When Can I Get My Magic Wand?

by Elliot Vos

With less than twenty-four hours before the launch of iPhone 3G, the hype is out of control. Lines are forming, Twitter is abuzz, the big three tech columnists have reviewed it, and bloggers can’t stop writing about it. The level of hysteria about this product which promises “Phone, iPod, and Internet in one fast 3G device” is intense. I’ve got my game plan down for tomorrow, and if all goes well, I will be a proud owner of another Apple product by the end of the day. And I am definitely pumped for it all; I’m eating up all of the hype.

Why all of this obsession over a phone? Sure, it’s more than a phone. Sure, it’s revolutionary in several ways. But it seems to be turning into a panacea, a silver bullet to solve all of our problems and fulfill all of our deepest desires. Again, I’m guilty here too. My friends and family can attest to the fact that lately, at multiple times in a day, I will declare that if I had an iPhone I would be able to solve whatever problem we were facing.

But it can’t do everything, and people have been quick to point that out as well. No voice dialing, no MMS, no video capture, no stereo bluetooth, no cut-and-paste, no flash, no dish-washing, no garbage-take-outing, no little sister whine-quieting, no guaranteed lotto-winning… Wait a minute, what expectations do we hold for this device?

I’m not here to defend Apple for the features they haven’t implemented on the iPhone, but I think all of this whining about missing features really boils down to people wanting this device to be the best thing since the creation of the universe by God himself (since many people compare Steve Jobs to a deity, I’m not sure my hyperbole is that outrageous). Some people want the iPhone to be their magic wand—satisfying their every wish with a simple glide of the finger across the touchscreen. Why do we hold such unreasonable expectations for a simple device?

Technology on the cutting-edge has always been a big mystery to people—sometimes exciting, sometimes scary, and often misunderstood. Imaginations dream of technological advances far beyond what is capable inside the current understanding of the laws of physics. These dreams are not entirely unhealthy. In fact, they are what spur the able-minded to push the boundaries of what is possible.

But our dreams of magic wands shouldn’t lead us to get carried away. The developers of this cutting-edge technology work to give us the latest and the greatest, but they are human and they do have limitations. It’s not an instant leap from monochrome television tubes to color tubes to projection to liquid crystal to plasma. These technologies take time to develop. And even when technologies do exist, there are always trade-offs to implementing them in a device.

Still, it’s fun to dream. Transporters (à la Star Trek) would be really freaking neat. They’d add a whole new dimension to the interconnectedness made possible by virtual communication technologies today.

What are your dreams of the future?