Kirk Had a Communicator AND a Phaser

(Please forgive the gratuitous Star Trek reference, but…)

It just occurred to me that Captain Kirk had a communicator AND a phaser. Two devices, wholly separate, that he had to carry around velcro’d to his belt. Spock had a tricorder, and Bones had a bunch of medical do-hickeys. And Uhura had that funky headset thing that shoved in her ear.

According to sci-fi future history, devices were continuing to proliferate. I still believe that most of the devices we carry around with us could somehow be combined, and done well. Phone, PDA, GPS, MP3 player, digital camera, game, media player… These things have a lot of common elements: screen, input device, speaker, microphone, mass storage, removable media, operating system — and don’t forget battery.

There are some hardware elements that are device-specific — lenses, antennas, some chips — but I can imagine including these or allowing them to be attached modularly. And most of them would like to be connected to a desktop computer at some point, fast and wireless if possible.

The Treo phone comes close, though the camera is low-res VGA and I don’t believe it has GPS. Will we someday have a good pocket device platform?

[Note: the answer was yes. It was called the iPhone, and it arrived in 2007.]