Dan Gillmor: Accessing a whole new world via multimedia phones

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

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ed on Sun, Dec. 08, 2002

Dan Gillmor: Accessing a whole new world via multimedia phones
By Dan Gillmor
Mercury News Technology Columnist

HONG KONG - It wasn't earthshaking news when NTT DoCoMo, Japan's largest
mobile communications company, announced in late November that it had sold
more than 3 million camera-equipped phones since introducing them in June.
Three million is a big number, but a smaller Japanese carrier, J-Phone, had
already sold more than 7 million.

Japan is a leader in a phenomenon that others have been slow to grasp. The
people who use multimedia phones are not passive consumers of
next-generation mobile services. They are extending the boundaries of mobile
communications.

The technology is still early in its development and only beginning to show
up in the United States. Phone cameras and screens have relatively low
resolution. Sending pictures from one phone to another, or from phones to
e-mail or Web sites, could be simpler and cheaper.

The relentless pace of development is removing such limitations.
New-generation networks and vastly improved phone handsets -- some of which
were on display here last week at a major telecommunications conference --
are creating a new kind of medium.

Yet at the International Telecommunications Union's Telecom Asia 2002
conference and exhibition, I heard relatively few people talking about what
customers could do for themselves with this gear. Ditto at a conference here
in mid-November on next-generation mobile services.

Oh, there was some discussion about how forward-looking companies will find
ways to use these kinds of technologies, just as they found value in
desk-bound PCs, laptops and networks. Once a competitive advantage is
obvious, others will race to copy it.

But what about you and me, the people way out at the edge of these emerging
networks? As far as we're concerned, the telecom companies and their
corporate partners seem to view tomorrow's multimedia mobile world as a 21st
century vehicle for content delivery, much like television, or an e-commerce
tool. If we can view videos on our phones, they reason, we'll watch what big
companies deliver. If retailers can tell us about items on sale as we pass
by their stores, we'll buy.

Sure, those will be some of the ways we'll use tomorrow's high-powered
phones and other handheld devices. But there are flawed assumptions in
aiming the industry in a big-company entertainment and marketing direction.

In fact, the main way we'll use these things will resemble the way people
have always used phones and, more recently outside the United States, text
messaging. It won't be about broadcasting for a profit, but rather about
staying in touch and getting things done.

That's not ``content'' in a Hollywood sense. But it's the most important
kind of content: what we create ourselves. That phone call you make to your
spouse or child or business partner is more valuable, by far, than anything
you see on television.

The rise of technology has changed old equations. Phones are one-to-one
devices. Broadcasting is one-to-many. The Internet and mobile devices are
both of those, and more. Add pictures to voice and text, and then take it on
the road, and you're moving into some fascinating territory.

You can get a glimmer of the possibilities beyond one-to-one communications
in Howard Rheingold's new book, ``Smart Mobs'' (www.smartmobs.com). He
explains what happens ``when computing and communications technologies
amplify human talents for organization.''

Mobile messaging has helped bring down governments, Rheingold notes.
Filipino activists used the technology to spark and organize demonstrations
that helped topple former President Joseph Estrada in 2001. And mobile
phones helped protesters flummox the police in the anti-globalization
campaign at the 1999 Seattle World Trade Organization meeting.

But it has also become a tool for everyday use. A quick text message
alerting people to a meeting location and time is simpler and more effective
than a series of calls. Add pictures, and the possibilities grow far beyond
the notion of mobile Web cams.

I can safely predict one area that will soon feel the impact of all this.
It's the field I know best, journalism.

Consider the more than 10 million camera-equipped mobile phones in Japan.
Some of their owners take snapshots and post them to Web pages.

Watch the next time a major news event, such as a bad earthquake, takes
place there. Before the big Japanese media organizations even have time to
scramble their photographers to the scene, the world will be able to view
the aftermath of the quake -- and, no doubt, videos of the quake as it
happened -- on a variety of Web sites.

Or consider the impact when camera-equipped phones capture a crime in
progress and shoot the result off to the nearest police station. (If it's a
case of police beating up, say, a human-rights demonstrator, the tables may
be well turned when the pictures end up on TV news and in the daily papers.)

There's always a downside to technological developments, and this is no
exception. We're heading into a creepy era when it may be safest to assume
that we're always being photographed or videotaped in public places.

World affairs and cautions aside, the camera-phone genre has already made
its way onto weblogs, the online journals that have become so popular in the
last few months. Several sites invite people to contribute what they're
seeing and capturing digitally, with mixed artistic results.

A version of this is available in the United States, where mobile phone
networks and handsets are grossly inferior to those in western Europe and
eastern Asia. Danger's hiptop handheld (www.danger.com) has generated a
community, HipTop Nation (http://hiptop.bedope.com/), a fascinating
experiment with wireless weblogs.

Where is all this ultimately heading? Ask a teenager. She'll be first to
figure it out.
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Dan Gillmor's column appears each Sunday, Wednesday and Saturday. Visit
Dan's online column, eJournal (www.siliconvalley.com /dangillmor). E-mail
dgillmor () sjmercury com; phone (408) 920-5016; fax (408) 920-5917. 

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