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Somehow in the last 100 years, every time there is a problem of getting more spectrum, there is a technology that comes along that solves that problem.
I'd been taking things apart and inventing things since I was a little kid… I still have memories as a child trying to really understand how things work.
I think young people don't appreciate that when you're in your 70s, you'll lose patience for techie stuff and you may decide that you want a simple device.
The future of cellular telephony is to make people's lives better - the most important way, in my view, will be the opportunity to revolutionise healthcare.
When I go skiing, I may carry a phone, but it's there for safety purposes. I'm not one of these guys that reads his email while he's riding up on the chair lift.
Just remember, in 1973, we had no digital cameras, no personal computers, no Internet. The thought of putting a billion transistors in a cell phone was ludicrous.
We had no idea that in as little as 35 years more than half the people on Earth would have cellular telephones, and they give the phones away to people for nothing.
The optimum telephone is one that I think some day is gonna be embedded behind your ear. It's gonna have an extraordinarily powerful computer running the cell phone.
There were a lot of naysayers over the years. People would say, 'Why are we spending all of this money? Are you sure this cellular thing will turn out to be something?'
There is no reason why T-Mobile can't be successful on its own and the only real reason AT&T would want to own T-Mobile is to increase its exclusivity by owning more spectrum.
People are mobile. They move around, and anytime they want to communicate, if you tie them to the wall or the wires, you're restricting them, you're infringing on their freedom.
The more we learn about new communications, the more capacity we need, and that is going to keep going on forever. That's been happening since radio was invented, and that's going to keep going.
The first cell phone model weighed over one kilo, and you could only talk for 20 minutes before the battery ran out. Which is just as well because you would not be able to hold it up for much longer.
Of course I have an iPhone and I use that, interestingly enough, mostly for my calendar because it synchronizes with my calendar. I take pictures with it and I show people pictures of my grandchildren.
Once you've lived in Del Mar or the San Diego area, why would you want to live anyplace else? It's the neatest place, whether it's the culture or the small-town atmosphere the whole San Diego area has.
The only thing that was in my mind when we made that first phone call was, 'Is it going to work?' We had all these parts hand soldered together, engineers standing by with the soldering iron - just in case.
Engineers and entrepreneurs are fundamentally dissatisfied with the way the world is and want to make it better. There are so many things you could do with technology if you can match it up with real problems.
I think an engineer has not matured until he or she has conceived of a product and participated in every stage of bringing it to fruition, if that makes sense. And not many engineers get to do all of those stages.
There are all kinds of features that will become part of cell phones that will help us offload the more laborious things of life and let us focus on doing the things humans do well, like abstract thinking and creating.
Whatever happened to courtesy? What can be so urgent that you have to look down at your phone in the middle of a dinner conversation with people who matter to you? You can't wait five minutes before staring at your phone?
What else is there in life but to accomplish things and to do things? Sure I like to be on a beach on occasion, I like to ski on occasion, but as long as I have the ability to make a contribution, I am going to keep going.
Just think of what a world it would be if we could measure the characteristics of your body when you get sick and transmit those directly to a doctor or a computer. You could get diagnosed and cured instantly and wirelessly.
The biggest innovation of all is social networking, and cellular technology is the facilitator for social networking. People are mobile; social networking is people, and the only way people connect with each other is wirelessly.
My favourite example of good technology is the automobile. I travel all over the world and if I want to drive a car anywhere, I get in and put the key in the ignition, shift out of park and drive. I don't need an instruction manual.
It pleases me no end to have had some small impact on people's lives because these phones do make people's lives better. They promote productivity, they make people more comfortable, they make them feel safe and all of those things.
We predicted the concept of a telephone that isn't tied to a wall or a desk. We anticipated that everyone would have a cell phone. We joked that when you're born you would be assigned a cell phone and if you didn't answer you had died.
When you are doing one thing - talking on your phone, texting, whatever - you are automatically not doing something else. What is the greatest scarcity in the world today? It's not oil. It's time. Time is precious. Don't throw it away.
Bell Labs was a fantastic research organization but having them create and market new products for the world was terrible. They were not good marketers and yet it was AT&T engineers who were deciding what the products of the future were.
It doesn't take a cell phone to make a person rude. There are rude people all over the place. But people are learning. I have never heard a cell phone ring in the movies. We are going to learn how to live with the advantages of new technology.
When I was young, the concept of being a dreamer was a very negative one. If you were a dreamer, you were useless. You didn't contribute anything to society. But Star Trek made dreaming legitimate, and I think that was a huge, huge contribution.
As I walked down the street while talking on the phone, sophisticated New Yorkers gaped at the sight of someone actually moving around while making a phone call. Remember that in 1973, there weren't cordless telephones, let alone cellular phones.
People want to talk to other people - not a house, or an office, or a car. Given a choice, people will demand the freedom to communicate wherever they are, unfettered by the infamous copper wire. It is that freedom we sought to vividly demonstrate in 1973.
Just suppose that you could do a physical examination, not every year, which people do and which is almost worthless, but every minute, because you're connected, and because we have devices that you can put on your body that measure virtually everything on your body.
I think what's really going to happen is we're going to have a lot of different kinds of phones when our industry grows up - some that are just plain, simple telephones. In fact, my wife and I started a company, and she designed the Jitterbug, which is just a simple telephone.
My wife has forced me to wear designer jeans, and I find... there must be two or three hundred different kinds of jeans you can wear, all of which are made out of denim and look roughly the same. People are different. They have different tastes, different bodies. Cellphones ought to be the same.
I think what is going to happen in the future is more customization, more personalization. We all are different and we ought to be able to customize and have a phone that does exactly what we want it to do - that is so easy to use that we don't even have to think about it. That's what the dream is.
WattUp is one of those rare breakthroughs that recognizes that the so-called 'battery' problem in wireless devices is solved with a charging solution that is transparent to the user. The cell phone with a dead battery can become a relic of the past. The days of wired, mat-based and proximity charging are over.
I'm at the doctor's office. I'm in the waiting room. And there's this guy on his cell phone, talking really loud. Does he think he owns the place? Apparently. I think this is so offensive. But you have to remember: It doesn't take a cell phone to make people rude. People were rude before there were cell phones.
Even though you can't get along without your smartphone, there are not many essential services on your smartphone. They're mostly convenience; you could live without it. Essential means you die without it. A gadget that warns you're about to have a heart attack - that's essential. We're about to go into that phase with smartphones.
The technology that lets many people use the same radio channel at the same time is called smart antenna technology or adaptive array technology or interference mitigation. This technology uses computer processors to take the signals from multiple antennas at each location and sorts the various signals out so they don't interfere with each other.
As I walked down the street while talking on the phone, sophisticated New Yorkers gaped at the sight of someone actually moving around while making a phone call. Remember that in 1973, there weren't cordless telephones, let alone cellular phones. I made numerous calls, including one where I crossed the street while talking to a New York radio reporter - probably one of the more dangerous things I have ever done in my life.