2.17. "I'm Local"

We launch mobile apps to get the skinny on our surroundings: "I'm local, tell me what's happening around me." We've celebrated the personal computer since the days of disco, but the iPhone is the most personal computer yet—a device that knows tons about you and your surroundings. More than just a precocious phone, the iPhone is a personal sensor device tricked out with a camera, microphone, GPS, motion detector, and compass, all backed with Internet know-how. With sight, hearing, and touch, it lacks only smell and taste to round out the five senses (and really, that would just be creepy).

The iPhone is at once hyperlocal weatherman, restaurant radar, source of directions, know-it-all travel guide, and more. Trekkies, eat your heart out. Sensor-savvy apps turn the iPhone into the tricorder of Star Trek yore. Like a pack of pointy-eared science officers, we whip out our phones for a confident read on our personal habitat, using the iPhone's sensors to filter sprawling amounts of information for a local view of our immediate environment. Fascinating.