Next mobile generation

ECIC, The European Christian Internet Conference Ugo Guidolin, Professor of Digital Anthropology June 14, 2012

Next mobile generation: the fastest human mobility history ever told Goodmorning everybody. My speech today focuses on the next mobile and apps generation. When we talk about the future in relation to new media and technologies is always a risk: their ever innovative being causes that new technologies language and forms are always in changing. So, I’d like to start with a very quick introduction which analyze the evolution of the human mobility: it can help us to understand the meaning of mobile ongoing transformation. Let me introduce you “The fastest human mobility history ever told” At the beginning - until 3000 B.C. - human social life was restricted to a village, an organic community with a small system of relationships, based on 150 elements. The number was formulated by Robin Dunbar and represents a constitutive limit of the human being: in short, a single man can track his relational activities only with 150 identified peers. The question is: what should I do with my 5000 contacts on Facebook?... This is the reason that recently drove

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Zuckerberg to introduce new features for filtering the posts of more active contacts and retracing social activity. There is also a new personal network: “Path”. It’s an app for mobile and is the Facebook antidote: you can connect only with 50 peers. More human! In any case, in 3000 B.C. Facebook would be useless, also because the humans communicate through sensory. It was a multimedia language, made of symbols and rituals that belonged only to regional culture. Symbols and rituals brought to life the narration of a myth. Reliving a story was very important to remember it and trasmit it to the next generations. It’s a long-term memory that comes from experience and generates an empathic language that communicates with the unconscious, like art, music, photography, cinema or... advertising! This requires a face-to-face communication. This is what I called “The Age of Zero Mobility”: no need to move out from their territory. Two conditions guarantee the stability of the community: a limited number of elements and proximity, allowing them to participate and have a global perception of system and culture. We should consider these two conditions also when we establish and manage online communities, I think, to get more positive results than noise. But let’s go on to The Age Of Physical Mobility. All forms of communication also requires a transmission rate. In the age of zero mobility it was zero, it was in real time. The invention of the wheel speeds up the man's foot. Then came the chariots, the trains, the cars, the planes. Faster and faster, until a rocket carried the man's foot on the moon... but more about that, shortly. The possibility of moving faster allows humans to go into new territories and contact foreign NEXT MOBILE GENERATION

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populations, but in 3000 B.C. we know there was a problem: how to communicate? There was no common code or - how we say today - a standard protocol. So the humans needs a universal language to communicate, abstracted from their own culture and open worldwide. They took the representation of their language - the symbols - and emptied their meaning to construct words, sentences and texts. The humans invented the Alphabet Machine: 26 signs with no meaning, associated with 26 sounds without meaning, because the meaning is generated by their sequence. The language loses its sensory and becomes abstract. The symbols became letters and numbers. The writing fixed our memory outside of mind and so can be transmitted away. The empathy became individuality: man leaves its cultural and local roots and becomes self-made, divides the regions with boundaries and geolocalizes territory. The Alphabet Machine is the best software we have installed in our mind from three thousand years until now, so that - as Walter Ong says - we do not know how the words were before they were written. It is interesting to note that the Alphabet Software became also a Thinking Software: alphabet, in fact, forces us to concatenate our concepts along a oneway thinking, linking causes to effects. This is what we call rational-logical thinking, which is typical of Western civilization. It modified our natural way of thinking. But let’s go on talking about mobility… “Faster and faster until a rocket carried the man's foot on the moon” I said before... Ironically, just when the human with his foot goes up to reach the universe, he discovered a place where matter was moving faster then feet, wheels and rockets: the electric space! There is a little known fact about this, but very significant. NEXT MOBILE GENERATION

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Michael Collins was the third astronaut of the Apollo 11 fleet. As Armstrong became famous for their first moonwalk, Collins was left to caretake the mothership. Collins remembered that moment with these words: “Not since Adam has any human known such solitude”. His solitude is interrupted by a radio message from the base in Houston: 600 millions tv spectators in the world are watching the moon landing! The logical consequence is: the whole world - which is 250,000 miles away from the moon - was watching the moon landing... but Michael Collins who was only 65 miles away! He just could not believe: the whole world was in the moon, but him! Television is a kind of magic: it allows a man to watch the world outside and far away. Retrieves the original empathy through the multimedia sensory, but on a larger social scale. You can be anywhere and live experience in real time. No need to move out from their territory again: just stay plugged! Tv restores strength to image and to a message without memory: when you see a television message, it is just gone! Television globalizes the ritual and symbols of an extended society, but it’s like a totem: its communication has no return. We cannot really share its rituals. People can view the television, but cannot communicate through television. Well, look now at humans... We are the cyborgs! Media extends first our body and later our central nervous system to reach a faster mobility, because the mobility can modify space-time coordinates, reduces the world to a village, the time to an istant. A human seems to involve the whole of mankind in him. He needs to restore the ancient empathy on a larger sharing platform, everywhere, on the move. NEXT MOBILE GENERATION

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We have globalized all: the economics, the communications, the market, the business, the commerce but... until recently, we never globalize our relational system. We have extended our organic mobility to globalize our relationship network to the social dynamics of the original village. It was necessary to restore the initial conditions, dimensions and proximity - remember? - but on a larger scale... And, maybe, this is the reason why today all we are in Facebook, Twitter or Foursquare. The social network is a good social model, but it must have a limited number of contacts allowing them to participate and have a global perception of relational system. Maybe Facebook does not the right thing, but - I think - the traditional online forum, for example, does it. Today, the media are us, not the devices, and the network is our village. It’s not a face-to-face kind of communication, but it became a face-to-interface communication model. We communicate with our mobile digital extensions, but in a sensory way, which reproduces the analogic way of interact with things and people: we touch without touching, browse pages without really touching the paper, drag objects without really take them, we smile, get angry, wink wink with emoticons… We have eliminated the obstacles along the path: input devices like mouse, cursors, but also joypads and joystick to return to play with our body (just look at videogaming trends: Wii, MS Kinect), and on-desk immobility to extend our natural mobility and activities to the global village. We are the media, we are mobile... So, let’s go on analyzing more carefully what’s the meaning of being mobile today...

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Network is not technology! Network space is not a Pc, a smartphone or the Web. Often we tend to focalize on technology, but we could see that media change with human social evolution: there would be no Gutenberg if there wasn’t a Renaissance! So, from a social point of view Network is where we move, what we’re doing and the way we do it. So it’s not important focalize on device the user uses, but on the context in which he uses it! How he interacts in different situations, how it behaves, what feedbacks he expects. Without regard to the device, because the device could be a mental cage, an obstacle to natural user experience in mobility. Take a look at some examples... Network is on-desk. Our laptop computers are not portable, but transportable. You can transfer it, but its best context of use is always a comfortable posture at a desk: it requires a smooth interaction. On-desk is our traditional mental model of mobile computing, but uses little mobility. As a matter of fact, we try to use laptop also in uncomfortable contexts of use, often in mobility: to quickly show a presentation, to read a document on the fly or lying on a couch, to connect to the network on the move… In all these cases the laptop is a cage! Before Apple iPad the market response was the NetPC, smaller and lighter, but it was the same conceptual model. It optimized technology and functionality... but it didn’t change anything to human interaction! Network is on-the-go. Smartphone is an agile device. Often you can use it with one hand and on the move. It operates on micro-tasks, increasing your

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productivity in real-time: sends e-mail, get a direction, syncronizes and shares events and contacts, get your position. But also a smartphone could be a cage. Often the network activity requires more productivity in mobility: a fast connection for downloading files, a larger screen to work on documents or well read an entire web page. Smartphone is a micro-device for macro-tasks. Before Apple iPhone there were the early MS Windows Mobile Phones, but their conceptual model of interaction was the same as computer: a desktop, a lot of menus and hierarchies to reach informations and files, buttons and interface elements too small for an interaction on the move. A better response was Amazon Kindle, but it was only an e-reader. Network is in-between. One of the key success factors for Apple iPad is that it meets the requirements explained until now. iPad is a brand new concept. There was nothing like the iPad before. The iPhone killer application was telephone, for iPod was Mp3 player, but there was nothing before iPad that identifies the new device. Kindle Amazon, maybe, but has not been so: the iPad buyers looking for more games and personal productivity tools then e-books. It is the beginning of a new computing era, the era of network mobility. The network enters into the spaces of everyday life, it’s a natural extension of our social life on a larger scale. It’s more pervasive. There’s a funny video on YouTube which well explains this idea: the title is “iPad + Velcro”... Go and see! In any case, iPad also may not be the right response in the long run... It’s too hard, too visible… The network context of use is in-between, it dresses our NEXT MOBILE GENERATION

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ordinary life, objects... We don’t need other solid devices. Every object in our daily lives could transfer informations, services, offering digital tools according to the needs of the situation or the moment, like computing does today through tablets and smartphone. The network is on the move, is more pervasive, its technology is liquid, not solid. To give you an idea, experience a normal day in 2014… (https:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=g7_mOdi3O5E) We are the mobile media. We must change our point of view focusing more on user experience than on device. User is a cyborg, is a mobile media. Accellerometers and giroscopes get his position and his movements... Gps get his position… If an iPhone screen is turned off and in vertical position, maybe he’s calling. If iPhone is shaking maybe he’s in motion. Audio input get is voice.

STANDBY

ON/OFF

VOLUME

INPUT OUTPUT

MULTITOUCH

Controls

AV

HIRES GYROSCOPE

Display

WIDESCREEN

Sensors

AMBIENT LIGHT

ACCELEROMETERS BACKLIT

Net 3G

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Video input get his face expressions and what he sees. Multitouch get his behaviors. Net connection allows him to communicate and share it to the outside world. Where he move, what he’s doing and the way he do it. Here is his technological apparatus. The technological apparatus finds his meaning in apps! Apps is the language of the mobility networking. Apps is the place where conventions and creative and intellectual practices take place and can be shared with peers. Apps are not only the applications for iOs or Android... We must think of the app as a network module, a network widget that we can plug in multiple devices and media channels. This is the reason why we tend to develop mobile applications more as web apps then device targeted apps, because Html5 and Javascript are standard programming codes, crossplatform. The app must be a network app: crossplatform and multichannel. Social is our experience. Social activities are the humus of network, its lifeblood. The rules that govern the network are subject to a continuous process of re-mediation, due to technology and social changes. The network is an organic being, continuously dynamic. It’s the place of experience and skill where anytime are redefined languages, formats and conventions. Social network, in the broadest sense - I mean also forums, blogs, Wikipedia, Storify and many others - is the place where this comparison happens. Now the social web skills meet the mobility: a lot of apps allow us to checkin a location, searching our nearest friends in a map, sharing a photo or a video, experience augmented reality... NEXT MOBILE GENERATION

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Cloud is our memory. Cloud is the highest expression of liberation from the cage of a memory device! Our memory is not the paper or an hard disk, but is the cloud. We put a lot of data in the network, because we want to view, edit and syncronize them through any interface, any display, any device, everywhere... in mobility, again! Through the cloud we can manage and organize our time, our thoughts, our contacts, sharing tasks and projects, collaborate with a working group. So... What’s up now? In relation to what I have told until now, In the next slides I want to do a very quick carousel on current trends applications of mobile evolution. Let’s go...! This is a list of possible key trends that could shape the new mobile experience. Augmented reality. Using the mobile camera, GPS, gyroscope, the accelerometer and a data connection, the Augmented Reality technology combines image recognition and restitution of the frame 3D space, making the real world around completely interactive. Custom information. News is not a magazine or a newspaper. Apps like Flipboard or Zite are changing the way we intend the informations reading. They collect the content of social media and other websites and present it in magazine format, allowing users to flip through many feeds.

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Social Mobile Networking. Self-Expression in real time. Social networking is built on the notion of sharing: is the ultimate vehicle of selfexpression in real time. Mobile social networks are the communities of the future and at the core of any community is connecting people with a passion for a common interest. Network Touch Surfaces (wearable gestural interfaces). The touch surfaces free information from its confines by seamlessly integrating it with reality, and thus making the entire world your computer. Enhanced Geolocalization. All the things around us. The next big trend in mobile could be the combination of structured data around places, objects and events that combined with your social graph can generate a whole new class of apps Mobile Television. Television on the go. An emerging whole new generation of wireless networks - 4G, WIMAX, LTE (long term evolution) made the broadband mobile a reality. Padmasree Warrior, Cisco Systems CTO, said video will occupy an estimated 66% of mobile traffic by 2013 Mobile Payments. Your smartphone is your wallet Pew Research suggests that mobile payments may replace cash and bank cards to become the mainstream method of payment by 2020. Gamification. Cheap is more! Angry Birds continues to dominate the iOs charts two years after its original release. A game like Temple Run earns 7 million players on a daily basis. Many of these games, like Fruit Ninja, Cut The Rope, get started on the iPhone, are quickly spreading to other platforms (computer, web and videogaming consoles) and are moving into non-interactive NEXT MOBILE GENERATION

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media (comic books and movies). The cheap game are able to more easily hook players! Thanks for the attention.


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