My principal interest in mobile applications is to push the boundaries of innovation to create uniquely mobile experiences. I hope my blogs excite and challenge developers to think 'outside the box'.
are we creating mobility or immobility?
coultonp | 30 August, 2006 18:47
I came across this blog by Paul Hartzog by way of a colleague from Sociology here at
“Technological mobility, i.e. access to information about another place than where I am right now, means that I dont actually have to go there. So technology can also be anti-mobility”
I have heard this sort of argument before in that a natural consequence of something being mobile means something has to be fixed. For us to have a mobile phone we necessarily require the fixed infrastructure to which we can connect. For us to get our location via say GPS we need the infrastructure to have a known position.
We are thus left with the interesting philosophical question: if we are becoming ever more mobile, does our environment increasingly have to become fixed to give it context and meaning? Something to ponder over on your coffee break!
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Re: are we creating mobility or immobility?
coultonp | 30/08/2006, 19:53
HarttiOn a personal level I would agree I dont feel I have become less mobile but I wonder as we develop more context aware applications how much of our environment will have to become fixed in order for this context to work. I can imagine a situation where we have data that has to remained fixed and therefore its environment must be fixed while other data could be mobile as well as users. This should pose interesting problems for search engines!
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My principal interest in mobile applications is to push the boundaries of innovation to create uniquely mobile experiences. I hope my blogs excite and challenge developers to think 'outside the box'.
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Re: are we creating mobility or immobility?
hartti | 30/08/2006, 19:33
On a grander scale, there might be however some truth in one of the scenarios PH offers: "society becomes more mobile locally, i.e. within some small predefined boundary, but less mobile within the global context." People being afraid of flying makes them travel less (or shorter disctances), and hence we return back to the village culture. Although now the villages are much more aware of what happens in other villages, thanks to the technology.
Great link,
Hartti