Some survey participants said this scenario as written is shortsighted and we will have moved into a different communications environment. “A new technology will blow all of this away,” wrote one anonymous respondent, and another wrote, “Another ‘killer app’ will emerge before 2020 that will change everything; communication will not achieve stability in the 21st century.”
Josh Quittner, executive editor of Fortune Magazine and longtime technology journalist and editor, wrote, “The notion of a ‘mobile telephone’ in 2020 is quaint. Telephones in 2020 will be archaic, relics of a bygone era—like transistor radios are today. Telephony, which will be entirely IP-based by then, will be a standard communications chip on many devices. We'll probably carry some kind of screen-based reading device that will perform this function, though I assume when we want to communicate verbally, we'll do so through a tiny, earplug-based device.”
Mike Treder, executive director of the Center for Responsible Nanotechnology and an expert on the social implications of emerging technologies, responded, “It shows a lack of imagination to assume that mobile phones as we know them today will still exist in 2020. While I agree that desktop computers will no longer be the standard interface for Internet connection by then, it seems far more probable to me that some form of ubiquitous wireless communication that goes beyond today's mobile phones will have taken over.”
Hamish MacEwan, a consultant at Open ICT in New Zealand, enthusiastically sees an edges-oriented future. “The mobile Internet will dominate usage, but the device will be very different in 13 years from our concept of a ‘mobile phone,’” he explained. “So will the providers of connectivity, and another group will provide the services and content. Universal standards will not control access, already WiMax and other non-proprietary standards are being deployed in competition, and combination, with the legacy integrated solution required in the cellular environment… Does your scenario imagine or imply that the legacy dominance of vertically integrated telecommunications services will return? If so, you are very wrong. Operators no longer define the service or the future; the edge, the customer, is now in charge. While we may temporarily embrace or endure the closed proprietary model, with an operator elite, the trend is towards decentralisation, toward control by the edge, with devices that will utilise whatever connectivity is available in a transparent and open mode. As Feynman and Rangaswami, and others have explained, there is plenty of room at the bottom.”
And Jonathan Dube, president of the Online News Association, director of digital media at CBC News, and publisher of CyberJournalist, net, wrote, “It's highly unlikely that telephony will be offered under a set of universal standards and protocols accepted by most operators internationally. More likely, telephony will merge with Internet technology and the two will fuse, so that everyone who is using a mobile phone will always be online and everyone who is online can easily make connections via voice and video. Who knows, maybe by then we'll be too busy running from our robot overlords to spend much time on our mobile phones.”