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Social Norms - Papers Online

Social Norms

I was thinking recently how inconvenient it was not to have a general term for iPhones, iPads, and the corresponding things running Android. The closest to a general term seems to be "mobile devices," but that (a) applies to any mobile phone, and (b) doesn't really capture what's distinctive about the iPad.

After a few seconds it struck me that what we'll end up calling these things is tablets. The only reason we even consider calling them "mobile devices" is that the iPhone preceded the iPad. If the iPad had come first, we wouldn't think of the iPhone as a phone; we'd think of it as a tablet small enough to hold up to your ear.

The iPhone isn't so much a phone as a replacement for a ...

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glasses. I wouldn't be surprised if by playing some clever tricks with the accelerometer you could even replace the bathroom scale.

The advantages of doing things in software on a single device are so great that everything that can get turned into software will. So for the next couple years, a good recipe for startups will be to look around you for things that people haven't realized yet can be made unnecessary by a tablet app.

In 1938 Buckminster Fuller coined the term ephemeralization to describe the increasing tendency of physical machinery to be replaced by what we would now call software. The reason tablets are going to take over the world is not (just) that Steve Jobs and Co are industrial design wizards, but because they have this force behind them. The iPhone and the iPad have effectively drilled a hole that will allow ephemeralization to flow into a lot of new areas. No one who has studied the history of technology would want to underestimate the power of that ...

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Social Norms. (2011, March 13). Retrieved January 25, 2026, from http://www.essayworld.com/essays/Social-Norms/95995

"Social Norms." Essayworld.com. Essayworld.com, 13 Mar. 2011. Web. 25 Jan. 2026. <http://www.essayworld.com/essays/Social-Norms/95995>

"Social Norms." Essayworld.com. March 13, 2011. Accessed January 25, 2026. http://www.essayworld.com/essays/Social-Norms/95995.

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PAPER DETAILS

Added: 3/13/2011 09:57:10 PM
Submitted By: 5S5A
Category: Social Issues
Type: Premium Paper
Words: 565
Pages: 3

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