Today, mobile phones have become an indispensable item in life. "Gluing" with the mobile phone, it must be the daily life of many people. Recently, there have been self-reported articles saying that smartphones will soon "fall out of favor" or disappear after five years. So, will the phone really disappear? What will be the future human communication tools? The Science and Technology Daily reporter interviewed relevant experts with these questions.

The status of the mobile phone is gradually marginalized

“Convenient and compact smartphones combine the functions of traditional mobile phones and handheld computers, which are essentially miniature versions of intelligent computers.” Yan Huaizhi, an associate professor at the School of Computer Science at Beijing Institute of Technology, said in an interview with the Science and Technology Daily that smart phones support personal information management. Wireless data communication, network wireless access, multimedia applications, etc., the essence of these functions is mainly to achieve the interaction between people and the outside world.
In Yan Huaizhi's view, a smart phone is another central computing platform for individual users other than computers. These two central computing platforms have achieved two peaks in the history of Internet development with the help of the Internet and the mobile Internet. The development of computing technology will make intelligent computing hardware ubiquitous, which has brought great impact on the computing platform's dominance of smartphones.
“Whether smartphones will disappear, it depends on whether their future needs can meet our needs.” Yan Huaizhi said that in the future, people's communication and processing of information will not disappear, and will be further enhanced with the development of technology. These needs necessarily require a specific computing platform to meet, but this platform does not necessarily appear in the form of a smartphone. It can also be understood from another angle that if the current smartphone does not iterate, it will not be able to better meet the needs of users, and it will not be able to shoulder the mission of the future computing platform.
“I said in 2014 that the disappearance of smartphones is an inevitable trend in the future. The disappearance of the talks here is not really a demise, but the smartphones will gradually lose their mainstream position in electronic products. It will be gradually marginalized." Yang Ning, president of Beijing Lebo Century Equity Investment Center, predicted in an interview with the Science and Technology Daily that the time of "disappearing" from mobile phones may exceed five years.
Communication portal site Dumbo, CEO Xiang Ligang also pointed out in an interview with Science and Technology Daily reporter interviewed, it is still unable to determine the exact time of smart phones disappear, perhaps 5 years, 10 years or even 20 years later. But it is undeniable that when the smart Internet and the Internet of Things develop to a certain extent, many items will replace some of the functions of today's smartphones.
"Communication equipment such as 'Big Brother', BP, and "Little Smart" have been hot stars, but with the upgrade of technology, they have fallen, and perhaps smartphones will usher in this scene." Yan Huaizhi said. The smartphone building will be tilted and centered. The emergence of this event is only a matter of time. The speed depends on the speed of the smartphone itself and the slow development of the smart system and soft environment.
All terminals in the future can be intelligent
"In the Internet age, the mainstream terminal equipment is a personal computer; in the era of mobile Internet, the mainstream terminal is a smart phone. In the future era of intelligent Internet, the terminal may be various objects encountered in life, such as street lamps, televisions, air conditioners. , tables and chairs," Xiang Ligang said.
"Intelligence of all terminal devices will be the overall trend of future development." Yang Ning pointed out that at present, the high price of chips is the main reason hindering the popularization of intelligent devices. "Why do we rely on mobile phones today, mainly because the cost of smart chips is relatively high, and in order to meet the needs of daily life, people can only continuously improve the intelligence of a single machine such as a smart phone. Imagine if the smart chip becomes very Cheap, intelligent costs can be reduced to a very low level, so why don't we make everything smart?"
Everything is smart, what does this mean?
"The next generation of intelligent platforms will be built into an all-round, three-dimensional device for adult machine interaction, making interactions all the time and everywhere." Yan Huaizhi said that computer human-computer interaction is realized by peripherals such as mouse, keyboard and display. The smartphone simply digitizes and digitizes this model and uses a touch-based virtual input technology. In the era of intelligent IoT, human-computer interaction may adopt augmented reality technology in the short term to replace any device that needs a screen such as a smartphone, TV, tablet, etc., to construct a quasi-realistic scene simulation and interaction, which is highly close to the real line of human beings. Interaction, providing a new interactive experience for humans.
"The market such as Xiaomi smart speakers, Amazon smart warehouse, Apple smart watches and other products, has already shown this intelligent trend." Yang Ning said that we have seen the burgeoning state of the intelligent world in the future.
“When intelligence develops further, people can even interact with human beings through their own senses, such as vision, hearing, touch, smell and taste, and integrate virtual reality with real reality. Real data passes directly. Brainwaves enter the brain, omitting the intermediary devices such as smartphones, tablets, and televisions that interact with the outside world.” Yan Huaizhi pointed out that the former naval warrior Jack Sally, who was in the middle of the movie “Avatar,” lay down through the headset and used his mind. Manipulate the artificial Avatar battle. Although this is a sci-fi concept in film and television works, it seems that the manipulation of ideas is likely to become a reality in the future.
Computing power and hardware provide underlying technical support
How many mountains do we have to turn over to achieve "smart everything"?
“In addition to convenient hardware such as computing and storage devices, more powerful system support is also important, such as quantum communication and quantum computing. In addition, blockchain, big data, biometrics, etc., these technologies need further Update iterations to lay the technical foundation for 'smart everything',” Yan Huaizhi said.
"As the smart industry gradually emerges, people will focus more on smart chips and deep learning algorithms." Yang Ning said that Google, Apple, Microsoft , Intel, Qualcomm, Alibaba and other technology giants have begun to independently develop artificial labor. Intelligent chips and deep learning algorithms have also achieved important breakthroughs in the past decade.
In Yan Huaizhi's view, the ultimate version of "smart everything" - "intentional manipulation" is also inseparable from the further exploration of the mechanism of the human brain itself. Secondly, how to use the machine learning algorithm to analyze the brain wave signal is also a technical difficulty. "Connecting the brain to the Internet, humans still have a long way to go to achieve it, but that doesn't hinder our embarrassment."
"It is undeniable that human beings may also have some fears about this intelligent revolution. For example, smart machines instead of people to work, how can we support our families?" In Yang Ning's view, fears must exist, but they don't have to be too pessimistic. Some jobs with people as the main labor force have disappeared, and naturally, new types of work will be derived to adapt to the development of the times. For example, with the popularity of mobile communications, the profession of telegraphers has gradually faded out of the stage, but industries such as mobile phone manufacturing and communication services will generate many new job opportunities.
“Opportunity always coexists with challenges, and will be the same in the future.” Yang Ning said.
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Those distant communication tools: "Big Brother" and BP machine
On April 3, 1973, Motorola invented the world's first mobile phone.
At the beginning of the reform and opening up, mobile phones traveled across the sea to China, and they had a new name on the mainland - "Big Brother." In 1987, Motorola set up an office in Beijing. Since then, “Big Brother” has been officially brought into China, which means that China has officially entered the era of mobile communications.
According to reports, in 1987, China’s first “big brother” user was born. The user spent 20,000 yuan on the purchase of “Big Brother” and paid 6,000 yuan for the network. His memory called “big brother” to trade. The negotiation has a great effect.
Then, after 7 years, the sales of "Big Brother" opened.
In 1994, at the auction of the first mobile phone number in Shenzhen, a bidder bought the “big brother” phone auspicious number – 9088888 for a high price of 655,000 yuan. On the same day, Shenzhen Telecom Development Corporation launched 30 “Big Brothers” numbers, which sold a total of 1.966 million yuan.
At that time, "Big Brother" was undoubtedly a tight cargo, but its shape design and function are difficult to compare with the current mobile phone. "Big Brother" is thick and heavy, weighing more than 1 kg, no other functions except calls, and the call quality is not stable enough.
In fact, what really makes Chinese users remember Motorola is not the "big brother" but the BP machine. In the 1980s, with the popularity of BP machines, the advertisement of "Motorola pager, transmitting information anytime, anywhere" became well known.
Compared with "Big Brother", the BP machine can only receive information and cannot send information. The user needs to dial the number of the paging station by telephone, and then tell the BP machine number and his name and phone number.
In order to meet the needs of different users, a variety of models of BP machines are available on the market. According to media reports, during the four years from 1995 to 1998, the number of new paging users in the country was more than 15.93 million. In 2000, the paging industry reached its peak. (Ma Yulin)