2 ms·

Not meaningless, the term has become broader.

• danmaz74 13y ago
  My point is that a term that is too broad becomes meaningless. Would you call your 3g tablet a phone? And what if you don't have 3g, only wi-fi, but you can still call phones using skype? Then, even my desktop-PC-with-a-keyboard could be called a phone. Where do you put the line?
  • huxley 13y ago
    Not comparable, I would say that a computer is a broader term than telephone. Nowadays, telephony is just another application not a device, so an iPhone is a computer that does telephony as one of its primary tasks and your desktop is a computer that does telephony via Skype. I don't worry about where the lines are drawn because the lines are mostly arbitrary and imaginary.
    • danmaz74 13y ago
      And without lines the names lose their significance, that's all my point. They are arbitrary but not imaginary: they are a convention. A convention that is useful and necessary, if we want to communicate.