the Evil Line

The 2009 Edge question is up. If you don't remember from previous years, this is a game where super-intellectual people compete with each other to say shocking, original things that will make everyone marvel at their creativity and uncommon wisdom.

So, in response to this year's question of "What will change everything?", we get answers like "Understanding the mind" and "Artificial, self-replicating meme machines" and "The anthroposphere" and "Brain-machine interface."

Read through ten or so of these, and you're very refreshed to read Keith Devlin's simple answer:

The mobile phone. Within my lifetime I fully expect almost every living human adult, and most children, in the world to own one. (Neither the pen nor the typewriter came even close to that level of adoption, nor did the automobile.) That puts global connectivity, immense computational power, and access to all the world's knowledge amassed over many centuries, in everyone's hands.

I declare Devlin the winner. Yes, he is a mathematician. What, you expected me to declare a sociologist the winner?