Tag: Smartphone

Lonely crowd

Back in the 60’s , David Riesman already concluded that “the more might not be the merrier”.

Social network researchers have come up with diverse conclusions about Facebook and Internet use.

Passive vs active participation makes a difference whether we are happier or less happy when using social media.

We have yet fully exploited this new social platform (democratized, groundswell stuff).

Social media and digital content not only have width (geographically), but also depth (time irrelevant).

THIS PLATFORM FOR THE FIRST TIME IN HUMAN HISTORY, ALLOWS US TO MAKE KNOWN OUR EXISTENCE ACROSS TIME AND SPACE.

Right now, these platforms are monetized, politicized and socialized.

But in time, they will also be memorialized and multiplied.

People of all races, creeds and generations can access and translate someone’s blogs and tweets into their languages,

and to understand what made someone react and respond at a particular time in history.

In other words, open platform.

Yes, if we passively participate (just browsing) in social network, we might feel lonelier. And vice versa.

Riesman’s Lonely Crowd again, even with Smart Phone and Wi-Fi (wireless on the beach).

Social Network is not a utility (Application layer, not Physical Layer). It allows each of us to create and share content i.e. collective cognition, not dumbing down.

Sort of what I am doing and have experimented with Liking, Blogging and Commenting (hopefully filming and video someday).

My Warhol‘s “15 minutes of fame”.

Neither Warhol nor Orwell could have predicted the rise of the Internet. Or else, they wouldn’t have staked their claims on

limited fame or state control, respectively.

Turns out that Riesman has been ahead of his time: we are social animal subjected to existential loneliness, a fate from which we can not escape with or without Facebook.

 

Projecting your “Likes”

I once met a man who got a big screen TV.  It was oversized given the small dimension of his living room.

Since nearing retirement, he must have figured that it was worth the investment.

He would be projecting himself onto that screen a lot, so might as well “live” large.

A recent study about Facebook‘s Likes shows that on average we like 68 things.

It made up an average viewer’s profile. http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/story/2013/03/11/technology-facebook-likes.html

With a meaningful connection of 120 (Tipping Point), we can multiply to figure out our universe of Likes not to mention friends of friends.

We like something/someone because we project ourselves onto it/him/her, see ourselves in the situation, or find that which resonates and strikes the chords (99% gene pool we inherited and the rest were acquired at an early age).

Our neurons respond uniquely.

Big screen or small screen, we project ourselves onto them (turn off your lap top and you will see yourself reflecting on the screen).

Neil Postman studied the effect of television viewing. He concluded that the sheer amount of viewing itself was the problem.

His study (Amusing ourselves to death) was conducted before the coming of smart phone and mobile gaming.

When Apple radio and Google glasses get wide adoption, we will live in a more individualized society (each man to himself and his screen). It would render office cubicles relics of the past.

For now, at least, we can still strike a conversation even when the big screen is on across the room (or the I-pad on the dinner table).

When the screen is in front of the man (Google glasses), it would be like trying to talk to someone who “thinks different” with his or her Ipod on.

Hello!

I fear the man I met with the big screen will someday find his super-sized TV quite antiquated, and that he would have a hard time getting rid of it. First it’s he who dies with the biggest toy wins. Then, it’s less is more. Can’t they think of some other variables to play with in product design? We the adopters and consumers of technology and gadgetry will always be both victors and victims. In that vein, if you owned a boom box now, just hang on to it, and wait it out. It might turn valuable antique one day if not already.

Screen and Self

Long ago, we lived in the oral culture. Orators would speak for hours on end.

Now we communicate in short bursts and sound bites (injected with acronyms, see OPP blog).

In between, we had enjoyed the print culture, the Morse code, radio, film and TV , before we got to the Internet with  SMS,  touch-screen and voice-activation.

I was having a conversation today without an awareness that it’s an analog-digital-analog conversion and transmission.

That context is unchanged. The mode of communication has.

I looked at the screen, first to decide whether I should take the call, and what would be my response.

Over the years, adults in our families have served as mirrors and screens.

They told us when our behaviors were proper and when they were not.

Now, we interact more with the screen (let’s say, online education and gaming).

The intelligence in the software sets the standard for what is right and wrong answer.

So, slowly, we build our trust for the screen, our newest and highest authority “It says here in the computer that you owe us xxx amount of dollars”.

Our kids play with imaginary “friends” while we share our “Like” online.

I have mentioned “Being There” in my previous blogs.

It has gotten worse since Peter Sellers and Shirley MacLaine laughed about “in TV we  trust”.

Many states have prohibited text-while-you-drive.

I don’t know how they are going to enforce it, because by the time the tweet was sent, it’s already done with. It will be hard to “gotcha!”.

One thing is for sure. We, as adaptive creatures, have learned to be more tactile, thumbing our texts and chewing gum at the same time.

All along, the screen and the self have interacted like dance partners, each anticipating the other’s moves (on YouTube, we found a video showing a toddler toying with an Ipad; might as well start them early).

In fact, with self-improved algorithms, Search and other apps learn to guess our very intention.

Everything is in the name of utmost efficiency. Make your point.

No winding hour-long speech: ” Men of Rome! Shall we stand and fight? Yes or No”. Between the TV’s, the smart phones , the tablets and yet-to-be-invented devices, we have it all covered, from cradle to the grave; a life long state of  “being-there” i.e. communion between screen and self. In our age, the latest is the greatest: touch screen eliminates the mouse, voice activation eliminates the touch screen, so on and so forth. I read in the WSJ  today that smart phones are telling jokes “2 I-phones walk into a bar…..” In short, the screen first informs, then tries to educate and entertain, all in one fell swoop. No wonder spouses are jealous of the screen, for the obvious reason: it’s the attention economy, and Spouse/Self  is fighting a losing battle against Screen.

Perpetual obsolescence

After Moore’s Law came Android’s Law (open-source software allows for faster deploy of smart phone apps – between six to nine months).

http://finance.yahoo.com/family-home/article/111990/your-new-smartphone-is-already-a-dinosaur

Smart phone turns dumb phone pretty quick.

(conversely, studies showed a steady rise of IQ as digital natives  spent more time playing games).

I call this “smart and smarter” generation.

We are inundated with more information in one year than the entire life of a Medieval person. (During the Reformation, Luther even had the time to nail 95 theses on the Church’s door. If it were now, all he has to do is “wikileak” it).

A MIT scientist even proposed a not-so-smart computer so it can process information faster (just guesstimate and not calculate).

If and when that comes about, we will have a perpetual Beta of both soft and hardware much like when VoIP was first experimented (we had to fill in the auditory “gaps”, since multiplexing wasn’t yet perfected – remember Skype in its early days?).

Back to Android. Ship it (beta) and send updates later.

When software completely resided in the cloud, smart phones will turn “dumb” (virtualized). Hardware is now playing catch-up with software.

It’s not the hardware. It’s SaaS . Think it and we will build it. Say it and we will ship it (Amazon).

Amazon will stream video to your screen any time, anywhere. It took a few pages from business books it has shipped over the years; titles such as “Customer For Life”. Amazon and the likes are in a race on NASDAQ chart at NASCAR speed.

Super shoppers

Super computing power arms super shoppers on Super Saturday w/ price updates.

Retail outfits such as Best Buy might have to be renamed the age of Dollar Stores.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704694004576019691769574496.html?mod=WSJ_Tech_RightMostPopular

Tri Tang of Orange County was holding up his Smart Phone to do some comparison shopping in real-time. Faster chip speed (compressing more data into less space),  improved supply chain and lean manufacturing from world’s Super Factory in our post-recession era gave birth to Super Shoppers.

I went out to buy a car yesterday (I did my part). As a consumer, I found old media (classified ads for loss leaders and radio commercials) irrelevant. With Autocheck, Autotrader, Carfax and Carmax (super store), shoppers are now more informed than the sales person whose answer is “let me check and call you back”.

Super shoppers ask questions not to seek information. They ask for a confirmed response. Stores and “associates” will have to do some acrobatic like Cirque du Soleil‘s to survive.

Super shopping pits not only brick-and-mortar stores against each other (Target vs Wal-Mart), channel vs direct (Apple stores vs Apple web site) but also online vs online (Amazon vs Overstock.com).

No wonder Best Buy is under pricing pressure, which not long ago, took down Circuit City.

Female super shoppers, a majority of whom are now heads of household, shop for electronics and cars (once alpha males’ domain). Stores like Carmax milk these customers’ life time value by improving “impressive first impressions” and rely on economy of scale.

Disney staying power testifies to shopper’s early imprints. Randy in the Last Lecture referred to his childhood visit to Disney World in one of his chapters.

Super shoppers not only shop for price but also for convenience, quality and a positive shopping experience. The only thing left to worry about is “how to lug around an Ipad”. Tri Tang in our story didn’t carry an Ipad. He wielded around his smart phone inside the store, locating signal strength, looking for the best deal.

Truth in advertising has been around for a while. But the mechanism to enforce it has just arrived in the hand of the Super Shopper near you.

 

A girl walks into a bar…

We all need a “third place” (neither home nor office) to let our hair down.

It used to be Cheers-like place “where everybody knows your name“.

And lately, it’s been Starbucks, which struck a yuppie nerve (male and female).

With the lingering recession, I suspect that jokes will have to start with “a girl walks into a Starbucks…” or

“a Mr Mom walks into a MacDonald…”

for both men and women share equal stress load during hard times. Except that women are more prone to explore

and share with one another their feelings, much more than men. I noticed a string of suicide by men, taking with them

their families, children included. The American dream had turned nightmare for some. We were more confident

to overspend money which was not ours than we do this side of “green sprouts” with money which is ours.  There lies the paradox:

economic activities are powered by collective trust and confidence, and slow down in their absence.

I saw the Verizon‘s CEO interview on Charlie Rose last night. He came across  astute and ambassadorial: “it’s getting back to the quality of the network”…(can you hear me now?).  I came away with higher appreciation for the smart phone category. And I couldn’t help agree more with Charlie’s last word ” wonder if the US will put more emphasis on tech adoption as some other countries did , so its citizens can take advantage of the network effect“.

We will learn to communicate in ways we have yet known how (from the early days of gossip news at the boat docks, and in the bars, to today’s instant tweet). I told you, we all need a third place, the place where everybody knows your name, where they can see what you are up to and maybe, share a laugh: “a girl walks into a bar, she demands to buy that TV behind the bar. Bartender replies, “No, can’t sell”. She asks “why not” Then the next day, same thing, except this time, she brings cash, lots of them. “I still want to buy that TV there behind the bar” Mam, can’t sell it to you. Why not? Well, for one, it’s not a TV. It’s a microwave.”