PIE in the Palm

As a young man in the early nineties, I was working for a leading Telecommunications company in the UK. It was whilst working there that I came across the expression 'PIE in the Palm'.

The term related to the early mobile communications industry referring to 'People', 'Information' and 'Entertainment' delivered to your hand in the form of a portable computing device. Decades before the advent of 3G, WiFi & Smartphones it was still a very 'conceptual' idea. At the time, there were a lot of different technology sectors with many of the large technology companies producing different types of devices. Sony, Sega and Nintendo fought bitter wars over their different gaming consoles.

 Mobile Telephony was just starting to emerge with the likes of Hutchinson's 'Rabbit' and Mercury's 'One2One' mobile phones and mobile computing was just starting to develop in the form of the Psion Organiser, Apple's Powerbook and early IBM Thinkpad laptops. Indeed, it wasn't until April 2000 that the iPaq Pocket PC was launched. Satellite Television too was being offered in those days by 'BSkyB', the company that has since become 'Sky TV'
It is possible from that point to trace the 'convergence' of technologies through to today's Android and Apple iPhones with their high-end computing capabilities from such a miniature device. In the early nineties though these were still little more than an idea.  

People

Nowadays we are able to connect with people in a number of different ways including voice, text, social media and even video through the likes of Skype and Apple's 'Face time'. Twenty five years ago the technology simply didn't exist to enable these types of communication.  

Information

Text based services like Ceefax and Teletext were about as far as you could go in those days. Early Bulletin Boards and basic forums were available for those who could connect from an early PC. Simple Text SMS messages were just about to change the way we keep in touch with each other.  

Entertainment

Games on your phone in the early nineties were very limited. The original version of 'snake' on Nokia phones and Tetris on the Gameboy where two of the early games that have since become legendary.  

 

There's An App For That

There is no doubt that we have arrived at the stage where we could say that the concept of People, Information and Entertainment in your hand has arrived. The power of a smartphone is immeasurably more powerful than even the most powerful computers of even 10 years ago and as newer and improved Apps continue to be developed the 'power in our pocket' will become increasingly important to how we live our lives.  


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