Interviews with Digital Media Thought Leaders
How Important is The iPhone & What Might Go Wrong?
Podcast Audio | Posted by Phil Leigh on June 25, 2007
Alan Reiter has been a wireless industry consultant for nearly 30 years. He was with the leading Radio Common Carrier trade association before the first cellular licenses were awarded. Now he runs the Wireless Internet & Mobile Computing website, newsletter, and consultancy. He and I discuss the future of the wireless internet and the iPhone.
About 7 years ago George Gilder wrote a book called Telecosm which was subtitled “How Infinite Bandwidth Will Revolutionize Our World”. One of the concepts discussed is the “teleputer”, which is a hand-held device connecting wirelessly to the Internet. It is the evolutionary successor to the mobile phone, but voice is merely one of many applications a teleputer will deliver. Consider the following Gilder predictions:
“Early in the new century, the personal teleputer, summoning and shaping film and files of images from around the world will collide with the centralized establishments of TV broadcasting.”
“Consider the customer of the new era. He awakens in the morning to the music of his teleputer playing his favorite wake-up mantinade through a speaker near his bed.”
As discussed in our January 16th podcast, I conclude that the iPhone is basically the first iteration of George Gilder’s teleputer, but judge for yourself. Just go to amazon.com to locate the book. Use the “search inside” feature for the term “teleputer” and see where it leads you.
Alan feels much the same way, I think, but he has some interesting thoughts on just where Version 1.0 of the iPhone may well fall short of the great expectations implied by Apple’s current stock price.
Length: This audio interview is about 33 minutes long.
Categories: Podcast Audio
Tags: Apple, cell-phones, cellular-phones, digital-media, George-Gilder, Internet-video, iPhone, mobile-phones, wireless-internet
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