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No, The Smartphone Isn’t Broken.
Why all those AI gadgets keep failing while your phone keeps winning.
Last week the tech world was rather chuffed that Jony Ive, the industrial designer who helped turn Apple’s fortunes around was teaming up with Sam Altman of OpenAi to create a new AI driven device. Aesthetically, a nice idea. Practically? Perhaps not. Smartphones are nearly 20 years old. They’ve become culturally invisible, in that we just all use them without really thinking about them.
The rabbit r1 device flopped quite quickly. The Humane AI pin was a disaster. Google is about to launch a new set of smartglasses years after the first iteration was laid to waste by the visceral disgust of culture en masse. As a digital anthropologist who works at the intersection of culture and technology, I’m not sure that culture is all that interested in yet another device. Why?
The technology industry is on a constant, fever pitched search to upgrade what exists and to create a whole new category. The smartphone was arguably the last digital device to open up a whole new category and spin off into a sub-industry of gadgets and accessories. Some pundits proclaim the smartphone has stagnated. Design perhaps. In reality, the smartphone has stabilised.
The smartphone isn’t just a tool, it’s become a “cultural pattern”, a fundamental tool for organising and…
