There have been many inventions throughout human history that could be called “revolutionary” or “breakthrough”. The light bulb is a good one. There’s the printing press, the cotton gin, the transistor, and, of course, sliced bread. And trust me, if we were in ancient Mesopotamia right now, I’m sure I’d be recommending that you run right out and get yourself one of those cool new “wheel” thingies. But this is 2009 – the 21st century. We live in some weird “futureworld” where you can get your dog cloned or your hip replaced with titanium, and what better gadget to represent this crazy, electronic age than Apple’s iPhone? Even though there have been smartphones, PDAs, iPods, portable gaming platforms, and GPS units for years, the new 3G iPhone combines all of those technologies, and then some, into one sleek package – and it does it with style.

The techie term for the iPhone is a “convergence device”, and that’s exactly what it is. It brings just about everything you could ever possibly need into the palm of your hand. It comes from the factory complete enough with a powerful set of software applications, like iPod, email, calendar, GPS, wi-fi, web browser, and, get this, even a telephone. The good people at Apple even throw in ways to check the weather and the stock market – undoubtedly so you can watch AAPL climb to new heights with the money you just gave them. If you’ve invested in Apple, there’s a calculator for counting up your winnings (but count them quickly before they disappear again), and it also holds your pictures and has a camera for taking new ones. On top of all that, there’s a notepad for those who just can’t seem to let go of the good old days of jotting things down on paper.

If that was the end of it, I’d still be amazed. After all, never before have I had so much power at my fingertips; but wait, there’s more. No, I’m not selling Sham-Wow or Ginzu knives, but there really is so much more to the iPhone’s story. The real value, what makes the iPhone so special and so far beyond anything else that any of us have ever seen, is the “App Store”. “App” is short for “application”, which is a fancy way to say computer program, and the app store is where you can buy additional computer programs and have them instantly and magically beamed from wherever they are directly into your iPhone. This is where thousands of new doors open up, each with a seemingly infinite number of possibilities.

The App Store is accessed by pressing an icon on the phone’s touchscreen. Through wi-fi or the 3G network, you’ll see a list of categories like “Travel,” “Weather,” “Productivity,” and “Games”. There are about 20 categories filled with dozens, hundreds, and even thousands of apps each. Not surprisingly, since most of us prefer wasting time over getting things done, the biggest category is “Games.” Whether you prefer old-school board games like Monopoly or Scrabble, or vicious first-person shooters, you’ll find all that you desire and everything in between. Many of the games take advantage of the iPhone’s motion-sensors so you can control the game by tilting, raising, lowering, and waving the phone itself. Drive a car, hit a golf ball, fly a plane, go bowling, even control a flying dinosaur – the sky’s the limit.

Don’t let the games fool you, though. The iPhone can be serious, too. Categories like “Business,” “Finance,” and “Medical” have apps that can change your life and maybe even save it. Keep track of business expenses, transfer funds between your checking or savings accounts, or learn how to treat a burn victim. The range of apps is amazingly broad, with general ones that most people might find useful and others that are incredibly specific, written by extremely specialized people and targeted to a narrow group of users. Pilots will find apps to help them with their flight plans, another app tells film and television lighting technicians how many footcandles a particular instrument puts out, and still others work with programs like PowerPoint, Cisco WebEx, and Siemens OpenScape31 (whatever that is).

There are so many apps and ways that the iPhone can help so many people it’s almost mind-boggling. I can use the GPS to record my location as I jog, and it’ll tell me the distance I traveled with information like elevation gain and loss. I can read a book, learn a language, look at traffic cameras, find a restaurant, watch movie trailers, check the status of an upcoming flight, or find a recipe for eggplant parmesan (my favorite). Now, I know that most of that stuff is already available on the web, so you may think that all you really need is the built-in Safari browser; but these apps are designed especially to run on the iPhone, and therefore they provide a more streamlined, direct, and customizable experience. They save time and run faster by diving deep into the web, bypassing the processor-hungry browser and getting just what they need only when they need it.

There are other phones out there with similar features, but when you start really comparing them, the iPhone stands out as the gadget with the most to offer. Not many other handsets have wi-fi, for example, and the ones that do don’t sync with iTunes, so you can’t watch your tv shows or listen to your podcasts or music. In fact, if you have an Apple computer, good luck getting any other phone to sync as seamlessly (or at all) as the iPhone. When I switched from PC to MacBook, I had all kinds of problems syncing my Palm Treo, so the logical choice was to switch to the Apple phone.

The bottom line is that there has never before been a device as powerful, as feature-packed, and, let’s face it, as “cool” as the iPhone. I’ve been around since the days of the Commodore 64, and it seems to me that we humans have finally arrived at the time that many of us thought would only be possible in science-fiction movies. With the iPhone, we can communicate with people all over the world, entertain and educate ourselves, store our memories, and make our lives more efficient, productive, and enjoyable. Every day we discover new uses for it, and with every new day comes new possibilities. I can only imagine what other wonders this future holds.