Smartphones
The best mass market product of 21st century so far
This was an exercise to identify how things from all walks of life can now be operated from a single device, and how all of this happened in under 2 decades (granted, the things that made this possible: internet, communications, semiconductors took longer, but the idea here is the end product’s functionality). And the most important point is, it doesn’t matter if your net worth is $10,000 or a billion, almost everyone will have access to the same functionality in the phone you own.
Take a step back to think about how crazy this would be to someone from the 20th century, yet how normal this is to us.
Need to commute? Uber
Want to watch a movie? Netflix, YouTube, Prime
Love to learn something? Learn from the world’s teachers on YouTube
Need to write code? Replit
Listen to music or podcasts? Spotify
Meet someone new in a city? Tinder, Hinge
Hungry? DoorDash, Uber Eats
Groceries? Instacart
Almost anything that you need at home? Amazon
Talk to someone 5000 miles across? WhatsApp, FaceTime
Travel to meet someone 5000 miles across? Any airline app
Work communication? Slack, Teams, Outlook
Work productivity tools? Office Mobile, Figma, Atlassian
Not feeling well? Teladoc, Practo
Learn a new language? Duolingo
Learn just about anything? Spin up an artificial being using chatGPT
Know what’s happening around the world? Twitter X, Instagram, News
Capture memories? Camera on your phone
What may turn out to be the most import consequence of the software we’ve built over the last 2–3 decades is it being the perfect form factor for use by LLMs. We’ll likely see as many AIs as humans if not more, interacting through these applications within a decade.