If ever there’s an industry that can switch between geek and cool without missing a beat, it’s the mobile technology sector.
What other industry will host a conference where Duran Duran is the headline act while actor Stephen Fry – he who has 1.3 million-plus devout Twitter followers – is the awards host?
That’s exactly what happened in Barcelona in February at the hotly anticipated Mobile World Congress conference.
Fry tweeted that Japanese mobile company DoCoMo blew his mind away after he checked out the company’s earphones that can be controlled by eye movements.
That’s right. Earphones that follow your sight. Seeing that the eyes are technically part of the brain, then technology that can read minds now exist.
That’s apparently old news to a group of scientists working on the prototype of a touch screen that you don’t have to touch. To scroll up and down and the screen, just nod your head.
Unfortunately, developments in financial services technology don’t sound quite as fantastically brilliant and futuristic.
But what financial services technologies lack in the sexy scales, it makes up for in the dollar department.
A telepathic earphone is great but it’ll cost you. Back-office technology is boring but it can save a company serious sums.
No doubt Fry will never tweet about how blindingly brilliant the new finance technologies are. But that’s cool. Sometimes, it’s not the coolest but the simplest software technologies that can make a big difference to society – even if you’ve never heard of them.
