When Apple CEO Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone to the world in 2006, he knew it would revolutionize how we communicate with each other globally, he understood it was a great leap forward.
This being Apple and Jobs being so famously optimistic, he saw its arrival as a cause for unmuted celebration, but I wonder what he’d think of it in 2022?
A year before the first iPhone appeared the mobile phone itself was still just a clunky portable tool to communicate with your friends, family, and business associates on the go and not much more.
But in 2022 your iPhone helps you navigate the world from booking airline tickets to confirming your ID, to boarding at the gate. It’s become your digital fingerprint, your bank account, your health monitor, and your constant flickering online companion.
Your phone helps you engage with the wider world now and it brings the world right back to you. It’s become indispensable to many, but is it a true friend? Do true friends spy on your every move as your phone does?
You have cause to wonder because from morning to night the little pal in your pocket is sending sensitive information about your whereabouts, background, tastes, orientation, purchases, social class, religion, political affiliations, education, gender, ethnicity, and interests to a host of shadowy but increasingly powerful global enterprises that then turn all that information into a personal profile unique as your fingerprint – and then turn that fingerprint into profit.
