community

My name is Phillip Jeffrey.  I am one of a number of writers based in MAGIC that will be sharing with you something about our research or research-related interests. I am a Masters student in Interdisciplinary Studies at the University of British Columbia. My interests include pervasive games, location-based technologies, ethnography, and culture. 

Today while I was sitting in front of our residence fireplace while snow fell outside, I tried without success to use my mobile phone.  At the time the network was working intermittently perhaps due to the power outage.  It was also by chance I came across an article from the Chicago Tribute about how Africans are being empowered through mobile phones.  I realised how little I hear about Africa and mobile technology and I thought it would be useful to bring to light how their society is being affected by mobile phones today. 

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.  

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.