Earbuds weren’t on the list, so I was ignoring them. It seems unfair and highly open to bias to add devices that weren’t on the list when evaluating the prediction. The prediction is vague enough as it is, without going that route. When considering integrated microphones, I would say that they are part of one thing, not connected components of a system. I’m aware that definition is non-obvious; however, I believe it is justified by context. The prediction is about “cables are disappearing”; an integrated microphone (or cell phone display, or cell phone keyboard) has no part that an end-user would identify as a cable. I can’t believe that Kurzweil thought wireless would become so ubiquitous that it would be used within a cell phone, and I don’t see anything in the prediction that I can read to mean that.
That said, I may be vastly underestimating the number of headsets with microphones sold for gaming. I don’t do gaming with them. Availability heuristic and all that; it wouldn’t surprise me much if they outnumbered bluetooth headsets.
And to add another example, my previous cell phone came with a wired lapel mic. I used it on only rare occasions.
Earbuds weren’t on the list, so I was ignoring them. It seems unfair and highly open to bias to add devices that weren’t on the list when evaluating the prediction. The prediction is vague enough as it is, without going that route. When considering integrated microphones, I would say that they are part of one thing, not connected components of a system. I’m aware that definition is non-obvious; however, I believe it is justified by context. The prediction is about “cables are disappearing”; an integrated microphone (or cell phone display, or cell phone keyboard) has no part that an end-user would identify as a cable. I can’t believe that Kurzweil thought wireless would become so ubiquitous that it would be used within a cell phone, and I don’t see anything in the prediction that I can read to mean that.
That said, I may be vastly underestimating the number of headsets with microphones sold for gaming. I don’t do gaming with them. Availability heuristic and all that; it wouldn’t surprise me much if they outnumbered bluetooth headsets.
And to add another example, my previous cell phone came with a wired lapel mic. I used it on only rare occasions.