The everything device
Almost 20 years ago, Apple CEO Steve Jobs announced the iPhone as “an iPod, a phone, an internet communicator.” The world swooned at the time because that one device was all those things, and more.
Today it is our wallet, our identity, our social media, our likes, dislikes, fitness levels, bank accounts, as well as our personal, sexual, and political identity. The phone in your pocket gathers more information about you than you knew existed and has become the primary portal to our digital world.
With so much information packed inside each and every smartphone, no wonder governments everywhere want to take a look inside. If there isn’t an enemy to justify such intrusion, authoritarians will invent one. And if that doesn’t work, they’ll talk about protection, taxation, or salvation to justify their attempt to turn everyone’s experience on a digital planet into usable data.
