A significant majority of expert respondents agreed with this predicted future. The consensus is that mobile devices will continue to grow in importance because people need to be connected, wherever they are. Cost-effectiveness and access are also factors driving the use of phones as connection devices. Many respondents believe that mobile devices of the future will have significant computing power. The experts fear that limits set by governments and/or corporations seeking control might impede positive evolution and diffusion of these devices; according to respondents, this scenario’s predicted benefit of “effortless” connectivity is dependent on corporate and government leaders’ willingness to serve the public good.
The overwhelming majority of respondents agreeing with this scenario took note of the current boom in cell phone and smartphone use and imagined its extension. “By 2020 we should see several billion cell phones shipping per year, most of which will be Internet-capable; this will probably dwarf the volumes of other Internet-capable devices, such as PCs,” wrote one anonymous participant.
There are 6.6 billion people in the world, and the UN estimates that 1.2 billion have access to and use the Internet (2007 figures). Wireless Intelligence, a market database, reports that it took 20 years for the first billion mobile phones to sell, just four years for the second billion, and two years for the third billion. The firm projects there will be 4 billion cell phones in the world by the end of 2008; about 11 percent were Internet-enabled in 2007, and it is expected that could rise to 15 percent by the end of 2008. (It is important to remember that some people own more than one mobile phone—in 2007 it was estimated that 700 million people owned more than one—so 3 billion phones does not equate to 3 billion people who have and use mobile phones.)
Several survey participants noted in their written elaborations to the survey question that connectedness serves humanity in so many ways that even people who are struggling to make a dollar a day in the world’s least-developed nations find the economics of mobile telephony to be manageable and sometimes even vital to their lives.
“Communication is a basic human need,” responded Howard Rheingold, Internet sociologist and author of “Virtual Community” and “Smart Mobs.” “People who are trying to scrape by have immediate need for connection to information about local labor and commodities markets. Public-health and disaster-relief information can be an SMS [short-message-service—or “text”] message away. People in Africa turned paid telephone minutes into an ad-hoc, grassroots, e-currency, because they had the need to transfer small amounts of money. Billions of squatters might live in slums but still ingeniously and often illegally deliver the construction and utilities services they need. There are already reasons why people at the bottom of the economic system need and can use cheap telecommunication. Once they are connected, they will think of their own ways to use connectivity plus computation to relieve suffering or increase wealth.”
Lutfor Rahman, of the Association for Advancement of Information Technology in Bangladesh, said mobile communication is world-changing. “Before introducing the mobile phone in remote areas of Bangladesh, the exchange of information was through physically meeting,” he wrote. “That wasted much time, and sometimes it became impossible in short time because of lack of communication facilities.”
Gbenga Sesan, a Nigerian and consultant on the use of the Internet for development for Paradigm Initiative, has written extensively about the use of mobile communications. “With the rise in the number of mobile phone users across the continent, it is only wise to start planning that the future will be driven through mobile phones—governance, businesses, networking, leisure, and more,” he commented. “The story will be the same across the world. Regardless of technology choice (GSM, CDMA, etc), mobile telephones will form the core of human interaction and livelihood. And when you consider the fact that some mobile phones were competing with computers in 2007, you can only wonder if owning a PC will matter by December 31, 2019.”