Link: AAS Feature: The Nokia N800 and Semi-Convergence.
"There's a lot of talk in the technology world about 'convergence', the idea that devices with different purposes will gradually merge into one. It's a sort of Swiss Army Knife philosophy, where one device can handle everything, albeit not quite as well as several separate units.
"To some extent this has already happened and the list of devices absorbed into a modern phone is absolutely breathtaking, literally dozens of separate devices have been partially or entirely replaced (the telephone, the pager, the alarm clock, the calculator, the answerphone, email, web browsing, the fax, video gaming, computing, the camera, the video camera, the dictaphone, the FM radio, music players, video players, etc).
" The most expensive phones may have high quality cameras, DVD-quality video cameras, an advanced PC-style web browser, pedometers, and even GPS satellite navigation hardware.
"It's even more amazing that most of these features are available on cheaper sub-$100 models, and that each new generation of phone hardware brings more features. It seems convergence is an unstoppable force, and that one day we really will have just one device in our pocket that can handle everything.
"Maybe. But is that necessarily what we want? Is there an alternative?"
