By Michael Castelluccio, Technology Editor

Strategic TechNotes, Strategic Finance magazine

September 16, 2003

http://www.imanet.org/ima/technotes/default.htm

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Warm Water Cure

September 16, Montvale, N.J.

Cell-phone technology has been taking a beating in the press lately. The biggest campaign, shored up with statistics from everywhere, blames the devices for highway accidents in cities, suburbs, and maybe even on country lanes. Then there was the published speculation about the possible connection of cell-phone radiation and brain tumors. And the editorial essayists rarely let us forget the contribution the device has made to a pandemic alienation in our age. Our machines have made it so easy for us to function apart from each other that day by day we are becoming less social. Or, at least, less able to relate to each other in nonelectronic ways. And then, to frost an already sagging cake, there was the story last week about a person who dropped his cell phone, and later, when he tried to make a call, it ignited and burned him. The Scandinavian manufacturer said it was the battery manufacturer’s fault.

Mix in the commentary from those who really don’t care where you are going this weekend, no matter how loudly you discuss it on your cell, and the need for public announcements at performances, lectures, and in church to turn off your ringers, and cell telephony seems to have become an accelerant for a ground fire of bad manners.

But then, at the end of last week, a small item titled “Floatation Phone Cuts Off the World” appeared in the Technology section of BBC News Online. The story was a small light in the long tunnel of bad news.

Connecting Back Up

The floatation phone in the story is one of 18 projects being developed at the Human Connectedness Research Group at Media Lab Europe (MLE). The group does its work in Dublin, Ireland, and is the research partner of the MIT Media Lab in Boston. The point of the group’s research is to improve human connectedness.

Complaints about the alienation of modern man actually began long ago in the last century with the Existential philosophers in the ’50s. Technology has only exacerbated the problem. TV keeps us indoors and generally uncommunicative, CDs replace live performances, much of human conversation ends up in hanging wires, and now in the air well above our heads; we e-mail, instant message, sit in front of computer screens all day, read PDAs on the train, and, as all our technologies pull the world tighter together, we get more remote from each other.

Luddites suggest that we just pull the plug, but it’s way too late for that. Consider what happened in the last blackout. When the lights finally came back on, there were the commentators on TV actually congratulating people for not razing their own cities. We’re really not comfortable without our technologies, and it’s pretty clear we don’t trust each other in the dark.

Media Lab Europe has a different solution. Instead of turning away from technology, connect it together better so the technology network resembles the much older model we’ve developed in our human networks (societies). In its mission statement, MLE posits four questions that have become goals:

1. How can we convey a sense of presence and togetherness over space and time?

2. How can we promote and support collaboration among different groups of people?

3. How can we share a sense of intimacy and closeness in new ways?

4. How can we enable new forms of cultural exchange? ( http://www.mle.ie/hc )

At first, it doesn’t sound like you could accomplish numbers one and three without first prying that little silver Nokia off the sides of people’s heads, but number four provides the key. The MLE explains, “[our] mission is to conceive of new genre of technologies that . . . allow us to build, maintain, and enhance relationships in new ways.” You realize that the group intends to find practical, hard-wired solutions when they explain a little later in the statement, “We aim to build a technological framework for applications in this domain, taking advantage of the infinite bandwidth and processing-rich environments of the future and the opportunity to extend these networked media environments into our physical and architectural surrounding.” The answer lies in more technology, not less.

The Iso-phone, for instance, works by adding a few layers of technology to telephony as it exists today. Its purpose is to remove all distractions of any kind, so the only thing going on is the conversation on the phone. It is a helmet that cuts out all other sound, sight, and the sense of smell. That leaves tactile distractions, which are eliminated as the three attached floatation extensions keep you afloat in a pool with your head above water. The water is near body temperature so you can’t feel where your body ends and the environment it’s in begins. There are only voices in a completely relaxed state, creating a social context for conversation that is unique.

The inventors, James Auger and Stefan Agamanolis, point out that public telephones were originally set up in enclosures (phone booths) that kept out exterior distractions. Now, cell phones are used out in the open where, the inventors explain, the device “decontextualizes conversation.” And, in the name of flexibility, more distractions are being added every day with PDA functions like calendars and To-do lists, e-mail, Internet connections, instant messaging, and so on. The Iso-phone exists at the very opposite end of the scale--just conversation. This is a key to many of the MLE’s experiments. As our everyday tech world gets more complicated and devices are burdened with additional functions, the MLE solutions reach for a simplified directness.

(The photo above is from the MLE projects pages at www.mle.ie/hc/projects/isophone .The site also has a demo movie in Quicktime. The first prototype of the Iso-phone was exhibited at a tech expo in Dublin in June of this year. The device will travel to e-culture fair 2 in Amsterdam and Experimenta Design in Portugal--both in October.)

Quality No-face Time

The people who have created the Iso-phone readily admit that it’s not very practical in its current form. Maybe you could take the helmet with you, but finding the warm-water pool might be more challenging. But the point was to “enable new forms of cultural exchange” that increase “a sense of intimacy and closeness in new ways.” Perhaps the Iso-phone will get some others thinking about fewer functions and closer contact.

At least with the Iso-phone you’re not going to run somebody over, get a really bad photo of yourself sent to some co-worker’s cousin, or raise eyebrows at a wedding service. You also probably won’t set your hair on fire--not in the pool.

Michael Castelluccio