context aware

For those who survived our longest solstice night and are tuned to seasonal celebrations, here’s a chestnut about mobile context-aware community narratives that hopefully brings some warm inspiration to your fireside reflections.

Christmas is just one child within a large family of cultural traditions that were born from or married into ancient human observances of the winter solstice.  As an astronomer-by-first-vocation living in Vancouver I was intrigued to study the miraculous birth story of the Pacific north coast, sometimes called Raven and the First People or Raven Steals the Daylight.  One dimension of this story is captured brilliantly in Haida artist Bill Reid’s “The Raven and the First Men” sculpture at UBC’s Museum of Anthropology. Raven is a complex trickster and this story is a focal point of the Raven Traveling myth cycle.  The epic poetry of north coast mythology is illuminated in Robert Bringhurst’s fascinating trilogy starting with “A Story as Sharp as a Knife”.

I was first introduced to Bluetooth technology in either 1997 or 1998.  It seemed like a pretty reasonable idea and the advocate presenting the technology was fervent in his belief that this technology would be the next big thing.

We're now mid way through 2006 - pushing towards a decade later - and where is Bluetooth today?  It remains an under used nebulous technology that refuses to gain a critical mass of acceptance - despite its prevalence in most modern mobile phones of today.  I think there are a few explanations for this disappointing result of a promising technology.