Rise of the Planet of the Apps

Just like the moon, there is a bright side and a dark side to the explosive popularity of mobile devices. More often than not, we can see the bright side clearly, but sometimes fail to notice or acknowledge the dark side. As with other forms of technology in the past, we are quickly becoming dependent on mobile devices and the apps that populate them.

It seems like nearly everyone around us these days has some sort of Internet-enabled mobile device: a smartphone, a tablet, a personal media player, etc. Usually, if one person does not have one of these devices, someone adjacent to them almost certainly does. One of the more common phrases I have heard over the past couple of years has been "Hey, can you look something up on your phone for me?" Our dependence on mobile technology has grown to the point where even those without mobile devices are becoming reliant on those who do. Rather than waiting to use alternative means to seek information or media themselves, they are much more comfortable with asking another individual to access that media for them on the spot.

Of course, there are others who do have firsthand access to these devices, and have built such a dependence on this mobile flow of data that they essentially shut out the rest of the world. You see them all over the place, in coffee shops, shopping malls, walking down the street, and sometimes even behind the wheel of a car. Head down, arms close to the body, hands firmly clutching a smartphone or tablet mere inches from the face, thumbs approaching the speed of light. They may or may not have headphones plugged in, and may or may not take an occasional glance forward or to the sides to make sure they haven't inadvertently strayed into the path of a bus or navigated to the edge of an endless precipice. Admittedly, these users sometimes display amazingly effective and efficient acts of multitasking, seemingly dividing their attention across a dozen tasks while remaining fixated to the screen of their smartphone. At the end of the day however, they are simply consumed by mobile media, for better or for worse. Take away the device and they would likely adopt the expression of a lost sheep, unsure of what to do without their apps.

Of course, these kinds of drawbacks and dependencies are a direct result of the mobile device's recent evolution into the "go to" device of many users. With hardware specs approaching and in some case rivaling or exceeding those of many laptop computers, it makes sense that some power users might be more inclined to use their phone or tablet to access media than their laptop or desktop. Fast processors, beautiful high-resolution screens, blistering wireless speeds, and intuitive interfaces have all been features in the latest uberphones and tablets over the past year or two, making it easier than ever to liberate one's self from the shackles of the personal computer or television. Every device that we have used and become dependent on in the past 10 years is being consolidated into something that fits in the palm of our hand, that is thinner than our wallets, that display so many pixels we'd need a calculator to count them all, that can download an HD-quality movie from iTunes before we're finished brushing our teeth, that looks better than the drunken sorority girl you met at that party last week. We sign our 2-year data contract and are handed a device that can do everything, that becomes everything to us. We are liberated from the shackles of old technology that held us down, but by that point we are already tightly bound by mobile media.