This ain’t just about being able to hack Quake to play on your cellphone. Android will help elevate serious discussion about ethics in software. It’s the Thomas Payne of 2K8, the Che Guevara of cell technology.

After the jump, yon Brian James Kirk looks into his crystal ball and sees the next 32 months of your call-screening.

Admit it, you are j-e-a-l-o-u-s of your best friend who flaunts his iPhone all over town ditching out on social invites because he can’t even afford his data plan. If you could save up the dough to put a down payment, you’d give up just about anything to own one. Your 2-year Verizon contract. Your personal safety. Even your social boundaries would be gone— you’d stop screening your phone calls just so you had another reason to touch that hi-res UI. The iPhone is bringing dorky back like Timberlake.

But as you already know, fair judger of all-things-attractive, it’s not always about the sex appeal. A girl’s gotta have some standards. The iPhone is everything we’ve wanted in a phone. But then there was that whole no third-party development thing. We understand that it was your party Apple, but no one likes a party if you can’t bring a friend. It’s awkward. It’s exclusive. And no Web 2.0 AJAX application was ever going to match up to what we really wanted. Yeah, you reneged, but quite frankly, too little too late. You sold out way too early, and that tells exactly where you want to be headed.

That’s why everyone in the industry shot their wads way early when it was rumored that Google was releasing a phone. Google has always been extremely supportive of the open-platform and lately I’ve found that everyone I know has been GChatting more often then hanging out. To keep it relative, they release quality products that consumers and developers can fall in love with. They’re just good at making people smile:

Hehe.

But instead of releasing a phone, they dropped the boring bomb. They announced that they’ve been working several years on an Open Source, Linux based, mobile OS called Android, a prototype of which is pictured above. Also see: cock-like green trash can in logo above. As a result, there’s been a lot of drama emanating from the watchful eye of technology media. Called out in the aftermath? The end of a death crawl lasting since 1996 and the excited yet desperate latching-on of telecom companies not AT&T.

On the inside of the industry, people are pretty excited. But for the consumer, Android brings up two points that will define the next several years of cell phone technology.

Can It Clack-Clack Like My Nextel?

More than anything, what we want most as consumers is abundant, well-developed features and inclusion of the services we already rely on. The iPhone did a pretty good job of meeting both of these. We already live and die for our new age antidepressant, the iPod. The incorporation of a strong contact and messaging system is even more vital. But what we may not realize, but appreciate most, is the support for outside e-mail and messaging services ala Google, Yahoo, and MSN. The downfall is that there exist services outside of the messaging spectrum that we want employed in our pockets.

Android promises all of this. With a well-developed API backbone that allows secure applications to be developed under Google’s watch, and the ethical foundation of the open-source community (a community that regulates themselves through a hierarchal debate system of hacking wiki pages and leaving insulting comments on every developer message board on the net), we are sure to see applications developed for anything we could ever want. That means that an app like Skype, which is literally the bane of the telecommunications industry, could find a welcome home on an Android phone.

If You’re Not My Friend, You’re My Frienemy

The Open Source argument is a fundamental one that exists way beyond the theoretical boundaries of technology alone. Unglaze those techie eyes for just two seconds and really read the wiki definition of what Open Source is:

Open source is a set of principles and practices that promote access to the design and production of goods and knowledge.

Please allow me just one Holy Shit, Maaaan moment, and think of every history, liberal arts, or economics class you ever took. This ain’t just about being able to hack Quake to play on your cellphone. Android will help elevate serious discussion about ethics in software. It’s the Thomas Payne of 2K8, the Che Guevara of cell technology.

It’s Time To Force That Music Metaphor

We’ve seen this shit show before. Are you the Stones or the Beatles? The Ramones or the Sex Pistols? N’Sync or Backstreet? These are arguments that will never die because we’re talking about two different types of people. The Apples want to give up the extras for the essentials. The Androids want to risk the worst to get the best. There’s no in-between. ‘Cos this is rock n’ roll, baby, and if you’re not with us you’re against us.

Brian James Kirk is a writer living in Fishtown, USA. His affinity for RSS feeds is equally as strong as his affinity for ladies- a subject he often covers in a sex column he writes for the Temple News.

Previously: Technologicology Visits Independents Hall And Doesn’t Turn Into A Long-Haired Hippie

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 13th, 2007 at 1:53 pm.