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Mobile as Remote Control of Life
Tuesday, October 2, 2007
Imagine if you could control the weather with your mobile phone: press the ’sun’ key for instant sunshine, the ‘rain’ key for some relief. Ok, that might be far-fetched, but there is so much that could be controlled and organised from your mobile.
The time is coming when such control will not be just a dream, but a practical and desirable reality. The mobile device should and will increasingly serve as the remote control to our real and virtual lives. The objective is simplification. The vision and aim is an ‘integrated life’. The mobile is the only device capable of this.
The time is coming when such control will not be just a dream, but a practical and desirable reality. The mobile device should and will increasingly serve as the remote control to our real and virtual lives. The objective is simplification. The vision and aim is an ‘integrated life’. The mobile is the only device capable of this.
Why the Mobile?
Compare the mobile and the PC: the mobile is available ‘24/7’ and is always connected to the network; the PC is on for a few hours a day. The mobile sits in your pocket; the PC needs a table and even a laptop needs to be removed from bag. There are c. 2 billion mobile users in the world, compared to c. 1 billion PC users. Mobile devices can be effective remote controls, PCs can’t.
Real Life Remote Control
The remote control concept already exists. We organise our family, friends and acquaintances using the mobile. In the UK, BSkyB allows you to programme your digital TV to record via SMS. But how can we expand upon this?
Music, films, photos and other media are increasing stored on a network or streamed to us. Accessing all such files from the mobile and instructing the server where to play them eg. ‘home TV, ‘Dad mobile’, ‘John laptop’ simplifies our current mess of passwords, accounts, devices and remote controls. The mobile can do this. It is networked. It can compute.
Virtual Life Remote Control
It isn’t just the real world where a single networked remote control would be useful. Our virtual selves are currently abandoned for the 15 hours a day we are not online via a PC. While nobody needs to update their ‘Linked-in’ profile at 3am, some may wish to receive notifications for ‘Second Life’ or ‘MySpace’. The mobile is the obvious central point for all online communities and virtual worlds; it’s always on and it’s always with us.
To some extent, the mobile is already the ‘digital me’. It is personalised in form and increasingly in function. It is always with you. The mobile can become the ‘super avatar’; not just the controller of all your different virtual identities, but the controller of a single, cross border, cross platform virtual identity.
Virtual Treaties
Fulfilment of this dream requires a ‘treaty’ between the competing virtual worlds. Without open standards there will be no benefits and therefore the commercial benefits for those who take the leap and succeed. Simplification is the goal, but simplicity takes a lot of work.
The sweet spot will be occupied by whoever can put digital control into the customer’s hands. Control of both our real and virtual lives from a mobile transforms the device into a ‘life management centre’.
There are many obstacles to the realisation of these aims. The most serious of these is the need to think mobile. Until now, mobile services have sought to emulate the PC. To progress, we must think about what the mobile can connect and integrate. The mobile is not the richest platform, but it is the omnipresent platform.
Integrated Life Management Centre
This vision will not be realised in one step. However, adopting these ideas as core principles will lead the evolution of the mobile as an integrated life management centre. The necessary industry cooperation cannot be forced, but it will come. A”er all, think about what Sony could achieve in the near future across Mobile, PC, Visual, Audio, and Gaming platforms and with its music, film and game content.
Welcome to the Integrated Future.
testataas tätä
really a nice one keep researching