There’s still more to come

For wanting to sell a music instrument I am not using anymore, I recently contacted, among others, a friend who works at a private school in Amman. I asked him if they had a notice board where he could display a small “for-sale” poster with a photo of the instrument and my contact info for me.

He smiled and said that the traditional notice board where you could pin announcements of all kinds is obsolete and that they now have an electronic one (understand a web page) that all students and school staff members can consult online and respond to in an interactive manner.

This saves time and of course paper, making also the contact with the announcer easier and faster via direct e-mailing. So I sent my friend a soft copy of the announcement by e-mail and in a matter of minutes it was published and inquiries about it started flowing into my mailbox. 

I felt embarrassed for I should have anticipated the change. As much as you can be in high-tech, as much as you are aware and try to read, to be informed, updated and to anticipate, you can’t think of everything and sometime you end up being caught by surprise. “But of course, I should have thought about it; everything now is digital and online — silly me”!

As it has always been the case in the realm of IT, the change is faster than we can adapt, and the acceleration rate keeps increasing non-stop. It’s what you call a gradient in physics. Except that the most significant part of the change now is not in having more powerful, more reliable hardware and equipment but in the way we use all computer-related devices and the web. It’s in the “app” that is here to do the job, to do it fast, to save time, to save paper and to do it online.

Besides, the very expression “computer-related” now encompasses an impressive number of devices and hardly stops at desktop computers, laptops and smartphones. Soon enough, when everything is connected, from washing machines to cars, kitchen appliances, clothes and TVs, it will be faster to draw a list of what is not computer-related rather than of what is.

The cameras that are built in smartphones and that have been improved in an almost unbelievable manner in the last two years are some of the tools that are changing our living and working habits in a new revolutionary way.

Forget about the selfie, it’s just another photo gimmick. Phone cameras are so good now that we often use them as scanners. They haven’t just killed entry-level dedicated cameras but other devices too.

Want a copy of a given document before handing it over to someone else and while in your car or at the gym? Just take a snapshot of it with your smartphone. You can then send it over Wi-Fi to the web to any target if you want. With most new phones featuring cameras sporting at least 10 megapixels and some models going up to 40 (Nokia’s 808), you always have plenty of resolution room to enlarge, see and read every detail.

Some purists rightly argue that more megapixels doesn’t always translate in more beautiful pictures, but this is beside the point; we’re talking usable here, not necessarily more beautiful. A higher pixel count definitely lets you use your phone as a good scanner, always ready.

As much as has already been digitised, computerised and moved online, it seems that there is much more to do. We haven’t seen the end of the cloud concept yet; and yes, there is still room to save more paper by not printing, though by now it is not anymore the most pressing issue.

Think of any task that uses text, sound, photo or video, and chances are that “there’s an app for that” to use a trendy expression. And if there’s any yet, it’s probably coming fast.