Cellphone turns 40 today

[WOOO]

Cellphone turns 40 today

http://thestar.blogs.com/worlddaily/2013/04/cellphones-turn-40-today.html



Happy 40th birthday, cellphone: you are officially middle-aged today, though you still manage to cling to us like a needy baby.

On this day in 1973, Martin Cooper stood on a street corner in New York City and made the first handheld wireless phone call. Cooper, a Motorola engineer, called his counterpart at Bell, where work on a rival technology was underway.

That simple publicity stunt launched the era of mobile technology we find ourselves in today, for better or worse.

The phone was clunky: it was 10 inches long and weighed 2.5 pounds. It was called the DynaTAC. It took 10 years to hit the commercial market, and stayed there until the early 1990s.

Cooper is now in his 80s and still a giant in Silicon Valley. On Wednesday, he was honoured with the 2013 Marconi Prize, which recognizes advancements in the field of communications and was named after radio pioneer and Nobel laureate Guglielmo Marconi.

In a statement released by the Marconi society, Cooper is quoted as saying that working for Motorola was the best thing that ever happened to him. "We had one over-riding belief: that people are inherently mobile," he says.

Cooper made his first foray into wireless technology when the Chicago police department asked him to make their radio systems better. He came up with a system that allowed officers to use handheld, portable devices instead of in-car systems.

Interestingly, in a 2012 interview with Cisco Systems, Cooper says that cellphones today are "essentially useless" since so many different things have been piled into them.

"For the most part, almost everything that they have put onto a smartphone you can do elsewhere in a much more effective way. You can take better pictures with a separate camera. You can send your email and read it more conveniently on a computer. You can text. The only real advantage is the fact that you only have to carry one thing with you."

He continues:

"All these other things turn out to be conveniences but not nearly as revolutionary as just connecting people."

[arce1988]

  hbd

[Gregzs]

http://www.buzzfeed.com/daves4/future-fuuuuuture-fuuuuuuture?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=BuzzFeed+88&utm_content=BuzzFeed+88+CID_43a818047931d8d9d0dd33115ae036c1&utm_source=Campaign%20Monitor&utm_term=whooooooooooooa

22 Pictures That Prove We’re Living In The Damn Future

22. Just keep this in mind. 1994 vs. 2014:

http://s3-ec.buzzfed.com/static/2014-08/6/14/enhanced/webdr04/enhanced-buzz-2005-1407348426-9.jpg

[Simple Simon]

Primemuscle invented the cellphone??

[orion]

It's just a fad.  I'm not buying into it.

[Bevo]

Looks like a Jew

[Redux]

I knew this thing had a future when I saw Sonny Crockett with one.

[Primemuscle]

Primemuscle invented the cellphone??

Don't tell anyone. I don't want a bunch of loser bodybuilders coming to me for a handout. 

[MikMaq]

http://www.buzzfeed.com/daves4/future-fuuuuuture-fuuuuuuture?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=BuzzFeed+88&utm_content=BuzzFeed+88+CID_43a818047931d8d9d0dd33115ae036c1&utm_source=Campaign%20Monitor&utm_term=whooooooooooooa

22 Pictures That Prove We’re Living In The Damn Future

22. Just keep this in mind. 1994 vs. 2014:

http://s3-ec.buzzfed.com/static/2014-08/6/14/enhanced/webdr04/enhanced-buzz-2005-1407348426-9.jpg

That list is shit.

But what I think is stranger and less focused is how society has completely changed because of the internet.

Most of the tech we have really isnt that impressive.

Most of what we use, with the exception of low quality youtube vids was around in the early 90s.

Get big is a prime example of how shit hasnt changed much in the last 15-20 years.

Even cell phones I think are a gimmicky technology with little pragmatic advantage.

Whats fascinating is how weve become vr zombies.

We really live in the cyberpunk future they warned us about.

People today are totally dependent on the internet.


Granted technology  the real kind(industrial aps) are fucking rapidly advancing.

I really think were approaching a new wave of computer usage, where there are actually functional benefits.

I.e. software that will get people to work out etc.

[Primemuscle]

Laughing at the zombies comment because it really rings true.

My wife and I were out to lunch at a restaurant today, we both sat on the same side of the booth facing out towards the room. At one point I looked around and literally 90 percent of the patrons were scrolling through the menus on their phones. They weren't engaged in conversations with the other people at the table. It is pathetic. The three folks sitting next to us talked to each other, but never looked up from their phone's screen.

My phone was in my pocket. I resisted any thought of pulling it out to check it.

[sync pulse]

The idea of  a mobile phone service were first applied to trains.  In the mid 1920’s on some German trains there were phones for the passengers.  This prompted the imagination of a German Cartoonist shown below.

The first “Car Phone” that I am aware of, that is, a full duplex two way radio that required no training to use, was in Franklin Roosevelt’s limousine.  When the President picked up the handset, the White House switchboard responded.  When the White House wanted to call the car, the switchboard routed the call.

Mobile car phones, due to the limited number of channels in each location, were stupidly expensive to acquire and use. 

The concept of cell phones were demonstrated by Bell Labs in 1947.  The thought behind them is that rather than one huge powerful central transponding station for all the mobile phones in a location, there would be numerous low powered station across the location so that a car at one end could be on the same frequency as one on the other end.  A car drove around and the call was switched from station to station relatively seamlessly.  This proved the concept, but could not be exploited because the equipment to do this was ungainly.  What was needed was in the future, computers.

The first “Cell Phones” were designed for cars and consisted of a handset in the front seat and a big box of “junk” (computers, radio link and the like) in the trunk.

[Mr Anabolic]

Got rid of my cell phone about 4 years ago.  No cell phone tower pings or GPS tracking me.  No radiation passing through my head either.  Besides those things, no one should have 24 hour access to someone else... NO ONE.

We've become a nation of tech-toy addicted, narcissistic, dumbed-down morons.  Critical thinkers are practically non-existent these days.

All these movies and tv shows about a zombie apocalypse.  Just take a look at the people around you... the zombie apocalypse is already here.

[Primemuscle]

My first "cell" phone was provided by my employer. It was a big hunk of a thing that no way would fit in one's pocket. It was more like a walkie-talkie then a phone. I'd forget it, leaving it on my desk most of the time.   

[funk51]

those things allow aliens to read your thoughts.

[Novena]

.

[Danimal77]

Cellphone turns 40 today

http://thestar.blogs.com/worlddaily/2013/04/cellphones-turn-40-today.html



Happy 40th birthday, cellphone: you are officially middle-aged today, though you still manage to cling to us like a needy baby.

On this day in 1973, Martin Cooper stood on a street corner in New York City and made the first handheld wireless phone call. Cooper, a Motorola engineer, called his counterpart at Bell, where work on a rival technology was underway.

That simple publicity stunt launched the era of mobile technology we find ourselves in today, for better or worse.

The phone was clunky: it was 10 inches long and weighed 2.5 pounds. It was called the DynaTAC. It took 10 years to hit the commercial market, and stayed there until the early 1990s.

Cooper is now in his 80s and still a giant in Silicon Valley. On Wednesday, he was honoured with the 2013 Marconi Prize, which recognizes advancements in the field of communications and was named after radio pioneer and Nobel laureate Guglielmo Marconi.

In a statement released by the Marconi society, Cooper is quoted as saying that working for Motorola was the best thing that ever happened to him. "We had one over-riding belief: that people are inherently mobile," he says.

Cooper made his first foray into wireless technology when the Chicago police department asked him to make their radio systems better. He came up with a system that allowed officers to use handheld, portable devices instead of in-car systems.

Interestingly, in a 2012 interview with Cisco Systems, Cooper says that cellphones today are "essentially useless" since so many different things have been piled into them.

"For the most part, almost everything that they have put onto a smartphone you can do elsewhere in a much more effective way. You can take better pictures with a separate camera. You can send your email and read it more conveniently on a computer. You can text. The only real advantage is the fact that you only have to carry one thing with you."

He continues:

"All these other things turn out to be conveniences but not nearly as revolutionary as just connecting people."

I've saved all my cell phones since 2000, totaling a dozen so far.

[Tom]

ANYONE know when cell phones first were able to be used as a camera? you know able to take pics of yourself and others? friend of mind says mid to late 80's? i say no way not until mid to late 90's at the earliest? info on this question on the internet doesn't help answer this question..

[Primemuscle]

ANYONE know when cell phones first were able to be used as a camera? you know able to take pics of yourself and others? friend of mind says mid to late 80's? i say no way not until mid to late 90's at the earliest? info on this question on the internet doesn't help answer this question..

The first camera phone was sold in 2000 in Japan, a J-Phone model, about a decade after the first digital camera was sold in Japan in December 1989