Bernard of Chartres used to say that we are like dwarfs on the shoulders of giants, so that we can see more than they, and things at a greater distance, not by virtue of any sharpness of sight on our part, or any physical distinction, but because we are carried high and raised up by their giant size.
—12th-century philosopher and theologian John of Salisbury,
in his work ‘Metalogicon’, 1159.
This week’s unveiling of Apple’s latest iPhone 15 drew predictable plaudits and praise. But the most significant change that captured the media’s imagination was not any breathtaking new software feature or a major design shift, but its new charging port. For the first time, Apple has built USB-C into its iPhones instead of its proprietary Lightning connector. Why? To comply with the European Union, which has insisted, in the name of environmentalism, that there should be one charger for all devices. (You can read more about the ‘Brussels Effect’ in my Briefing for the Hungarian Think Tank, MCC Brussels, here).
The fact that a charger port has become the global focus of innovation speaks volumes about how low our imaginative horizons have become and how estranged we are from our past achievements.
The smartphone is a remarkable technological achievement. But its brilliance lies not in how it can help reduce carbon emissions but as an outcome of centuries of human problem-solving.
What’s smart about a smartphone?
The cell phones we carry in our pockets today have more computing power than all of NASA back in 1969 when it placed two astronauts on the moon. By every measure, what we carry in our pockets is astonishingly powerful. The 70-pound Apollo Guidance Computer on board the Apollo 11 Command Module was a machine with only 64 kilobytes of memory. It operated at ridiculously slow operating speeds compared to today’s smartphones. The iPhone has 130,000 times more transistors and is 120,000,000 times faster in terms of overall performance. It is calculated that one iPhone 6 could theoretically guide 120 million Apollo rockets simultaneously (why we would ever need to do that is a moot point, but it’s quite an astonishing thought nevertheless).
This is a spectacular achievement, especially considering how small these devices are. But as mind-blowing as this is, there is something even more brilliant about today’s smartphones.
What is truly fascinating is that the inventions that combine to make smartphones result from separate problem-solving in fields unrelated to communications over the centuries. Breakthroughs in the discovery and development of glass and other materials, electricity, batteries, computing, cameras and photography, liquid crystal displays, physics, chemistry, and mathematics have made this all possible.
In his highly entertaining infographic of the history and timeline of the iPhone, Dmytro Nesterov demonstrates that at least 258 known people from at least 92 countries were involved in discovering and creating the disparate inventions that made the smartphone possible in the 21st-century.
Generations of mathematicians, chemists, and inventors, along with all kinds of engineers and scientists, people of different calibres and talents from unknown students to scientific legends from all over the world, failed and endured making small and significant contributions to create all the elements, that eventually emerged as today’s smartphone. Even a few wars had to break out to boost technologies that would bring us this technological wonder.
It might have taken someone like Steve Jobs to pull this together to create the iPhone. Still, if one were to make a film about the iPhone and all the underlying breakthroughs and failures over centuries that made its components possible, the iPhone story would perhaps be told in the last 15 seconds of an hour-long documentary about how remarkable mankind is.
What is smart about smartphones is the smartness of human beings, solving problems, imagining new worlds and pushing mankind to uncover the laws of nature to bend them to meet and advance human needs and dreams.
And what is dumb about smartphones?
What is dumb is how we have not used them to inspire young people about technology, science, mathematics, physics, chemistry and history – the elements that make the modern world possible and can shape the future. Instead, we have flattered them about how brilliant they are with digital technologies, which they are not (but need to be), and thus failed to use something so central to their experience as an opportunity to educate and challenge them to raise their game.
Using the smartphone as a point of entry, young people could be inspired to understand that every significant technological breakthrough that has transformed society results from continued human imagination, failure, persistence, courage and, above all else, ambition. Understanding the evolution of the smartphone could, in turn, spark dreams about inventing the future for understanding and changing the world for the better. But praising young people’s apparent technological prowess does the opposite. It encourages complacency and the lowering of ambition.
The result is as depressing as it is inevitable. Instead of a spark for knowledge and a future-oriented aspiration, the smartphone has become a tool of self-reflected indulgence and narcissism. Instead of inspiring young people to raise their eyes from their screens and engage the world around them, we have kindled introspection, a quest for inner identities which fatalistically trap us in the very biology our forefathers overcame with their imaginations.
The smartphone and its dumb abuse by adults prove, yet again, that human progress is not just about overcoming natural or biological limits but man-made ones, too.
What’s Smart and Dumb About Smartphones?
This week’s unveiling of Apple’s latest iPhone 15 drew predictable plaudits and praise. But the most significant change that captured the media’s imagination was not any breathtaking new software feature or a major design shift, but its new charging port. For the first time, Apple has built USB-C into its iPhones instead of its proprietary Lightning connector. Why? To comply with the European Union, which has insisted, in the name of environmentalism, that there should be one charger for all devices. (You can read more about the ‘Brussels Effect’ in my Briefing for the Hungarian Think Tank, MCC Brussels, here).
The smartphone is a remarkable technological achievement. But its brilliance lies not in how it can help reduce carbon emissions but as an outcome of centuries of human problem-solving.
What’s smart about a smartphone?
The cell phones we carry in our pockets today have more computing power than all of NASA back in 1969 when it placed two astronauts on the moon. By every measure, what we carry in our pockets is astonishingly powerful. The 70-pound Apollo Guidance Computer on board the Apollo 11 Command Module was a machine with only 64 kilobytes of memory. It operated at ridiculously slow operating speeds compared to today’s smartphones. The iPhone has 130,000 times more transistors and is 120,000,000 times faster in terms of overall performance. It is calculated that one iPhone 6 could theoretically guide 120 million Apollo rockets simultaneously (why we would ever need to do that is a moot point, but it’s quite an astonishing thought nevertheless).
This is a spectacular achievement, especially considering how small these devices are. But as mind-blowing as this is, there is something even more brilliant about today’s smartphones.
What is truly fascinating is that the inventions that combine to make smartphones result from separate problem-solving in fields unrelated to communications over the centuries. Breakthroughs in the discovery and development of glass and other materials, electricity, batteries, computing, cameras and photography, liquid crystal displays, physics, chemistry, and mathematics have made this all possible.
In his highly entertaining infographic of the history and timeline of the iPhone, Dmytro Nesterov demonstrates that at least 258 known people from at least 92 countries were involved in discovering and creating the disparate inventions that made the smartphone possible in the 21st-century.
Generations of mathematicians, chemists, and inventors, along with all kinds of engineers and scientists, people of different calibres and talents from unknown students to scientific legends from all over the world, failed and endured making small and significant contributions to create all the elements, that eventually emerged as today’s smartphone. Even a few wars had to break out to boost technologies that would bring us this technological wonder.
It might have taken someone like Steve Jobs to pull this together to create the iPhone. Still, if one were to make a film about the iPhone and all the underlying breakthroughs and failures over centuries that made its components possible, the iPhone story would perhaps be told in the last 15 seconds of an hour-long documentary about how remarkable mankind is.
What is smart about smartphones is the smartness of human beings, solving problems, imagining new worlds and pushing mankind to uncover the laws of nature to bend them to meet and advance human needs and dreams.
And what is dumb about smartphones?
What is dumb is how we have not used them to inspire young people about technology, science, mathematics, physics, chemistry and history – the elements that make the modern world possible and can shape the future. Instead, we have flattered them about how brilliant they are with digital technologies, which they are not (but need to be), and thus failed to use something so central to their experience as an opportunity to educate and challenge them to raise their game.
Using the smartphone as a point of entry, young people could be inspired to understand that every significant technological breakthrough that has transformed society results from continued human imagination, failure, persistence, courage and, above all else, ambition. Understanding the evolution of the smartphone could, in turn, spark dreams about inventing the future for understanding and changing the world for the better. But praising young people’s apparent technological prowess does the opposite. It encourages complacency and the lowering of ambition.
The result is as depressing as it is inevitable. Instead of a spark for knowledge and a future-oriented aspiration, the smartphone has become a tool of self-reflected indulgence and narcissism. Instead of inspiring young people to raise their eyes from their screens and engage the world around them, we have kindled introspection, a quest for inner identities which fatalistically trap us in the very biology our forefathers overcame with their imaginations.
The smartphone and its dumb abuse by adults prove, yet again, that human progress is not just about overcoming natural or biological limits but man-made ones, too.
This piece was originally published on What a piece of Work is Man!, the author’s Substack. Dr. Norman Lewis will be a panelist at The European Conservative’s Event ‘Progress’ or Power: Decoding the Digital Future.
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