Sunday, November 13, 2005

The Mobile Phone And Phase 2


If you read Smart Mobs by Howard Rheingold, this isn't new, but it's a great story to refresh you on how big of an impact the mobile phone will have on us.

A great article titled Mobility Special: Plugged into it all in the Financial Times explains how the mobile phone will become the remote control of the physical world.

I highlighted a couple points.

The mobile phone has changed the way many people relate to their work, or to their friends and loved ones. It seems a fair bet that its next incarnation will have a much deeper and wider impact.

The mobile phone is already morphing into an all-purpose messaging device, capable of catching and transmitting many of the minutiae of daily life, from the short snippets of text messages to impromptu photos.

"This is like watching the beginnings of the world wide web,” says Dick Lampman, director of Hewlett-Packard’s research labs. Trying to predict exactly how this personal communications revolution is going to change your life is likely to lead to the same kind of hyperbole - and mistakes - that characterised the early dotcom days, he says, but “you can see the early pieces of it, joined up, in the mobile phone world”.

The virtual world created by the mobile is a shared social space, something always with you: the point is to be always on and always connected, even if right now you have nothing much to say.

It has also become a way of easing the transition from the real to virtual world.

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