January 13, 2004
A Pocketful of Junk... Let's take five with Moira Gunn. This is "Five Minutes."
When it comes to the size of consumer electronics, small is not always good. Case in point: I keep misplacing my digital camera. This may not seem particularly earthshaking except for the fact that it's almost always in my purse. And the same goes for my cell phone. It plays hide and seek in there and to add insult to injury, keeps chiming until I've upended everything.
You can imagine my reaction to Steve Jobs' announcement about the new iPod mini: they're the size of a half-inch thick business card. I'm tempted to buy one and just toss it in my purse - a ritual sacrifice to the gods, if you will.
It could nestle happily next to my PDA, my mobile flash memory stick, my business card holder, my wallet and my checkbook, which - come to think of it - I haven't used in public in several years.
Well, that's it - the checkbook goes, but I already know it's a hollow victory. There's no way its removal will pull the linchpin in my battle with digital debris.
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To tell you the truth, I feel bitten by a thousand electronic fleas, each of which are only asking for a little bit of space. I could go home to get away from it all, except Bill Gates has just announced Microsoft's new efforts to manage all the data in my home through my television set. He had no apparent qualms when he stated, "The home is going digital."
Sony is jumping in with its own complement of products, one of which is called the downright scary "location-free tv." What this all means is that everything we own is being connected to everything else, and the data will flow - video, music, email, the Internet, digital photography, you name it.
And anything that can be digitized, will be.
Since I've gone this far, I might as well admit to you that I've been tempted to take my laptop to McDonald's or a Starbucks, just so I can use the high-speed wireless network and do some serious downloading. But all of this is really about the same thing - and that is: mobility.
But lest we forget, there are many kinds of "mobile."
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Every human wants all his services, everywhere, all the time. Now I want to watch television wherever I go, but would I dream of taking my television set along every time I left the house?
"Mobile technology" may actually mean you're hauling around any number of pounds of equipment and/or an assortment of light-weight items that can jumble together and give you the services you want.
Yet with enough wireless bandwidth, online storage and generally simple technology, the truth is our data can be accessible at any time. Why not beam it up to an airplane? Why not pull a keyboard out of the seat pocket in front of you and use your personal screen to write the great American novel? When you check into your hotel room, just pick up where you left off without lugging along all your stuff.
There's a difference between consumer products being mobile, and humans being mobile. We won't have mobile computing until all the products can stay in the same place, until data can flow un-tethered to wherever these products are, and until we can move through life without a pocketful of junk.
I'm Moira Gunn. This is Five Minutes.
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