Wheres the map dad? Google it.

So what happened to good old maps? We mobilised ’em.

Gone are the days when we whip out the A-Z from under the seat in the car or somehow manage to manoeuvre a Michelin road map the size of Russia in the front seat of a Peugeot 206. Although my good ol Grandpa still has his maps handy, but i don’t know how he does it.

This is a prime example of how our life has been directly affected by mobile technology. Map reading and map drawing is a very complicated task and one which takes alot of time and skill, but it is being driven out of our society by digital maps and Sat Nav systems.

Ok, so there are good points to this, of course. I for one think the digital maps are excellent and provide an easy and simple way to navigate our way around which saves me alot of time on the phone to my girlfriend when she’s lost. However what does worry me is how disconnected it can make us feel from our surroundings. We have got ourselves to the point where you stop noticing the features and the landmarks around us and rely on the little blue dot. When our sense of direction becomes so diluted that following the dot or the triangle becomes our method of navigation, it spells worrying times.

What i feel we need to retain is that natural sense of knowing where your going. Knowing that you just ain’t going the right way and having that confidence and connection to things around you to know how to get yourself out of trouble. Whether that be by the stars, the sun, the earth’s magnetic field or simply taking a punt, then it’s still progress over that reliance on mobile technology to solve all of our problems.

Mobile Revolution

Motorola 4500x

So here we have it, this is where the mobile revolution began. The Motorola 4500x was released late 1980’s, had a terrible battery life and weighed a ton.  If you think of a mobile phone, does this form even cross your mind? If your gran gave you this next christmas, would u take it?

of course not. We all think of the Iphone, HTC, Samsung etc but it’s amazing to see where it all began and where our generation was first defined.

The way we live our lives these days is forever on the internet, forever on Facebook and Twitter but not so long ago people had to carry around these massive boxes just to own a mobile phone, but still, people stuck with it and people kept buying them and hence pushed us into the age of the mobile phone.

But how has this affected our connection with each other, and the world around us, in a physical sense? Have our people skills declined? have our communication skills diminished because of this? Hopefully i can answer these questions in future posts as i dig deeper into the world of mobile technology.

The number of mobile phone activations between 1990 and 2011 rose from from 12.4 million to 5.6 Billion. Personally i find that staggering, and with new products like the Ipad, Blackberry playbook, Smartphones etc this number is set to explode through the roof to the point where i believe every single person on the planet will own a mobile device. And i can see this happening in the very very near future.

Endless Resources

In a recent lecture from one Dr Federico Casalegno, i was enlightened to what exactly takes place in the research departments of Massachusetts Institute of Technology ( MIT ). The projects on show ranged from devices allowing us to interact with trade shows in a more convenient manner to a cloud made from 75km of fibre optics to an intelligent house that helps the inhabitant to engage with green living.

Now of course, the students, the lecturers and the majority, if not the entirety of the population of MIT consists of some brilliant minds who can innovate and explore the most obscure concepts and see the justification where others cannot. But my argument is simple, what if other schools and other institutions had the limitless funding and endless support from some of the worlds largest companies and corporations? If i make the comparison to my own course .. Product Design Engineering at GSA, and wonder how we’d perform i wonder if the money would corrupt us. Would it make us too reliant on the wealth of resources at our disposal rather than innovate with what we have, allowing the course to produce ingenious driven designers. I hope not, but this is all hypothetical.

I can’t help but make a comparison with another company. Apple. As most of my peers will point out, i like Apple products. Contrary to popular belief my favouritism to the company doesn’t come out of greed or need of a new shiny toy but my massive appreciation for the usability and the enjoyment i get from using the devices which i genuinely believe make my life that little easier and a little happier. More than these though, i love the thought and effort that goes into their products and the fact that someone in California has obsessed over every detail in order to bring about that happiness to my pocket or my desk. There is no excess, no massive ranges of unsold products ( Dell, HP, Acer ) no massive unnecessary choice range ( Samsung, LG, HTC, Nokia ) but simply a small offering of the most comfortable and most obsessed over detailed design on the market. I guess it’s easy to be in the sights when your at the top, but ask yourself this, what’s worse than a company charging ” over the top ” prices for some beautifully designed and manufactured products? a stockpile of unsold and obsolete machines that are serving no purpose, but simple being manufactured simply because the technology is available. I truly believe this to be correct, when you compare the ranges of Acer, there must be 15 – 20 diff models, but to satisfy who? do we really need that volume of choice?

In light of recent lectures and talks, i feel the Apple way to be more appropriate in terms of excess consumption, of which there is none. My point here is suppose is, if Apple didn’t have the unlimited resources generated by it’s sales, could it perform the way it does? Probably not.

If we look at this in comparison to MIT Mobile research lab ( http://mobile.mit.edu/ ) , who is making more of a difference? 35 million IPhone owners in last quarter alone, can’t be wrong. The ‘ anti-Apple ‘ dogmatists aren’t right. I think MIT could use a little PDE sprinkled in their life to bring about public behavioural change in the way they invision.

But if i have one point to make in all of this discussion, do i think the mobile lab at MIT will spend thousands exploring concepts which are pointless, yet one day make a discovery that will change the world?

Yes.