Tuesday, February 17, 2009

The Cellphone, Navigating Our Lives - NYTimes.com

Another timely John Markoff reality check – which in part explains why Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Nokia, among others, are competing in phone-centric apps and information services

It has been 25 years since the desktop, with its files and folders, was introduced as a way to think about what went on inside a personal computer. The World Wide Web brought other ways of imagining the flow of data. With the dominance of the cellphone, a new metaphor is emerging for how we organize, find and use information. New in one sense, that is. It is also as ancient as humanity itself. That metaphor is the map.

“The map underlies man’s ability to perceive,” said Richard Saul Wurman, a graphic designer who was a pioneer in the use of maps as a generalized way to search for information of all kinds before the emergence of the online world.

The Cellphone, Navigating Our Lives - NYTimes.com

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