Is the smartphone, as we know it, set to disappear?

In 1915, Ed Klein, a seller of harnesses, put outan advertisement in Lawrence Journal World, a local newspaper in Kansas.

- Abhishek Asthana

Itwas an appeal to people to not buy this new gadget called the car, and continue buying horses for transportation. It mentioned a horse named Dobbin (added to give the appeal emotional draw, a classicadvertising trick) who was very low maintenance, needed no expensive fossil fuels, and didn’t depreciate as an asset on the balance sheet. The appeal was desperate. Henry Ford had already come up with the concept of assembly line manufacturing in 1913, and by the time of Klein's ad, he could produce acar in 93 minutes flat. He famously said, “If 1 ask people what they want, they would say faster horses.” He was right. Much of the research over the 100 years preceding Ford’s statement was on making horses faster, stronger, and, probably, poop less. The stench of horse manure was so bad, cities must have felt like marketing department meeting rooms.