Abacus iPhone app

I used this image for one of my class projects. I'd like to take about it because the image is very interesting when you look at what is being displayed. this is an iPhone showing an app that allows you to use an abacus. How ironic is that? Its an iPhone! The iPhone is one of the more advanced cellular devices on the market. It is shown here useing a 5000 year old device called an abacus. The use of the abucus is said to date back about 2700 B.C. to the ancient Mesopotamians. I wonder if any of them ever thought there would be a divice called a phone, let alond a phone that conects people through a satelite system. Now this ancient way of counting and calculating numbers can be used on one of the most cutting edge devices of our time! And get this. There are technologies that make the iPhone look outdated! The real kicker is that the abucus can be used to calculate some numbers much faster than an iPhone can. If one learned how to use an abacus correctly one be able to use the abucus to perform a calculation like [(89-75+47) / 67 )* (46)*(302334343) ] in seconds while on the contrary you cant even calcualte this type of proplem on an iphone or even most hand held calculators! What does all of this have to do with design? Well I think that the mind pocess of someone who could figure out how to invent and abacus is mindboggling. How could you invent and analog calculation device that can challenge calculation devices built thousands of years ago? What aren't we thinking about that they were thinking about?