Tuesday, January 12, 2010

A tool is still a tool, even if it is new

The linked to article says nothing new. Like when other new forms of communication became available to businesses, such as telegraph, phone, fax, or email, they are used to do basically the same things.

Communication technology, funny enough, is used to communicate. I dont see anything innovative about these. All of these could have been done with email. They could have been done with faxes, etc. And they were actually done with those earlier technologies.

Doing a quick Google search shows several pages that discuss how to use email for business, but you have to go back a page or two before you find them, as the idea of using email for business is kind of expected or taken for granted by most now.

So, technology is a tool. I hope at some point we will polish communication technology until it because so well understood that it will be like a hammer. Sure there are specific types of hammers, but everyone seems to understand what a hammer is for. Ok, there are some that may not know what a hammer is for, but if they see it used once or twice, it will become apparent what tasks you could use a hammer for.

What will this highly polished communication tool be like? Some weird combination of email, tweets, texts and instant messenger.

Or, it could be like Google Wave.

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