Mapping your desires
2 06 2004Joris wrote an intriguing piece on the mobile operators racing to present experimental (location based) services in a behavioral context.
“Imagine walking around town, guided by a mobile phone. Imagine sending a dinner invitation to so.’s cellphone, to guide them to the exact location.” Michèle added an extra layer to that: “I would be interested in on-demand features, e.g. get the address and location info of resto/pub that is within my travel-range, and that is rated as excellent that evening by the people already sitting there, people with a resto-profile similar to mine. Or give me the address of a museum that is counting the highest or lowest number of people entering this morning (depending on whether or not I’m very sociable today).”
I don’t believe these services will take of the coming two years.
Why? Because “We are not our maps”; like Krystof Lenk put it on his speach at Interaction-Ivrea last week. Mr. Lenk is professor at RISD and founder of Dynamic Diagrams. He made a presentation on maps and the way they work: “Maps are representations. A map is an abstraction, just like our social network is an abstraction. Let us start using and understanding FOAF and how maps show our philosophy, conceptual models and thinking processes; but remember they are merely tools and not us. They are abstractions and before marketers move into this space, they should be well aware of every notion this entails or they might be shocked the maps lack any compass and thus value.
Just like in any previous development; the core wil happen on the Web; it’s way to early for transporting this conceptual thinking to mobile phones, GPS systems and other devices; people who have never heard of an online social network are mentally not ready to understand the use and value of FOAF.
And the question remains: how will mobile operators convince people actually paying for this? The example Michele gave exists (for free): add resto.be. with the GPS in your car and there you go.
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