Koz and Effect

Is this the Droid you are looking for?

I’ve been on a bit of a social media kick as of late, starting up a Twitter account and launching a new website. I place a lot of blame for that on my smartphone. Having slowly gotten hooked on the concept of mobile e-mail by my work Blackberry (gateway drug?) I planned on getting a Storm2 soon after it’s release. Reviews for the device were mediocre, but many were glowing in praise for Motorola’s Droid, the Google Android powered device also being offered on Verizon’s network.

“Why didn’t you jump on the iPhone?” you ask. Variety of reasons. For one, I’m not a big early adopter of personal electronics and social apps. Not sure why. My PCs are cutting edge, but I didn’t get an iPod till the 4th generation. The Droid represented my first foray into smartphones (aside from my work blackberry, and that was slow in coming.) In some cases it’s a lack of device maturity, in others, I fail to get taken in by the hype. It’s probably a personality issue; the more everyone jumps on something, the more unlikely I am to do so myself, an irrational thought that what’s suddenly good for everyone is, for that reason, not good enough for me or something. But I usually come around eventually, and that has it’s own rewards, in that I’m usually introduced to a more polished product.

So life has been different with a smartphone in my pocket. And with it has been the desire to use more and more of the “web 2.0″ everyone talked about so much, because now it suddenly makes sense. It’s far from a phone in your pocket, it’s a computer in your pocket, and with the cellular network, it’s having the world with you at all times.

I can share trivial things, quickly and with little interruption. “I saw this, and it’s cool.” Is it important? Probably not. But quick text and “status” updating apps such as Facebook and Twitter have made it easy to share the odds and ends we run into every day. The key to this though is not only the ability to share these things quickly and with little effort, but to read and absorb them with little effort as well. I think this last point is the more important of the two, and it finally clicked to me the other day that this is the reason Twitter is so popular. I can get very brief, simple updates from many people, and it all but takes a few seconds. This seemlessness is what makes is so much more convenient and appealing over a direct e-mail or phone call.

The result of this also is that we can rack up social points and time with people without having to establish a dedicated conversation over the phone or so, which isn’t always convenient. And it enables interaction with many people at once, instead of overly focusing on one.

That’s not to say that face-to-face time has suddenly fallen by the wayside. But for the times when you want to have trivial conversations with someone throughout the day, it’s a welcome development.

The information at one’s fingertips astounds me. I get traffic info on my phone. My fiancee e-mails me grocery lists. I have my full calendar with me in my pocket, which syncs to the cloud, and to my friend’s calendars as well if I wish them to. (Which is awesome when you’re planning for a group.) Ask a question, and I can wiki it on the spot.

On the techie side of things, the fact that 3G and cellular networks in general are becoming more and more like a general internet service is evident in it’s networking capabilities. I can tether a computer network to my phone, forward all of the traffic over an SSH tunnel to a proxy server at home, or any other number of things. (The ability to do this and establish a Remote Desktop connection on my phone still awes me.)

Of course, many of these things are not unique to the Droid. iPhone will do it, Windows 7 Mobile will do it, other Android devices will do it, as will Palm. Pick your poision. Eventually though, just as we saw with camera phones and color screens, we’ll all have one of these.  I do find that rather cool.

There are of course, changes and consequences of any great technological change. Here’s a few I can think of just off the top of my head:

• The current regulatory climate is ill-prepared for these sorts of services. Cable networks, phone networks, cellular, and internet, are all regulated differently. But these services all ceased to be different a long time ago. All of these networks all run on Internet Protocol now, and all of them deliver some if not all of the services the other provides. The only differing mechanism is the physical medium easy service uses. Rules need to be drawn up for “Information Services” (since that’s what all of these are) and placed under that framework.

• Some commentators have been warning of security issues on the phone in the past. If they were early then, they arn’t now. This is a full-blown computer in your pocket, and has all of the same attack surface as your PC at home. As these are becoming more ubiquitous (and they are), this will become more and more of an issue. Smartphones, (which again, are really pocket computers) are not thought of as devices in the same class as a desktop or laptop. This will need to change quickly.

• Many privacy issues exist. I’m not necessarily talking about wiretapping. One of the key differences between your smartphone and your PC is that you control your PC. You have physical access to it, you can build your own, wipe it, load your own software, etc. It is your device, and so long as it understands Internet Protocol, you are free to control it as you wish. This is not true of your phone. With the exception of the few handful out there hacking apart Android, your phone company controls your handset. It’s features and functionality are ultimately delegated to you by your service provider. We’ve seen the dangers of network operators who abuse this control. It will need to be something that’s carefully looked at. Google’s Nexus One concept is promising in that it removes the provider from the handset, but it is by no means a total cure.

• We’ve seen these people: Persons talking on the phone in their car. Persons furiously typing away at their Blackberries in a meeting, elevator, or even while you’re talking to them. Extraordinary convenience creates extraordinary temptation to “check” on things every few minutes. I’m totally guilty of this. This is not a technological problem, but a human one. Self control. The recipient of a phone call or e-mail does not demand automatic response. People cannot expect an immediate response from you where you provide no expectation of one. This is an option I think people don’t exercise often enough.

That’s enough out of me for now. Do you have a smart phone? What do you use it for? What are you hoping to use it for? If you’re pressuring friends to get one (like I am. =) what are you hoping they’ll use it for? Post below!