Mobile no longer exists in relation to a technology. Mobile is part of a contiguous computing system that honors man’s desire to have anything anywhere, without a learning curve. It does not appear to be that this was a planned outcome but rather an evolutionary side effect.
A few years ago, what people thought when they meant mobile was, “make this product fit on an iPhone.” It never meant, “take the core functionalities of a system, identify the most useful aspects of it, and then generate a new micro-system that is intuitive and powerful.” In fact, this thought seems to have been so intuitive that nobody has really voiced it. The reasons for this are unknown to me, but I would imagine that the reason for this is because this reframing of mobile served nobodies purpose. It would be like telling a person that the sky is blue. This fact is intuitive and non-consequential when thought about in a context not connected to a whole. However if someone where to say, “the sky is blue because the suns rays are scattered by our atmosphere,” one might then come to the conclusion that we exist within a system. Just as the blue sky is a byproduct of the atmosphere, mobile is a byproduct of human cognition. This thought situates us in the perfect position to look back on what has lead to this.
Maybe the most important thing that lead to the notion of “mobility” is the size. Smart phones have traditionally been of a form factor that is not conducive to powerful computation. It is limited by its form as well as its I/O and for that reason, the applications designed for this domain have been naturally limited. It would be almost illogical to port photoshop to mobile for this very reason. Beyond computation and form, the idea of mobile was also constructed around notions of capitalism and temporality. Things that are mobile should not be expensive because they should are not worth the time. Mobile has always been constrained by short attention span partnered with a greedy desire to have anything, anywhere, at anytime.
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Having set the stage for mobile, this now allows for a reframing to occur. Mobile, to this point has been thought of as as a silo, dissociated from all other technologies. It is not a tiered system (flowing and conforming to cognitive states), intent on captivating the needs of a human but rather an annoyance that stands between desktop level power and transient computing (???? The ability to compute on the go). As a result we have had things like “mobile friendly design” come about, which is really just a nice way of saying “you should really be sitting down at a computer to experience this.”
Arguably, the notion of the app is the backbone of mobile, and it has been the silver lining to our rough transition into mobility. But seeing as most people still view apps as unique applications leads me to believe that apps are not being used to their full advantage. Apps are abstractions that weave temporality and cognitive ease into an experience that is “intuitive.”
If a desktop application is a kitchen drawer with every cooking utensil, then an app is the digital equivalent to the knife found in that kitchen drawer. At times the app does not have to be a byproduct of an application, however in the cases that it is not, it must preform a single task at exceptionally high standards to be pleasing to a user (is this point arguable, I think I am wrong, I need evidence). This idea of the app looks to be a known cognitive model, however it has not been thoughtfully implemented. Companies like google, adobe (most notably adobe), and Facebook have been unintentionally acting on this cognitive model by creating robust mobile presences by dividing their “kitchen drawer” into manageable, bite sized pieces. To say they are thoughtfully doing this to conform to a tired system of computation and thought would be a stretch. I think their main goal is to gather more revenue by carpet bombing the mobile landscape.
The notion of a tired system of computation and cognition comes from contemporary observation of the world around me. What I have seen is a gradient emerge from the background noise that is technology. What Vanaver Bush and Doug Engelbart provided us with was a high power, time intensive, non-intuitive platform for interfacing with technology. The promise of a computer was never a fast interaction (no matter how fast and powerful it gets). From there, Steve Jobs opened up the next tier of computation & thought with the advent of the iPhone. The first truly mobile technology promised fast interactions and an intuitive experience.
Those who are intent on predicting the future might be inclined at this point to ask what of VR and AR? The answer to that is simple: desktop and mobile. VR is just an extension of the computer, powerful and stationary, while AR promises a new entry to apps with its ease of use and comparably low power.
However what then is the future. Selfishly I would like to see the notion of the app abstracted once more. Before proceeding with this though, I feel it is necessary to provide a concrete example of what an app could truly be.
To begin imagine any desktop application (Word, Photoshop, Chrome, etc). Now take that ecosystem and position it at the base of your mental model. The desktop application is characteristically defined by its power. These applications are workhorses that, through time and training, meet the user in a stagnant location that allows for great things to be created. However if we take photoshop and try putting it on a mobile device we find that, like an adult at the kids table, it is uncomfortably out of place. To make photoshop mobile, all we need to do is look at what adobe has done. Apps like Photoshop Express and Photoshop Mix take the functionality of photoshop and divide it. These apps consist of maybe 2-3 core experiences that emulate aspects of the desktop application, but other than that, they do nothing more. In the app, we find a level of feedback (??? Am I making his up), uncommon to the computer. This ability to segment a whole into its parts is the true power of mobile.
One could imagine a future where any application could be personally divided into a set of respective apps, and instead of the application maker deciding what should be inside a mobile app, it is now left up to user to decide. This promises a seamless transition between mobile and desktop that, up to this point has been nonexistent.
Incorporate the virility of social media, the power of Artificial Intelligence, and the security of Block Chain, and the argument for mobile has become a no brainer. But what happens when you have no screen. All of what I have talked about hinges on the notion of the screens and the pixel (and holograms). It is all that we have known up to this point. So again, this leads the curious-minded individual to ask, what comes from mobile.
In the coming years, I hope people will begin to yearn for a return to the tangible world. Screens are quite literally sucking the life out of us. They are both immensely useful and dangerously addicting. Above all they prevent us from existing as embodied humans. However just as the iPhone ushered in a new era of computation, a future technology, of yet unknown form will enable apps to exist tangibly (look to the tangible media lab and the ideas of Hiroshi Ishi, i.e. radical atoms)
You might ask, “why do I want a more tangible version of an app?” The reason is simple, creativity has been made subordinate to technology for too long. To enable creativity people have needed to be creative, working counter to what we know about creativity. We make things overly complicated, uni-sensory, and constrained to a set of strict rules. A level of effort and creativity is being spent on tying to be creative.
The reason I am choosing to relocate apps within a physical domain is entirely selfish, but I think it is necessary. At the base of my belief, humans are physical creatures. Technology has been a godsend but it has also been a curse. For the most part, our bodies are rejecting the technology we insist on creating. However, in the most hegelian of moves, I think we are trying to symbiotically exist with technology. Seeing as we have no way of turning our atoms into bits, it would only make sense to make our bits into atoms (or as close as possible). I’m doing so we provide the world with a symbiotic relationship that Mother Nature would be proud of.