Consider a distant-future iPhone roughly the same width and height as the iPhone 5, but as thin and as durable as a credit card. Accidentally drop such a phone and it’d flutter harmlessly to the ground. Now maybe this would be a terrible design—the edges might dig into your hand, and it might be even less secure-feeling when held—but it’d clearly change the equation when it comes to fear of dropping your iPhone (not to mention where and how to carry it, and so on).

Interesting piece on the ineffable trajectory of technological progress by John Siracusa.