鈥淕OLLY,鈥� she said, 鈥渢hat鈥檚 a really old one!鈥� Oh, the humiliation. I mean,
when an urbane Londoner lends his phone to a colleague, he does not expect it to
be handed around the bar to be admired as an ancient relic鈥攅specially when
it was all of three years old. Until then, I鈥檇 actually been rather proud of it.
True, the keypad was worn clean of numbers and the battery held in place with
insulation tape. On the other hand, it worked, you could tell it was fully
charged by the smell of the tape melting, and I always knew which pocket it was
in.
But in fin-de-si猫cle London, mobile phones are evolving at the rate of
Gal谩pagos finches. Anything that won鈥檛 fit in a shirt pocket
or鈥攈orror鈥攚hich still needs to be held against the ear, attracts
pitying glances.
So it was fashion rather than utility which encouraged me to get an upgrade.
I am now the owner of a natty dual-band Scandinavian handset and a 106-page
instruction manual. Nowadays, upgrading is a reflex action for many people. A
New York accountant tells me I should replace a third of my hardware every year.
The danger is that we have begun to see obsolescence as a good thing in itself,
forgetting that good technology often behaves less like a finch and more like
the famously unchanging coelacanth.
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Even scientists don鈥檛 always get it. Take a recent study at Johns Hopkins
University into the efficiency of bicycle drives. The researchers pointed an
infrared camera at drive chains to measure how much energy was being wasted as
heat. They found that the chain had an efficiency of 98.6 per cent, about as
near to perfect as you鈥檒l get. The researchers described the finding as 鈥渁mazing
. . . especially when you realise the essential construction . . . hasn鈥檛
changed in more than 100 years鈥�.
Sorry, guys. There鈥檚 nothing amazing about an old technology turning out to
be efficient. There used to be a phrase for this: 鈥済ood-enough technology鈥�,
classic designs鈥攕uch as the US Army Jeep or the London bus鈥攚hich
long outlast 鈥渋mprovements鈥�. Of course, the phrase 鈥済ood enough鈥� itself becomes
obsolete in cases where the niches inhabited by technologies are changing.
Darwin鈥檚 finches adapted fast because they found themselves stranded on a bunch
of weird islands. So maybe the bicycle is like a coelacanth not because it is
near-perfect, but because its niche hasn鈥檛 changed much. And maybe mobile phones
are evolving fast because their niche is changing.
But this begs a question: what are such niches made of? The answer seems to
be that they are made of our expectations of a technology rather than our actual
need for it. And those expectations are being raised and meddled with all the
time. Walk into any management consultancy and you鈥檒l hear the same mantras:
鈥淓volve or die鈥�, 鈥渢he only certainty is uncertainty鈥�. Management consultants are
peddling the gospel of change as if their souls depended on it. Which, come to
think of it, they do. Funny, then, that these consultancies, with their marble
head offices, formal suits and rigid staff hierarchies are about the most
traditional organisations around.
Bet they鈥檒l have the latest mobile phones, though.