Blogs

Imagine this sort of cyber-world if you will:

1. A domain name costs $400/month.
2. Before you are permitted to send and receive e-mail through your domain name, you have to submit an explanation to IANA explaining what sort of e-mail you'll be sending and receiving.
3. If you hope to use your domain name to launch a commercial service, you'll be required to give 50% of your revenue to your ISP.
4. Even after you get your domain name and e-mail address, only users in the same country as you can send you e-mail.  If you want users from other countries to send you e-mail, you'll have to register a new domain name in each of those other countries with similar restrictions.
5. If as an end user, you decide to install some software to enable a new service, you'll first have to contact your ISP to let them know what that service was before it would work.
6. Each user's browser is controlled by your ISP.  They will dictate what sites you can visit.

Now imagine where the Internet might be had it evolved under such a scenario.  Does this seem like a scenario ripe for innovation and opportunity?

Around 1990 many friends in traditional media companies discovered the Internet and dove in. It wasn’t easy to swim given all of the new technologies and unfathomed user interface issues. Now I’m seeing my traditional media friends (the web being traditional now too) eyeing the deep end of the mobile ocean and I’m thinking, “Take a really big breath!”  I believe the potential of mobile media is the biggest creative challenge our media-obsessed species has ever faced.

What is so hard?  In one word: “context”.  Context is about ‘where I’m at’ in terms of identity (e.g. personality, preferences), place (location, bystanders, politics, time), community (friends, family, colleagues, services), and purpose (work, learning, recreation, entertainment, shopping, commuting).  The vitality and value of mobile experience are ruled by such contexts.  When theatre made successive transitions to film, radio and TV nobody had to worry about context because these media are about vacations from reality rather than immersions in it.  

BUDDY BUTTONS and PLASTIC PALS:  ON COMPANION TECHNOLOGIES

An interview with Roman Onufrijchuk by Richard Smith

Roman is a colleague of mine at SFU and fellow member of CPROST. We worked at NewMIC together and at my request he has turned his philosophical and phenomenological mind to the problem of mobile rich media context-aware technologies. In his view the coming generations of mobile technologies ought to be thought of as "companion technologies."
I grabbed Roman for a minute the other day and asked him a few questions. These are his answers, between smokes and sips of a dark americano, in the sun outside Blenz.

I hope to bring you more of this stuff, as the debate between Roman and I expands and extends over the next few months.

I founded and continue to lead the MobileMuse.ca Network so it might be worthwhile to know a little about my mobile motivations, and about what inspires the Network's mission for mobile media innovation at the frontiers of culture.

At different times I've been a cancer researcher, astronomer, observatory director, science museum director, and dot.com CEO.  Beyond Muse, I currently champion a set of very exciting applied R&D projects in learning technologies at the University of British Columbia while leading a couple of start-up companies and contributing to a few public and private boards.  The only subjects I'm close to being an expert on are prehistoric stone circles (the Stonehenges of the world) and Native American cosmological creation myths. My most intimate connection with mobile technologies is that I commute by bicycle everywhere, all year.

[Updated May 22 with new links from Jordy. Keep 'em coming, folks...] 

Many people ask me (well, actually no one has asked me yet, but someone will, some day), "how do you keep up with the latest news in mobile technology and mobile applications?" In the interest of answering that question for future readers, let me give you a few of my sources. Some of them are obvious, others are not so obvious. I hope that others will add their favourites to the comments section of this post.

Down the road we'll use the aggregation capabilities of drupal to provide a combined feed from all of these, but for now you can subscribe via the links I will provide. Or, you can just read this site and get the 'executive summary' version. Let us do the heavy lifting for you!

Jim's my name and technology is my game.  I've been involved with the MobileMuse.ca project since its inception over two years ago.  In spite of my titular reference of Research Director, I'm probably more accurately described as the Chief Technology Officer in the MobileMuse.ca network.

A mathematician and computer scientist by training, I've been involved in the high tech industry for close to 30 years.  The vast majority of that time has been spent in the Ottawa area and specifically within the telecommunications domain.  I'm a serial entrepreneur and have participated or co-founded 5 startups in my career.

Good morning. I suggested that the bloggers on mobilemuse.ca introduce themselves, so I had better get started and do my own introduction.

My name is Richard Smith. I am a professor in the School of Communication at Simon Fraser University, and I work from the downtown campus. I have been interested in 'technology and society' issues for a long time - at least 15 years or so. For the last decade I have been working on internet issues and for the last five years or so on mobile technology and society.

I have a particular interest in how mobile technology affects social inclusion - helping (or hindering) people's ability to feel a part of the social world around them. I am interested in the role of mobiles as surveillance devices, and I am keen to discover new ways of understanding "user experience" of new technology.