The "Me" in Mobile Media

 Adam Sandler’s movie “Click” creates a public daydream about our emerging desire for an intimate relationship with the world through our mobile devices.  That thing in your hand is no longer an inanimate object - it is a dynamic extension of your self.

MobileMuse.ca in the process of defining a joint program of mobile media consumption research with Nokia and one of the more interesting experimental design factors is the ‘burning in’ period during which subjects need to build an effective and affective relationship with a new device.  There’s no point to user behaviour research while the subject and the device are strangers.  A relationship can’t be built overnight and in most cases it will go well beyond casual dimensions of friendship.  Marketers know that people begin to project their relationship with their device, along with their hopes and dreams for what it will achieve for them socially in the world, with the very first advertisements they see.  It’s similar to the way we begin to project our social selves through prospective mates from the first time we see them.

This isn’t kinky; it’s just human.  Cars also act as extensions of who we are or wish to be.  The difference with a mobile device is that it is immediately far more intimate, personal and capable.  It’s in my hand, therefore its very personal.  Try ripping the cell phone out of the hands of a motorist – everyone knows it’s unsafe but nobody wants to loose their social lifeline.  Think of what we could learn about people’s evolving musical portraits as painted by their iPods. Think of how our devices are beginning to capture a running commentary about our existence, as in Nokia’s “lifeblog” application.  The concepts of being and belonging are being mashed together with the integration of our personal experience.  We fondle these pocket fetishes while they help to fashion our lives.  Okay, maybe it is kinky.

Another important dimension of mobile identity generation is cultural.  A good friend and great artist, Loretta Todd, is very excited about the ability of the mobile medium to support an authentic expression of aboriginal cultural. It’s reasonable to see how print, film and television are successive media that have told other peoples’ stories for them, and that in the mobile space the ownership of expression is more ‘in hand’.  A further example of this phenomenon is with the upcoming 2010 Olympics in Vancouver.  There is a strong concern about how international media can swoop into a small community that is hosting a sporting event and tell that community’s story for them before swooping out again just as quickly.  There’s an exciting opportunity within mobile media for communities to create and curate their own stories.

The beauty of identity and culture is that they are evolving entities that are simultaneously within, around and about us.  When you look at emerging theories about learning, such as George Seimens’ “Connectivism” , and consider how separate digital indexes of our personal experience and urban environments are beginning to blossom, the mobile device is perfectly situated to be our identity manager, personality amplifier and lifestyle generator.  The “me” in mobile media is its most disruptive potential.