Re: When is a phone not a phone...
>- since when has a phone been more about productivity than communication?
It's just by historical contingency that we now call our pocket computers 'phones'. In an slightly different alternate reality they might have been called 'connected PDAs' or somesuch. Even before smartphones and 'feature-phones', people would use commonly use their phone as alarm clocks, calculators and torches.
You'll note also that we tend to drop the 'tele' from 'telephone' (dumb phone, smart phone, mobile phone, cell phone etc), so a mere MP3 player could correctly be called a 'phone', since there is no 'tele' (at a distance) involved. Heck, some people just call them 'mobiles'.
If I browse TheRegister or retreive my email on my 'phone', then the 'tele' part is present, but not the 'phone' (sound or voice).
(Icon: Not a grammer Nazi, but an armchair etymologist)
Biting the hand that feeds IT
