If we look at the history of computing we can think in terms of there having been four waves of computing, or “revolutions”. The first revolution was characterized by the appearance of the computer itself and mainframe computing. This was all about batch processing, with input via paper tape and punched card and output printed on continuous paper. The word “mainframe” stayed with us although the computers to which it first applied have long since vanished.

The second revolution was that of the minicomputer. What changed was that input was via terminals or VDUs (Visual Display Units) as they were called and output could be to the same devices. In other words, for the first time we had interactive computing. The third revolution brought us the PC. Now input was via a graphical interface with the aid of the mouse as well as the keyboard. This delivered computing power to the individual for the first time and launched a whole clutch of personal applications.

The fourth revolution brought us the internet. All of a sudden the user interface detached itself from the hardware a users had, in the browser, a common user interface providing access to a huge information and processing resource which was cleverly threaded together by the use of the hyperlink.

So what is the fifth revolution?

The fifth revolution is the wireless revolution. Just like the previous revolutions, it will dramatically alter the way that business is done and it will change the face of computing. The defining fact about wireless devices is that they are mobile – you carry them with you. In effect, a mobile device provides access to the individual rather than to a specific location. This is illustrated by the first informational explosion in mobile telephony; the use of SMS messaging. The massive usage of SMS took the mobile phone manufacturers and the carriers completely by surprise.

The simple capability of being able to send a text message by a mobile phone was not, to my knowledge, ever predicted to be a killer application. However it is. It neatly combines the function of the mobile phone and the pager and it is not expensive. Its compelling nature only began to become apparent when statistics from Finland last year showed that 50 percent of the mobile phone traffic in the country was SMS messages. The explanation for this was simply that young mobile users were using a less expensive way of sending information than making a call. The mobile phone manufacturers were not slow to see the potential and pretty soon mobile phones started to appear that improved the speed at which messages could be entered (by guessing which words the user was trying to enter). The latest statistics seem to indicate that the average teenage user sends about ten messages per day.

By any reasonable comparison, WAP has been far less successful. Indeed all I ever seem to hear is how disappointing it has been. Nevertheless we should suspend our skepticism for a while. Let us look at this from a distinctly different perspective. Let me suggest that what is happening with the mobile phone is that it is gradually replacing the PC as the natural and pervasive personal information device. Admittedly it has a long way to go yet, but when the PC first appeared it had a long way to go and it went the distance.
The real killer application of the mobile is the phone call. PCs still cannot do this in a generally acceptable manner (voice over IP is still not mature) and perhaps they never will.

What is happening is that the full spectrum of possible transactions is gradually being added to capabilities of the mobile phone. After conversation, came SMS messaging which is a primitive form of email. This will get more sophisticated and it will do so more quickly than many might expect. WAP is the beginning of  being able to process transactions. When the display capability gets larger (at least to the size of a PDA display) web site access will become feasible and so will video. We can envisage this as being the forward evolutionary path of the wireless device.

We could view the evolution of the PC in a similar way. First it provided its unique personal capabilities and then it began to assume the transactions of multi-user computing. In doing so it began to marginalise the capability of minicomputers. In a similar way the mobile device will marginalize the PC and gradually assume many of its roles, but the base from which it achieves this will be the unique capabilities that it has.
These unique capabilities come down to two obvious things, its wirelessness (i.e. its ability to reach the individual direct) and its voice capabilities.

If we wanted to get academic about the various changes in computing then we could argue that the various revolutions correspond to clear and significant changes in the user interface, from paper to character based terminals to graphical interface to browser. As well as new application types, the fifth revolution will undoubtedly bring with it a new kind of interface, which goes beyond the browser. In the next article in this series we will discuss the new application types and in the following article we will discuss what the nature the new user interface might be.