[coldtea]

You intend this to be ironic, but a proper perspective would be that:

1) 10 years ago this was way bulkier, far less convenient and more often than not without an intertube connection,

2) 20 years ago this was absolute bare-bones and only for upper middle class and rich people,

3) 30 years ago it was science fiction.

Now, a 20-something would of course take all this for granted. But technology will have some surprises for him down the road too, and he'll learn to put things in perspective when 2030 tech is 100 times more awesome than today's.

[jiggy2011]

Not sure about bulkier 10 years ago, the nokia 8310 was all the rage back then and they were so tiny that people used to lose them down cracks in sofas. Not to mention better battery.

[coldtea]

Sure, but that was a barebones model. I had the equivalent of today's iPhone style things (a Sony-Ericsson P910 IIRC), and it was like 3 iPhones in bulk.

[mikeash]

A minor nitpick on (3), commercial mobile phone service dates to 1946, and the first service that we'd identify as being something like a modern "cell phone", with actual cells, automated handoff, integration into the POTS network, etc., came in 1978.

Technology always seems to progress both faster and slower than you think.