Nokia Charger

Your best friend comes over to meet you after a long time, and before anything else he asks you, “Hi! Tere paas Nokia ka charger hai (Do you have a Nokia charger?).”

You get a call from your friend and before asking, “How are you?” he asks, “Where are you?”

On one side I am intrigued by the changing nature of our pleasantries and on the other I am surprised by our growing and insatiable desire to keep in touch with people. Even if it effectively means ‘sacrificing our presence’ at a place (and this sacrifice is not necessarily for ‘work’).
Someone has rightly mentioned, “being always accessible, makes us inaccessible”.
In times of Continuous Partial Attention (CPA) in place of being committed to people or places ‘we are committed only to being communicated with’.

There are people who are self-confessed net addicts wedded to their web mail account. They keep checking their mails throughout the day, even when nothing urgent is happening; they are in a constant state of ‘updation’!
As Steven Johnson has rightly pointed out - Aimlessness is the price we pay for interactivity. This is what seems to be happening with the click-happy young folk.

‘Continuous mediation by mail’ or any form of communication, including mobile phone, also interrupts flow of thought. As people connect more, they tend to behave more like ‘nodes’. These nodes ‘expect inputs and can interact’ but are not much of a ‘hub’ that ‘generates output’.

Contrary to common perception that communication expands social circle, our people preferences are actually getting solidified into sharply defined groups and many of us are beginning to be less inclusive than ever.
No doubt there are virtual communities, that are giving an entirely new meaning to socialization in cyberspace, but for people who are not seeking to connect with strangers on the net– hi fidelity has brought about privacy of highest order and ended up defining interest groups much more sharply than ever before.
It is only ‘wonderers’, who seem to be drifting in the open cyberspace. These ‘wonderers’ are wanting to align with some group or individual and many a times end up extending their communities in real world into the cyber space. So they end up scrapping the same set of people that they are anyway writing and forwarding e-mails to and keep exchanging texts with. I am sure you’d have been accosted at least once by someone you meet everyday, with something like, “Hi, how are you? Did you read my scarp?”

‘Scrap’ is one more thing that has gotten attached to an already over-bloated list of things that a user needs to keep checking (Email – personal & official, mobile text, voice mail, home mail box, missed call list and so on and so forth).
With so much communication happening, so much more to be said and so many mail and message boxes to be checked, can you really blame your friend for asking for a Nokia charger? ; )

Convergence 0; Bivergence 1

I have been hearing about Convergence since I was in my post-graduate programme. It has been over five years now but where is it?
I am yet to come across any product that does it all. Many of us still say that there would be that one device that would do everything and it’s only a matter of time before it is made available & affordable.
I want to believe it. But till such time that convergence becomes a reality, Bivergence seems to be ruling. Bivergence is about a personal communication device or technology with two key driving features.
Most of the products that are available today are live examples of this. Most of these devices are best suited for doing one or at best two things. Look at i Pod (Music & or Movies, but still mainly entertainment), The new series of phones from Nokia boast of a twin feature - Mobile connectivity & Music which effectively communication & entertainment, Sony Ericsson with Cybershot is a Mobile phone with a Camera but it still continues to be predominantly a communication device. Even Blackberry - the iconic mobile business backbone - is fundamentally a mobile phone with arguably the best emailing application (connectivity).
Step away from mobile handheld devices & we see that IP TV continues to be micro niche and DTH platform persists to be predominantly a Television service.
Despite all the future gazing about convergence, we are still living with products that are at best a duet of two kinds of applications. One of these applications is primary and the other only an additional feature.

What is still not very clear is are we only a product away from convergence or would we have to wait longer for a mindset change that would help us accept a more ‘universal’ convergence product better and thus give marketers reason enough to introduce that one ‘device’.

Just the beginning buzz

Steve Jobs will deliver his annual keynote today in Macworld Conference at SF. The new Apple website already has a teaser in place, "The first 30 years were just the beginning. Welcome to 2007."

The rumor buzz has been in high gear and like all Apple enthusiasts, I'm waiting Apple's next move. Is it the new iPhone, an iPod which is thoroughly optiimized for video playback, new Macs, new software???

In a typical Apple fashion, they are keeping their mouths shut, allowing the buzz to gain momentum. Keep your eyes open guys, Apple surely has something up its sleeves. Meanwhile watch this new iPod Shuffle ad. Keep waiting and enjoy.

Back-end

The proliferation of media has ensured that almost nothing can be away from the public eye. So Nike is not just what it advertises on TV or sells in its stores, Nike also is what happens in its factories.
Political parties are not just manifestoes and speeches but also embarrassments on spy cameras and revelations from tapped phone lines.
Brands are getting born (and killed) premature as the assembly line comes in the spotlight.
Network technologies like the one that is helping you read this text right now has ensured that people are able to know much more about companies than what companies are prepared for. It is not surprising that today on the Internet before you are even a product (solution), you already are a brand (image/perceived solution).
The power of collective thinking and personal broadcasting has democratized everything.

Corporate thus need to do be a little (if not a lot) flexible. They need to accept the transfer of control to the consumers or at least accept them as a co-driver.
There are a lot of intelligent, constructive and enthusiastic people outside corporates and one of the first things that companies can do is to use the collective ‘wisdom’ and ‘influence’ of these folk for mutual interest.
Things like using people to test products in real life (not labs) - I call it ‘Podcasting the beta’ - are not ideas but imperatives in the future of business.

The future would witness the word secret acquiring an entirely new meaning and we would read about concepts like back-end in books to do with the historical evolution of technology & society.