Detachable Brains

Something that’s turned up a couple of times recently, is using an iPhone as a brain for some sort of other, slightly bigger thing, that’s got absolutely nothing to do with telephones.

eg: this electric superbike… which uses one as a dashboard.

(from : via)

I can see this happening more and more – rather than having a computer with lots of “plug and play” devices, you have a lot of devices and one computer/smart-stick etc that plugs into them.

iPhones are a bit different though – because they have eyes, ears, a sense of balance, a sense of location… a screen, an input device, web-enabled, sms-capable etc etc etc. It’s not just an extension of a brain, it’s an extension of a load of different human senses as well… though not as good as the real ones. Yet.

I can see this coming from the other end, and being a competitor for arduino actually. The potential of it is massive. Seriously… but iPhones are tethered, and they’re not open-source… and the future is open-sourced. So um… Android it is.