Solitary Mobility vs. Mobile Sociality

August 17, 2005  |  Mobile  |  , , ,

Nokia 6680
Nokia 6680,
by alexde­car­valho.

Chris­t­ian Lind­holm cre­ated a stir while pre­sent­ing Nokia’s new prod­ucts, includ­ing the N90 trans­former, at Reboot 7.0:

“If you own an iPod, please stand up”. [Most con­fer­ence atten­dees stood up]

“Now take the iPod out of your pocket”, [only] two peo­ple can pro­duce their iPod.

The point: “If it’s not in the pocket, it’s not mobile”.

(Via Michael Heile­mann, Binary Bon­sai).

Surely,
it would be rude to
lis­ten to an iPod while the speaker is talk­ing, but so would
speak­ing on the phone. And yet, most peo­ple chose to carry their mobile
phone in their pocket and not an iPod / mp3 player (or for that mat­ter,
a com­pact camera).

Granted, no one goes to a con­fer­ence every­day and usage of these devices depends on the con­text of the upcom­ing activ­ity: when you walk out the door, would you rather stay in touch with oth­ers
or would you rather lis­ten to music? And if you have a fixed bud­get and have to choose between
buy­ing your first mobile phone or your first mp3 player, which would you
buy?

Your choice depends on whether you value soli­tary mobil­ity or mobile sociality:

  • With an iPod while on the move, you cre­ate soli­tary mobil­ity, by 1)
    sig­nalling to peo­ple you are not avail­able to social­ize because you are
    wear­ing your head­phones; and by 2) shield­ing your­self acousti­cally from
    your envi­ron­ment, by build­ing your own pri­vate sound bub­ble (ie., lis­ten­ing to music).
  • With a mobile phone, you achieve mobile social­ity and can con­nect with the world while on the move, through voice, SMS, MMS, e-mail, inter­net access, etc.

New con­verged mobile devices do both, by com­bin­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tion (phone), hobby (music, cam­era, games) and pro­duc­tiv­ity (pda) tools. For instance, with the Nokia 6680 pic­tured above, you can take pic­tures (1.3 mp … see exam­ple images), record video and sound, play mp3s, use a PDA, read an eBook, browse the inter­net, “blue­jack” (see Nokia Sen­sor), play games and more, thanks to exten­si­ble mem­ory, Sym­bian S60 soft­ware and open SDKs, all in a classy pro­fes­sional cas­ing (weighs in at 133g). 

Or, you can  switch to “offline mode” (or even take out the SIM card) and use the mul­ti­pur­pose device with­out net­work coverage.

Too bad it’s not a dual-mode 3G/wi-fi hand­set … but that would be ask­ing for too much (mobile VOIP, anyone?).

So, in most cases there’s no need to make that iPod / dig­i­tal cam­era / mobile phone trade­off anymore.

Nokia, let me count the ways …

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  • Great stuff, I'm with ya. Let's get operators to move beyond their "walled gardens" mentality, their high pricing for 3G packet communications charges and their lack of transparency in billing.

    DRM is another big hairy issue not easily dealt with.
  • Social currency is an arguement against the solitary mobility position. If the response to the question "What are you listening to?" is social currency, then an iPod isn't a solitary mobility experience. If an iPoder says, "hey! check out this song." and that's social currency, then how is an iPod solitary? The same is true for Dave's example.

    I do believe that network connectivity is important. What I don't know is which network will ultimately enable social media. Will it be 3G, Wi-Fi, Wi-Max, DVB-H, Media Flo or some combination of these? Probably a combination, but which one is more difficult to predict.

    There are complicating factors for mobiles and music like DRM, and cost of 3G OTA downloading or worse streaming. DRM prevents one from moving content between the devices owned or from doing so without being tracked by licenses. Streaming prevents one from having a copy for future playback at all. So, the intention of recent implementations of mobile music is to prevent social currency from being exchanged. And yes, that's a bad thing.

    http://www.mobilejones.com/archives/781/

    I agree with you and Rushkoff that social media is the target versus a pure content play. Hopefully, the operator's build out of the infrastructure for their doomed pure content plays will lead to reduced transaction costs for the social media between mobiles in the future.

    PS. Thanks for your comment at mobilejones.com
  • Both Mobile Jones and Dave Tilley have made lots of great comments, which I second. Indeed, that is the main point of my posting, where I argue that with the convergence of mp3 and mobile, you no longer have to make a cellphone / mp3 players tradeoff. Music is very important, no argument there.

    Music brings people together and it's telling that Dave's son communicates with him by sharing his music. The iTrip but also external speakers and just plugging your iPod into an amp makes this possible (dual headset jacks are also available).

    And yes, Mobile Jones, high-schoolers will probably have both an iPod and a cellphone in their pocket. Remember, I talk about usage context ... and that the device you choose to take with you (mp3 player, mobile phone, or both) depends on what you'll be doing after you walk out the door.

    Both Mobile Jones and Dave Tilley point to a specific type of usage which is about face to face socialization using the object (iPod) as the common interest, rather than socialization with someone at a distance through some kind of a wireless (voice, internet, bluetooth, etc.) connection.

    I would call this a difference between mobile sociality, explained in this post, and "social currency" (see Douglas Rushkoff at the now defunct The Feature). Social currency is about socializing by trading baseball cards ... or nowadays, swapping iPods.

    I'll post on usage of devices (iPod, mobiles and other) as "social currency" this week when I get a chance.
  • What catches my attention about Dave's comment is the different demographic that he points to instinctively. His son wouldn't be at Reboot. So the question might have very different results in a different demographic. What if that same question were put to a high school assembly or a group of college students?

    My bet is that they would have both devices in their pocket or napsnack. Not likely that one of those would be a high end smartphone, though. More likely the iPod would be in their ear and a small low profile feature phone would be in their pocket.

    Everyone remembers the music of their youth and continues to favor it through their life times. The iPod or any music conveyence is far more important to a teenager or young adult than to those older. Music is your voice before you've discovered your own. And it's a critical component of social interaction for younger people. It's the emotional glue that connects many firsts and events in our lives.

    There's also a discovery process taking place as a teenager and young adult when we're experimenting with identity and sociality. Many are learning what their favorite music is, making them more likely to ask, "what are you listenting to?" That is, an iPod would be more social for a 15 year old than a 30 year old. The iPod swapping Dave mentions is one example.
  • Totally agree about ipod vs cell phone. Just not that either is that social.

    Also, last night I noticed an ipod phenomenon. It generated a very interesting discussion on the music that each person had on their ipod. People are now swapping ipods for a week.

    Also the itrip is changeing the social. My son communicates with me by playing his itrip in the car. We end up expanding my listening to his music.

    I wonder if the exchange of ring tones will happen. My friend has a son who composes music purely for ring tones.

    This becomes like musical haiku.
  • Dave, thanks for your comment and post.

    There’s no fundamental disagreement and it’s certainly true that a cell phone can be an antisocial nuisance: while you're socializing with someone on the phone, you're effectively shutting out the people you are with. Indeed, it can be particularly disconcerting to see someone walking (or driving) while apparently talking to himself, when in fact they're using a small bluetooth headset. I believe there are even bluetooth earpieces and the ear implant may not be far away ;)

    Likewise, the iPod may be a "social object", for instance when used with external speakers or plugged into an amplifier. Also, with iPod photo, you are being social when you show images to your friends.

    Overall, though, the mobile phone's multiple ability to connect with others, through voice, text, bluetooth, infrared, internet (wap/3G), etc., makes it more of a "social machine", compared to an mp3 player, which arguably was designed for "solitary mobility".

    With bigger hard drives and embedded audio functionalities, new phone models may become an alternative to a standalone mp3 player and rumors have long circulated on whether Apple will enter the mobile handset game ...

    This comment is cross-posted from Dave's blog entry at
    http://thezone.blogs.com/root/2005/08/alex_de_carvalh.html
  • we agree on ipods but disagree on cell phones using voice. I tend to find people using their cellphones while out and about but not alone, as being anti-social to everybody else nearby.

    good article though. I have referenced it. Makes one think.
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