Do Smartphones Control Our Lives?

Ever since I bought an Apple iPhone, I have been hooked on apps. Apple's App Store is a virtual shopping mall with all the shopaholic joy of a real mall but none of the annoying teenagers. It is packed to the virtual rafters with thousands of downloadable software tools. Admittedly, the store makes a bad first impression on many people, with novelty apps such as lightsabres dominating the top 25 chart. But dig a little deeper and you will find life-enhancing riches.

I confess that I now turn to the App Store in almost every situation. In unfamiliar places, I use apps to find the nearest gas station, cinema or even public toilet. I track the length and time of my commute. All my gym workouts are logged. Finding a nice place to eat while on the move is a cinch. Even this article is brought to you thanks to a voice recorder app (iDictaphone) that I used for recording interviews, and one that helped me "mind map" my thoughts when planning it out. Sometimes I daydream about becoming the most virtually enhanced human in the world.

Thankfully, I am not the only one in this appy daze. I discovered that loads of people, including my colleagues, turn to their phones for help with all sorts of things. Up until a year ago, apps barely registered. Now these clever bits of software, when combined with the sensors and networking capabilities of today's smartphones, are sparking nothing short of a techno-cultural revolution. On the iPhone alone, Apple claims over 1.5 billion apps have been downloaded in just a year. The rest of the industry, including Nokia and Google, is now piling in with their own new or relaunched app store.

Apps are more than just clever toys. While gaming still accounts for the lion's share of app activity, it is beyond doubt that apps, and the new wave of phones in which they reside, are already influencing the way their users communicate with each other, navigate their environment and do business. Arguably, these tailored bits of software - connected to the internet, location-aware and sensor-supported as they are - may supersede the web. Some say the devices on which they reside are becoming a vital part of our selves, turning us into de facto cyborgs. Could these humble bits of code really have the potential to completely transform the way we interact with the world?