph, but was later convinced. Western Union who was the monolith that owned the telegraphs, didn't see any value in this "phone thing" -- and it's become known as the biggest mistake in the history of business anywhere.
Even after it's invention, people did not get it at first, nor did companies get it at first either. Amazing huh?
Keep this in mind too though. At the time, a phone line worked only if you had a direct line to whoever you were calling. If 20 people in your town had a line, you were NOT connected to all 20 by virtue of you each having a phone. (Sorta closest thing now is you can't walkie-talkie a Sprint customer on a Verizon phone, etc.)
So you couldn't call another person until the switch board was created. Then that had to be automated. Then, one city couldn't call another until a hub center linked switching centers, etc.
With all of that, anyhow, it makes me wonder, what can SMS and cell phones do in three years that 99% of us now cannot even comprehend. More importantly, of all the ways things can go, which one is the right way, and how to capitialize on it? That is the question.