Why Mobile WON’T Be King

To paraphrase what seems to be old news by now, analysts say decreasing PC sales mark the end of the desktop reign, and with it the traditional paradigm of how we understand technology. Even five years ago, you would have been on the fringes to hypothesize that mobile would fulfill most needs of the majority of consumers. Now? Look at the advent of apps geared towards primary mobile use and the popularity and functionality of these apps in our daily lives. I communicate with friends back east mostly through Snapchat, I pay rent through Venmo, catalog memories via Instagram, workout and bike via Runkeeper and Strava - honestly I don’t use my personal computer (laptop) most days for anything but editing (photos, data analysis, code, blogs, &c). As I examine my own behavior, it’s important to note that the single largest advantage that my phone has over my PC/laptop/work computer is availability. Always in your pocket, mobile functionality caters to effectively capturing the constant stream of unpredictable stimuli that hits us throughout our daily routines, and because of that availability becomes our primary device to capture those moments.

Why is this a big change? Because thanks to some brilliant engineers, users no longer have to be bothered with the “technical” constraints of technological consumption. For example, think about your computer - how much memory does it have? Well, do you check local storage, RAM, can you include backups and external hard drives? For better or worse, most of us average users will answer “who cares” because answers one and three are in the cloud (if I even own the files anymore, eg music or videos - helllllllo Spotify and Netflix) and answer two is increasingly being taken care of by the efficiency and prevalence of web apps (how many browser tabs do you have open right now, hmm?). Similar advances embraced by mobile programmers give me all the power I want for 90% of my daily tasks to be accomplished on the phone, and as for hardware, I have just enough battery to make it to bedtime, where I know there will always be a fresh charge waiting. So with power taken care of, we shift our demands to prioritize increased availability, and mobile completely wins out over desktop in this category. As for that extra 10% of tasks I can’t (or more importantly, won’t) do on my phone? Those tasks, which require increased power, more complex interfaces, and broader functionality, are primarily focused around editing.

Let’s split our digital behavior into two worlds - capturing and editing. Most of my activities fall comfortably into these categories. Take this blog for example: I write and hash it out on my laptop, but the ideas and instances I mention occur sporadically throughout the day and are much easier to quickly type up on the Notes app on my iPhone. This goes for almost all the random sidenotes of interesting info that cross my path every day:

With the recession of the PC as our main computational tool, our digital behavior is more accurately modeled on a timeline with at least three key moments: Moment Zero is “Capture”, Moment .5 is “Edit”, and Moment 1 is “Share”. Here’s a rough illustration of my own tech demands mapped out along those lines:

Photography - captured via iPhone, edited via Photoshop or Lightroom, shared via Snapchat, Instagram, VSCOcam.

Budgeting - captured via Venmo & Mint, edited via Excel, shared with no one.

Exercise - captured via Runkeeper & Strava, edited via Excel & Apple Fitness, shared with no one.

Writing - captured sporadically through Notes, edited via Svbtle, shared via Svbtle, Twitter, and Facebook.

For the record, this is not remotely statistically accurate - I wrote this in an hour two hours three hours and I’m moving this afternoon, so I promise a more accurate depiction and follow-up analysis in a later blog.

Short answer - I still spend most of my time editing and refining the content I release to the world, but nearly all of that content is captured and shared via my mobile device. That process of capturing and sharing intimately influences the editing process. Look at the explosion in popularity of Youtube/Snapchat/Vine icons Casey Neistat, Ben Brown, Jérôme Jarre, &c - who needs fancy editing equipment to share ideas one time to a broad audience (think about the process of creating and releasing a blockbuster movie) when you can easily capture massive amounts of ideas and experiences, touch it up a bit, and share it to thousands of people with a simple click?

In all of these disciplines, it’s now incredibly easier to capture data than before, and as a result there is a flood of newly styled creativity entering our lives everyday, for no cost, through our phones. Look at the trend towards mobile in the capturing process:

This translates into less time spent editing for each piece of content, so quality goes down slightly, but the ease of use and depth of modern editing tools mitigate this decline.

Finally, sharing is unparalleled - simply release it to a huge amount of dedicated followers for the lowest barrier of entry to creative work EVER.

There’s loads of real analysis to dive into here, but that’s not the point of this short musing. This is intended as a thought experiment, a simple introduction into a new era of behavior led by multi-tasking millennials demanding more and more from free services. And accordingly, we should forget the idea of mobile as a “king”, even with the slow demise of the PC. A king is old, outdated, and not nearly a comprehensive enough term for what mobile is and will become. Perhaps “president”, “instigator”, or “chief” conveys the point better, but these are clearly too specific for widespread journalistic adoption. The broader point is we should embrace mobile not as an heir to our PC’s, but as a broader evolutionary relative - hang on for dear life, cloud storage, because everyone is becoming a top-notch creator from start to finish.

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