Fortunately, mobile phones don’t get bigger when you install new software on them. But there’s been a long-standing debate about the utility of strong-specific digital tools (e.g. the digital camera) and weak-general tools (the camera-phone).

New tools create new uses: the kind of photography that is facilitated by having a camera in your pocket all the time is culturally / socially very different to the meaning of taking photographs using a dedicated camera. It’s not just the merging of devices, but the reconfiguration of social meaning. As for the spirit level business, I’m sure more people are going to buy a digital spirit level than a physical one (and you probably don’t need to feel that you’re a “handyman” to buy a digital spirit level, too).

“Lately, I’ve been talking to lots of smart technology people about ways in which the voracious and multifaceted mobile phone is cannibalizing other technologies…I downloaded two apps that already exist and that while they don’t quite boggle the mind, might aggravate the owner of the local hardware store. I downloaded a bubble level and a flashlight. I don’t know: I guess because you never know when you’re going to have to hang a picture in the dark?”

Link: The Flowering of the Mobile Phone (nytimes.com, via)