Ubiquity
No, not the much-feted return to command line computing being promoted by the Mozilla Foundation, I’m thinking of when something becomes so ingrained in our conciousness it’s automatic.
I’ve just been speaking to my wife who is digging out photos for our younger daughter school project. She was looking on the home network for the pictures from 2000 - “the folder’s empty!” she said. Well yes, that’s because they are on paper in a box in a cupboard…
Similarly, asking a young child to use a disposable (or “single use” as the film companies like to sa) camera, provokes an instant demand to see the results immediately.
Digital photography has become completely ubiquitous and the number of pictures being taken must have exploded.
The question for me is how can we detect these key technologies early and distinguish them from stuff like mobile video? I was amused by yet another US writer describing texting as “old hat” in favour of some video streaming technology. Yes, that’ll be right. Hope springs eternal, so how do we filter the duds from the gems?
