Mobile phone or Internet – which one is indispensible?

Imagine on a cold winter day you wake up and take hold of your mobile to check your emails. But unlike other days, today your device would not let you access your account. You try to respond to comments on your facebook pictures but again no access. You try and fail to send any MMS. Defeated you get up and switch on your laptop, but your EVO refuses to work. Down and dejected, you start your car and head towards your office. But lo and behold, your map navigator is down too. Perplexed, you move on and then somebody at the office tells you that from now on mobile and the internet will be separated.

With the advent of the new millennium, technology has been advancing at a pace never seen before. Among others, mobile phone and the internet are the two that gained the most from miniaturization and cost-effectiveness. From aeroplanes to refrigerators, from military to farmers, everybody is using these two technologies directly or indirectly.

Even though the first computer was made decades earlier, but it was after the invention of the Internet that the common man started treading the information highway. Be it banking, communication with near and dear ones, or information of just any kind, everything is just a few clicks away. With the rise of social networking sites, our social lives are changed forever.

While mobile phones were meant to be communication devices with mobility, they are no longer used exclusively for talking. With the Smart-phone era, mobile phone is a personal secretary, music and video player, GPS receiver, communication device and mini-computer. Most of the tasks that can be done on a computer are now routinely performed on smart-phones. And with netbooks and tablets, the line between what is a mobile phone and what is a computer is already blurred and getting more so in the future. With the availability of programs like Skype, internet has gone into one area which was previously considered the sole domain of phone companies including mobile phones. Similarly, telecom companies realizing the growing needs of the public, now provide access to social networking sites, email, chatting and even banking with many more options for internet with a basic handset, through SMS.

So there is not really competition but integration between these two technologies. It will be a mistake to think about one without the other.