What Is That Strange Object on The Kitchen Wall? (8/7/15)

It should be obvious that we are looking at a picture of a telephone.
How many of you have ever seen one of these?
How many of you have actually USED one of these?

These are the kinds of phones your parents and grandparents used when they were growing up.
If you were lucky, you had some sort of wireless phone so you could have some privacy when you were talking.
That is, of course, until somebody else had to use the phone or someone had to use the internet.

More on that in a bit...

At this point, there are many people who do not even have a phone in their house.
These days, people carry their phones around in their pockets.
We literally have the world in the palm of our hands.

Most of you have a phone that is capable of a great many things. In fact, you can even see the person you are talking to on the phone.
If someone had told me that this would be possible, I never would have believed them.
It's a bit like science fiction, accept it's real.

In your notebooks, please consider the following:

1) Describe the ways communication (the internet and/or phones) has changed to suit the needs of the people who use it in the 21st century.
2) How would you generate a plan to make such modifications to a phone?
3) What process might you follow to be assured that your modifications would be functional and successful?
4) Describe one other product or machine that you use that you believe has been modified drastically in recent history. Identify the product and describe the modifications that have made that piece of machinery more functional and useful to the people using it.