Mannerisms

Back in the 80s a form of the modern convergence theory emerged when it became widely accepted that the digital watch would add more and more functions until it became the centre of a wrist-based multi-functional electronic system.

“We thought we saw the beginning of a personal electronic system, adding a lot of functionality to the watch,” said Intel co-founder Gordon Moore.

Some may remember the pathetically tiny and impractical keyboards which were added to watches to give them calculator functions. Watches never progressed much beyond telling the time.

Then there was ProShare, Intel’s video-conferencing product brought out in the 90s when the phone networks delivered 28kbit/sec data transfer rates. Grainy? Jerky? Like rabbit poo on a hotplate. Yet Intel’s then CEO opined that it would: “Obsolete airplanes.”

A little later, came the $5bn delusion of the Iridium satellite constellation which was touted as a global wireless operator. To the surprise of many, when the service was offered, it turned out not to work indoors. The manufacturers said they’d known this all along. Obviously they assumed it didn’t matter.

Iridium was sold at a knock-down price to an operator which has attracted around 170,000 subscribers. The $5bn was absorbed in some black hole somewhere.

The there was the Rabbit wireless telephone system in the UK which could make calls but not receive them. That died swiftly.

Nowadays there is a widespread belief that people will watch TV on their mobile phones.

But no one has ever watched much TV on small TVs though they have been around for the past 30 years.

Folding or rollable screen may one day make TV to the mobile phone popular. Until then forget it.

“But the Japanese watch TV on their mobile phones,” people argue. What the Japanese watch may not be available to the likes of Vodafone and Cingular. Being PC has its downsides.

What TV programmes are we going to watch on mobile phones? I suppose in the tube or train or bus you might feel the urge to look at the news. But would one prefer the internet version of BBC news to the increasingly fatuous and trivialised TV broadcast news?

Would you watch a soap opera? Only if very sad. Would you watch a football or cricket game? Only if you don’t mind not being able to see the ball.

And though, marginally, you might, if very bored, turn on these programmes, would you be prepared to pay a monthly subscription to do so? Would you pay a fiver a month? The networks are talking about a tenner.

To me TV to the handset is strictly for the birds. Another of the industry’s periodic fits of delusion.

Great minds have great ideas, but they can also harbour great delusions.