Next Generation Wireless Applications: Creating Mobile Applications in a Web 2.0 and Mobile 2.0 World, 2nd Edition

1.3 THE FUTURE'S BRIGHT, THE FUTURE'S UBIQUITY

Let's take a trip into an imagined future. It's a fine day for lunching outside of the sultry office. Although warm and slightly humid outside, the air stirs with a wonderfully cool breeze that could easily carry away the morning blues. Imagine you are standing in a bustling shopping plaza at one of the popular meeting points where you are soon going to join up with three of your closest friends for lunch. You have in mind a cool crisp salad, perhaps a salade nicoise⁴, but as of yet, you don't know in which restaurant you are going to eat, just when, or thereabouts.

The meeting time was suggested after a flurry of interactive picture messages popped up on everyone's communicators when earlier you had sent a ‘let's eat’ invitation initiated by pressing a ‘let's eat’ hot button⁵. One of your friends received the invitation via their wrist-based ‘sleek device’ that connects using Bluetooth to their smartphone. This is why the word communicator has gradually replaced the word phone, it no longer being the best word to describe some of the new devices, often barely resembling phones at all. When exchanging information, sending a message or placing a call, you can never be sure what device is on the other end of ‘the line’; it might be someone's watch, a pendant, a pen or even a fridge magnet! Kids on the street have taken to calling these devices ‘commies’, short for communicator (not communist⁶).

Whilst standing still for a moment, the ...