Thursday November 02, 2006

Your friends are...

your family.

2. Cell phones are all about people communicating with people.

Make phone call, talk to person, right? Nope.

In the last 25 years or so, the size of families has gotten smaller and smaller. I remember when I was a kid meeting someone from a family of 20. That was an anomaly. You were far more likely to have 4-6 kids in your family. Today its 2-3 kids or none.

What happens when families get smaller from a cultural perspective? You can't depend on your big brother to take care of you when you don't have one. So, someone else has to fill that gap in your life.

Your friends become your family.

This changes the dynamics of communicating with your "family". Your family no longer entirely lives with you so you have to use other means to stay in contact. This goes a long ways towards explaining why internet based social networking sites and text messaging and chat are so popular with the younger generation.

Thats where the cell phone comes in. Now you have a beast that you can take with you everywhere. Many of the same tasks you can do on your personal computer can be accomplished on your handset.

Oh, and, if you really want to, you can call someone and actually talk to them.

[evil laugh]

Next up is how all this changes tasks as they move from PC to mobile handset. ( Nov 02 2006, 01:50:01 PM PST ) Permalink