The Dean's Mobile Lifestyle: Challenges of Mobile | Hideyuki Tokuda (Dean, Graduate School of Media and Governance)
2006.06.22
In mid-June, I attended the "International Conference on Networked Sensor Systems 2007" with my students. In the final panel session, I discussed what Networked Sensing Systems would look like in 10 years. Mr. Muller from UC Berkeley discussed from the perspective of the MEMS field, Mr. Boda from Nokia from the perspective of a mobile phone company, and I discussed from the perspective of ubiquitous computing. Perhaps due to the personality of the coordinator, Mr. Langheinrich from ETH, it was less of a debate and more of a calm discussion where experts from each field spoke matter-of-factly. Still, I wonder why time seems to move so slowly at European universities, whether in Braunschweig or Cambridge.
Now, on to the topic of a mobile lifestyle.
According to a December 2006 survey by the Mobile Society Research Centers and Institutes , which I assist, the ownership rate of mobile phones is 18.3% for middle-grade elementary school students, 24.3% for upper-grade elementary school students, 50.0% for junior high school students, and 94.0% for high school students. In Japan, mobile phones have already had a major impact, similar to the internet, as a medium that significantly changes our lifestyles and work styles. However, compared to television and the internet, the status of mobile phones as a subject of media research is very low, and the current situation is that important issues such as their "impact on children" cannot be said to have been sufficiently discussed.
Meanwhile, it's not just mobile phones; improvements in transportation have dramatically increased the mobility of people and goods. In fact, the mobility of our work and task environments has also been dramatically enhanced by mobile technology.
For example, a piece of software called "Timbukutu Pro" that runs on my Mac is one of the earliest software applications to provide a remote desktop environment. It allows you to view the screen of your Mac in your office from any Mac or Windows PC connected to the internet and freely operate the mouse remotely. It is a mechanism that allows you to perform your work freely from anywhere on Earth. Recently, many PCs, including VNC ( Virtual Network Computing ), offer remote desktop functionality. Instead of us having to move to where the PC is, this method brings our work environment to wherever we have moved.
This is, so to speak, a reverse way of thinking, where you don't need to carry a PC around but rather move your office environment onto any terminal. When new infectious diseases or bomb threats become prevalent, people's mobility decreases significantly. Even in such cases, a major challenge is to what extent mobile computing and mobile communications can support people's lives.
This may be a bit of a digression, but Marshall McLuhan, famous for his media theory, says the following interesting thing in his book "Laws of Media": "All media have four properties: they 'enhance' something of ours, 'obsolesce' something, 'retrieve' something, and when pushed to their limits, they suddenly 'reverse' their character."
We need to think deeply about various mobile media as well.
(Date Published: 2006/06/22)