At present, daily when I leave home for work my mom runs through her checklist to ask if I am carrying my wallet, watch, mobile phone, day planner, keys, identity card, letters to post, news paper, PDA, wireless network card, a post-it card with some stuff to bring home while I come back from work.
In all its likelyhood in a very few years my mom would only remind me to take my mobile phone. The mobile phone – for the phone it is, for the watch it has, for the organizer it contains, for the remote keys it has, for the digital card it has for proving my identity, for the post-it it has, for the GPS to show me the routes that are not congested at that time, for connecting on to the internet - is a device much more than just a phone. My mom’s questions to me converge into just one. Technology, with its speed of convergence has helped my mom to ask just one question to me daily. Convergence also meant that my activities which had definite boundaries have converged; I can afford to watch the latest news on CNBC as I travel to work and get into my company network after dinner.
Why is everything in hand-held segment converging onto a mobile phone? Why did it not converge on something else say a watch? Probably it did just that but we chose to call such gadgets mobile phone just because of its conspicuous feature to be mobile and make phone calls from virtually anywhere.
Nils Stieglitz said that substitution and complementation is the key to convergence for both technology as well as products.
Convergence has always happened before and will continue to happen today and tomorrow. Convergence is an exciting aspect to follow at any point of time in this world. Let me take a look at convergence as it happens in this world and mumble about my views here.
Wish me happy blogging!
