The speed of now
As I tweeted earlier, at 4am this morning I caught someone getting into my car in front of the house. I knocked on the window of our front room and he ran. I bet he was extremely surprised someone was awake.
I thought about taking a photo. But the camera phone I had on me — an iPhone — was no good in the dark and my good camera was upstairs and I didn’t have to the time to find it: I’d have missed the opportunity. Late last year, someone hit my car coming out of a sideroad. I reached for my iPhone to take a photo of the other car and its number plate, but by the time I was ready the car had driven off.
“Make the most of now” is Vodafone’s smart slogan for mobile. It hits the rationale for mobile perfectly: Doing virtually anything costs more using a mobile, from making calls to sending emails, but the immediacy of now makes that higher cost worthwhile.
The speed of now is equally important. Mobile devices need to be really quick to use to make them usable “in the moment.” Mobile phones have a tremendous speed advantage over virtually any other device as they are often already in someone’s hand. If not, they’re placed in an easily accessible pocket, rather than in a bag, or left behind at home.
Good enough speed is rarely enough in those tight moments. And, this is one of those rare situations where subjective speed isn’t sufficient.
It’s actual sheer utility that’s essential. Mobile phones need to be fast as well as feeling fast.
Nicely done ruining the miscreant’s day at the office.
The immediacy thing is a subject I’ve been thinking about more and more since I finally succumbed to iPhone lust about a month ago. Up to that point I’d carry my netbook (with 3G dongle) when I felt it was practical and not worry about electronic communication for the rest of the time. Now it’s all in my pocket my view seems to have changed dramatically and I seem to be far more obsessed with communication on the move.
For me, the killer app was Twitter. Being able to send smart-alec comments from book-related events struck me as a good way to let readers get a glimpse of things within the publishing world they won’t normally see. Adding Twitpic just nailed that for me absolutely.
The feedback from that has been interesting. Having a writer who knew both myself and the subject of a photo from with a Gollancz event ended up with me passing a message along, which was handled by less immediate means. A few more people have heard of a couple of writers because I’ve shown/mentioned them and that sense of connection seems to have become stronger because of the immediacy – it’s on the Web less than half a minute after it’s happened.
And that leads me to one last thought: it’s now illegal to photgraph the police, so what happens if (heaven forbid) you come across a Rodney King-like scenario? Take photos and your camera will almost certainly be taken from you and the images deleted. That’s a little harder if you’ve already uploaded them and they’re being re-tweeted even as the kit is taken from you. The whole citizen-journalism thing might have just taken an interesting new turn.
David Devereux
March 17, 2009 at 12:39 pm
Overnight a journalist quoted me from twitter in a piece for the Guardian. It’s a good tool for reaching people in the media or the Internet industry.
I just wish twitter was more reliable.
Latest type of fail is worse than the normal fail whale – some tweets appear to be vanishing. I just received an email note about a ‘direct’ but the tweet itself never made it to me. Over the last week, I’ve also spotted normal tweets I’ve made going MIA.
Ian Fogg
March 18, 2009 at 10:10 pm
I’ve had the same problem over the last week, and if it weren’t for the messages being included in the notification I’d have missed a couple of interesting references that were being pointed out to me.
Has the rise in profile and assimilation towards the mainstream started to bite the company’s resources, do you think?
David Devereux
March 18, 2009 at 10:28 pm
Twitter is notorious for instability. In the past, the most typical problem is for the whole service to fall over. Users see the fail whale page when they go to the twitter website.
Missing tweets, to my knowledge, is a fairly new thing.
Ian Fogg
March 18, 2009 at 10:36 pm