phones is that anyone can write an app for them, including criminals, hackers and cyber terrorists,” he said. “Apple, at least, reviews and tests apps before allowing them into the iTunes store. Such testing doesn’t happen for Black-Berry or Android apps. Smartphone apps go onto my Terror Watch List.”

Also, several media reports suggest that mobile-network service providers have been calling their networks 4G, meaning “fourth generation,” but this is a result of a change in the defi-nition of “4G.” One survey showed networks often advertise speeds of “up to 21” or even “up to 42 megabits per second (Mbps).” Test results were nowhere near that fast, averaging at best one-tenth of that higher speed.

In December 2010, the organization that sets global standards for mobile communications, the ITU (International Telecommunication Union), decided that 3G technologies substantially better in performance and capability than earlier 3G technologies could be classified as 4G.

In other words, what was called a 3G network last year can now be called a 4G network, if it meets the new definition.

There is no change in the compulsion that many consumers feel when a new product comes out, said Hanson Hosein, director of the Masters of Communication in Digital Media program at the University of Washington, in a recent interview.

Soon the products will be “really efficient, really cheap, but it will have to be of excellent quality because we have gone past that initial euphoria of, ‘Wow, anyone can produce this stuff,’ to ‘Wow, most of this stuff is really crap.’

“People are really looking for quality stuff — let’s figure out how we can do that on a shoestring budget,” he said.

Hosein said we are in a time when innovation is moving quickly, but it will slow down in a few years when the market begins to saturate.