Just flew back from LA to Sydney and am writing this post in a slight jet-lagged cloud – but such a remarkable statistic though cuts through the haze.
“The total number of mobile connections is now equivalent to nearly a third of the estimated world population of 6.5 billion,” Martin Garner, director at Wireless Intelligence, said in a statement.
It suggests if nothing else that human-kind are not sedentary creatures – we prefer to be moving and interacting while doing so. It also suggests that we like to carry our contacts, immediate communication potential and dare I say it, our entertainment and personal media with us whenever possible. Perhaps the transience and fragility of our existence means we feel we are never far away from being cut-off from society or losing our roots, so like to keep as much as possible with us – that philosophical meander aside as media creators we need to consider the impact that mobility plays in our story creation process.
I think we are also intrinsically environmentally rooted creatures and as such in the near future location and mobility are intrinsically entwined – audiences will expect content that is both personally aware and location aware. Given that location and mobile entertainment go together so strongly it does beg the question why are there not more services that are location aware at the moment? I have just come from San Diego back to Sydney, switching my sim chip along the way and not once (apart from a time stamp update) did I feel I was getting a personalized, location aware experience – we have so far to go. I will be creating a post about where we may be in a couple of generations time from an entertainment and social networking perspective. For now though – ‘bring the physical back into the virtual’ mobile service providers – if you want to differentiate, be the first.
Posted by Gary Hayes ©2005
