Vision of a Wireless Future • S.Symons \

by Steve Symons

I mean really, who wants to watch television programmes on a small handheld screen, anywhere, anytime? A group or about 400 in Oxford (UK) apparently do http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4620792.stm. It seems that 36 percent of the study preferred to use the mobile TV service at home (as opposed to 23 percent at work and 28 percent on the move). It is hard to judge much from this study, we do not know the ages or background of the group, but guessing at a young/student population then the 36 percent is probably not that surprising. For me there is a question inherent in this study, “Are we becoming a more disjointed/fractured society where personal demands and needs rule over that of the groups?” However, I do hope to be among the first to suggest that whatever the world’s woes are, the fact that a set of the population stop receiving their soap opera fix in a communal space is neither here nor there.

So what really has changed? They will still be bombarded by the same media content. I have faith that our social urges (if only reproductive) will encourage some form of connection between the personal and external world. Additionally there is ample evidence from the growth of the internet that a device capable of a range of communicative/sharing activities will be put to a wide range of uses, both socially profitable and not. What is key here is potential - what else can the mobile television phones of the study enable? Or will we only be able to buy into particular services from particular online stores?

As to my personal vision of a wireless future? To be honest ubiquitous (and I mean Everywhere, Affordable and Open) access will have to be in part wireless technologically; but if we are tied up by contracts, proprietary systems and financial/political gain rather than social profit then it isn’t much of a future.