The iPhone and Other Transparent Devices

The iPhone is a transparent device. Not in the traditional sense in that you can see how it works; rather, the iPhone connects you to people and data directly and effortlessly. It’s not a phone in the classic sense, but a mobile device that contextualizes people, places, and things you want to connect to and brings them to you in a relevant manner. It’s a conduit: a transparent device. It situates data and people.

The iPhone is a transparent device because there is no data that is unique to it (for the most part). Data and names are synced or piped in through the always-on data connection. The face that Apple insists on the unlimited data plan from AT&T illustrates the importance of this connection. My mail exists on Gmail, and is the same mail I browse through my desktop browser. My contacts are backed up and leveraged through my Address Book, my music and videos live in iTunes, and my pictures live in iPhoto. Even Facebook, an iPhone application unto itself, is just Facebook contextulized for the situation at hand (pun intended). The design of the phone echos this function. It is blank black, defined by the bits that come alive with a button press.

My data is independent of the device.

Yesterday I came to the realization that if I were to lose my iPhone, I would be out a few hundred dollars but my data would not be lost. Within a few hours I would have the exact same phone in my hand, for all practical purposes. Compare this to the social faux pas and endless headache that is losing any other phone. I’ve been forced to poll my friends for numbers numerous times, which in this day and age is nearly the equivalent to forgetting a first name.

A transparent device is almost a cloud device: a gateway where the internet touches down and enters the real world. Data on the iPhone is data empowered and contextualized for my life. Others should strive for this relevancy and interface. I can’t think of another new interface of which users are not completely conscious of as they use them. One dialing a Nokia is painfully aware they are dialing a Nokia. The media theorist Stuart Hall refers to this transparent interface as “of courseness,” the point at which people don’t think about an explicit action as such. Usually, humans have to come to the device, but Apple has flipped the plan.

I’ve hit a block in my search for other, similar, network devices.  If you think of any, please add them below…