by Andi Hopkins '14

The Smartest of the Phones

by Shaan Verma ’13

The iPhone has been a dominator of the mobile device market since its debut in 2007, and it has since grown to accommodate more networks including Verizon and Sprint, which contributes to its continued success. The Blackberry has existed for 12 years and it has been a very strong contender in the mobile market. However, its limited entertainment value lowers it in comparison to other more popular smartphones. Android first made its release in 2008, but it did not start to gain followers until 2009 when an improved version of the operating system was released. Mobile devices today encompass a variety of features and are compact and portable for traveling, which makes them ideal for communication as well as entertainment. The iPhone has captured its audience with a wide variety of functions as well as plenty of entertainment from the App Store. After five years on the market, its number of users is said to be over 146 million. Android has gradually gained much strength over time and continues to grow yearly because it offers the same practical functions, but compressed them into a single Google account for all applications, whereas Apple has different accounts for different uses. However, the number of Android and iPhone devices is nearly equal and so the battle continues to rage.

Showdown of the Social Networks

Facebook has been a social giant since it was founded in 2006 and continues to dominate the social media market. Twitter was founded in 2006 and created a new way to share recent occurrences in a person’s life with its personalized blogging features. Google+ is the newest social network, made public in August and catered to a user’s interests. Facebook revolutionized the social media world by producing a social experience that did not rely on actual social interaction. This, and the fact that there were so many options available to users, captured the technology world’s attention. Twitter instead focused on the user’s life and experiences by allowing for a more personal micro-blogging experience. Google+ took an entirely different path to create a way to organize users’ interests and then share those interests with other like-mined users, which customized the experience to the user. These innovations earned Google+ 18 million users in its first four weeks, which may lead to it being a powerful social network in the future.

Do we need it?

by Isabel Patterson ’12

In a world full of technology it is inevitable to get sucked into one device or another. However, there comes a point where we must step back and decide, where we must draw the line between necessary technologies and outright useless ones.

In the past we have had some gadgets that failed to be of any logical value. For one, most likely produced due to the thought that anything related to a smart phone will become a huge item, engineers decided to create a way for a consumer to talk to his/her phone and have the phone type out what he/she is saying. Although this seems fancy and cool, how is this any different than just picking up the phone and calling someone? The only difference is the insignificant step of sending a text you just said aloud. Through this, smart phones are making us more antisocial by making social interaction less necessary.

Another concerning technology some may come across is the idea of a car that can park itself. But what happens when the car smashes into another car, or parks itself wrong. How hard is it for a real person to park a car along a curb?

When it comes down to it though, if a person cannot describe any major differences between the two leading social networks, something has gone wrong.

These creative minds working on technologies and social networking sites that barely make a difference could be better utilized; perhaps curing diseases, slowing global warming or merely improving the workplace. It is not that these technologies are completely useless; we just don’t need them as much as we think.