It's been 50 years since the American engineer Martin Cooper made the first-ever cell phone call on the Sixth Avenue. Now, the father of cell phones has some interesting thoughts on the future of our calling devices. He thinks future phones would ditch the current form factor and become a part of our bodies.
“The next generation will have the phone embedded under the skin of their ears,” Cooper told CNBC at the Mobile Congress Congress (MWC). The 94-year-old was given a lifetime achievement award to celebrate the golden jubilee of the iconic phone call he made to his chief competitor Joel S. Engel using the Motorola DynaTAC 8000X.
According to Cooper, these next-gen devices won't need to be charged as they would draw the small amount of power required from the human body itself. "Your body is the perfect charger," he said. “When you eat food, your body creates energy, right?”
That seems enticing when we see companies working day and night to launch the fastest possible charging tech. Cooper said they never imagined that someday phones "would become a camera and an encyclopedia." However, he also expressed disagreement with the current phones, emphasizing they are not optimal for speaking.
“Whenever I make a phone call and don’t have an earpiece, I have to take this flat piece of material against my curved head [and] hold my arm up in an awkward position,” he told the publication.
Well, his vision of embedded phones doesn't seem far-fetched when companies like Neuralink are already experimenting with brain-computer interfaces. More so, we have also heard about concepts like techno-humanism, which bridges the gap between humans and technology, for several decades now.
Cooper acknowledged that privacy and addiction have become serious concerns now. But he has "an abiding faith in humanity" and said that "somehow people have figured it out" considering all the technological advances we have had so far. People are wealthier and healthier than they've ever been before and despite the ups and downs, "humanity is progressing.”
Source: CNBC
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