PCs are to Mobile Phones as...

While reading an interview with Ajit Balakrishnan, the CEO of Rediff, an Indian company that has 35 million registered users for its portal software, I had a thought. I know the analogy isn't perfect, but work with me, OK?

Perhaps PCs are to mobile communications as the telegraph was to the telephone. They all offered the ability to communicate over long distances quickly. PCs, like the telegraph, had a big head start in the marketplace. They each require a large investment in technology by the user, a corps of intermediaries who keep the system running, and usage rules and customs that are dictated by the dominant service provider. Mobile phones, like the land lines that preceded them, are more democratic (small "d" democratic) in that the need for intermediaries is diminished, the technology is put to all sorts of uses that didn't seem immediately apparent, and while it's all pretty complicated behind the scenes, it's also pretty simple for the end user. (Although my grandmother never did quite get the hang of all numbers in her telephone number; to the end, she thought her number was "MAdison 3-0770.")

There are lots of ways the analogy breaks down; for example, will there ever be a US cellular company with the government monopoly that AT&T enjoyed at its apex? I doubt it. But it does provide a way of thinking about how we need to move library services to mobile communications if we want to be where the users are, doesn't it? We were still using Western Union lines to send interlibrary loan requests from the Charleton County Library to the State Library in Columbia, South Carolina, in the late 1970s, but I'm pretty sure we didn't assume everyone would have a Telex machine at home or in their offices to work with us!