Our Man Inside

For me a community is not tied to a geographical area. It’s more an area of common life. I live across a number of communities.  Family, friends, work, and a number of geeky tech loving groups who exist both on the web and in physical space.

Some hold a fellowship of solidarity and trust. Others merely contain a group of peope who share a common interest. Either way these communities are really important to me.

Anthony P. Cohen argues that communities are best approached as ‘communities of meaning’. In other words, ‘”community” plays a crucial symbolic role in generating people’s sense of belonging’.

I feel it’s this sense of belonging that’s missing from areas in society. And without this we are unable to build a feeling of self, of individuality.

Whether we like it or not capitalism permeates everything we do. Creativity is often styfled as production is privately owned and operated for profit. We are too far down that road to do anything about it. Still, there is no reason why we can’t create communities freely sharing our own thoughts, dreams and aspirations. A shield or filter as an antidote to the bombardment we are subjected to as the advertisers tell us how they think we should live.

The problem is, that most community spaces now cropping up have little to do with freedom of expression. They are controlled environments where the participants are leeched of all shared knowledge, where their interactions and connections are studied at a minute level.

If I arranged to meet with friends on my village green only to find that our every move was monitored and recorded, conversations archived and our home addresses logged.. I’d most certainly go and find somewhere a little more relaxed to chat. If in addition to this we were bombarded with suggestions of what someone thought we should spend our hard earned cash on… I’d probably leave never to return.

That is if there was somewhere to leave to.

We forget that Facebook and Google are advertising companies providing a communication infrastructure. Google plus is not a social network. We are the ones being sociable in the networks. It’s easy to forget this and our amnesia suits them just fine.

I’m aware of this. But only sometimes. It’s far too easy to get sucked in because that’s where my ‘friends’ are.

My networks exists cross platform. But for how much longer?

I won’t go into my gripes with Google+ following in the footsteps of Facebook and dictating how we should be conversing and what we should call ourselves. Making out they are doing us a favour by giving us four days grace to ‘fix’ our accounts should we rather use our nicknames in our posts. There are more than enough people making a noise around this to show it’s Google who are in fact broken.

I am now formulating a backup plan. An escape route. A quiet place where I can chat with friends in as close as I can find to privacy. Whatever that is.

This will probably sound terribly extreme to someone just floating along quite happily. I’d just like more options. I’m bored of the taste of ready meals and fancy something wholesome. Besides, I back up my data, why not back up my communication channels.

I’m not looking to create a secret society. I’m looking for an open system. Not owned or exclusive but shared worldwide. Perhaps a version of Status.net that in an emergency could work even if the internet is turned off. Yes you heard me. Perhaps a mesh-networked bluetooth affair or something using the D-star transmitters dotted around the world. There are options. It just has to be imagined.

And with this I’d like improved email to match.

I feel if i really want to regain control over the way I communicate online I need to ditch GMail. I’ll go for something with encryption. Something that gives me a red page when I am writing to someone not using encryption. It’s not because I have secrets. It’s because not everything I say in a personal email is for sale.

Decentralised, secure, mobile, social… What would you want?

I’m guessing what I want doesn’t exist yet. If not we should make it.

Who’s in?

The dust has just about settled after the Vodafone 360 launch and after having no clue at all as to what I was going to see, I now have much more of an idea and am genuinely excited about what is in the pipeline for mobile users.
I’ve never really subscribed to the platforms spawned by the mobile giants, either from the carriers or the handset makers. I made a point of avoiding Vodafone Live as when I was ready for mobile web I wanted it to be on my terms. I didn’t want to be spoon fed sport and weather on a naff mobile browser. Wap or no Wap.

Then there was Nokia’s Ovi.. Well, being a Mac user there seemed little point.

Vodafone 360 may well change the way we look at mobile forever. (Or at least the foreseeable future). If you ever dabbled in ZYB you will have a rough idea of what’s in store.

I guess cloud mobile hints towards it too but this is way more than what you get with your dot mac account.

This is not just syncing this is a suite of internet services morphing your contacts, status updates and messaging all in ‘the cloud’. This will integrate all your social networks with your address book and provide a two way editable pipeline between you and your contacts.

The flexibility and configuration options are mind boggling and I haven’t even gone into the realtime location integration.

Of course there will be some people (normally me) screaming “What about our privacy?!” From what I could see this has been taken way more seriously than any other platform developer has bothered in the past. After a few wines were had this conversation on audioboo ended up on Kathryn Corrick’s blog and Terence Eden‘s comment on the bottom explains things better than I could.

I thought I was getting close to a cloud mobile experience with my Apple devices and some of the apps I use. But Apple is as Apple does and I’m fed up with the controls and restraints Apple put in place to guarantee ever increasing profits while it’s users are drip fed new tech. Always wanting and waiting for Apple to do the right thing. Jobs acting like a Wizard of Oz over his minions.

Vodafone is a massive faceless behemoth yes, but I’m thinking with this move so much is going to decide on the community making it happen. From macro to microcosm. From the coding community building the apps to the cross platform communities meeting in their hand held device.

360 is meant to work on all devices with all carriers. Obviously Vodafone are going to make sure they have the most suitable devices on offer and having got my hands on the Samsung H1 running the LiMo Platform, It’s feels like really decent handset.

Sturdy, well styled and feature packed. The camera really impressed me as did the fact that this wasn’t another phone trying to win the megapixel stakes. It’s not the number of pixels in a camera it’s how they are used and on a WVGA AMLED display it’s easy to see the quality of your image.

On first impressions low light images looked better than some of the compact cameras I use and the 720p video quality seemed good enough for me to leave my other devices at home.

The touch screen interface felt a little sluggish compared to the iPhone but I was assured this is still really early days and the interface with be honed and refined as the weeks go by.

With the €1,000,000 prize fund in place for coders to collect should they create new and innovative apps I feel we may see an app store that begins with quality over quantity and I really have to get my hands on the phone just to experiment with new apps as and when they begin appear.

The universal contact list called ‘Vodafone People’ clearly puts contacts and content at the forefront of the 360.com ethos a suite of services that apears to be dripping with social media potential.

If a beast like Vodafone has bitten the bullet and finally embraced social media this may be the confirmation all the early adopters have been waiting for. Why is it we have been hanging around this social media fad thing for so long.. Well maybe this is really it. With so much potential to expand and innovate with the mobile communication tools at our finger tips starting to do what we want them to do.. This is what we have been waiting for.

Of course in the not too distant future we will no doubt be excited about hardware breakthroughs as battery life, bandwidth and memory capacity going through the roof.. That doesn’t change what Vodafone may have done here right now for mobile communication. I would not have imagined them opening up elements of it’s network to third parties.. This is a different and hopefully leading a mindset. Once you let social networks and open source operating systems enhance your devices, you are placing an awful lot of power into the hands of the community. I am sure the control will stay with Vodafone. The lack of Google maps at this stage hints towards this and they seem to have invested a hell of a lot into this move to take too many risks.

Still, I am excited to see where this goes. And with this new level of connectivity bridging previously unconnected networks, I imagine it will be a magical mystery tour where everyone is on the bus.

For more interviews with the people in the know click on this atom feed

..Or here are some AudioBoo’s

Also you may want to listen to Nik Butler and Andy White’s thoughts on Vodafone 360 in the podcast Social Media White Noise (7 minutes into the podcast)

I am not a Freemason but i have been asked more than once to don the apron and swear the oaths..

I have also been told that Freemasonry is not a secret society, It is a society with secrets.

Never-the-less, it was the thought of being admitted to a secret society that attracted me to the idea of joining the Freemasons. I have an unhealthy fascination with the unknown.

Freemasonry has a mysterious history going back hundreds of years and it’s symbolism and iconography is embedded within our language, architecture and history.

One thing I didn’t quite understand when visiting a Masonic Lodge during a recruitment meeting was the rule asking you not talk about work, politics or religion.

Now, arguments often accompany political and religious discussion, so i could understand why those topics may be frowned upon. But I thought this would be just the place for movers and shakers, the people in positions of power to ‘Get Things Done’.. Where deals were made and projects started. How can this happen if all you have is small talk?

Now I think I get it.

Perhaps In one way Freemasonry is one of the Wests first social networks. Albeit a little more exclusive than the ones we have today. The small talk like the kind we see in our online social media networks was and is vital to build trust.

I imagine the Lodge meetings to be formal in some ways. Packed with ceremony and learning and the bar/social time afterward, the place where I’ve been invited to sample the subsidised beer, is where you shoot the breeze and get a feel for those you are connecting with.

Some of us do the same online. Twitter is a good example of people getting involved in small talk before contacts and connections are formally cemented. It may be at a conference or a social media get together where things move on to the next level. A quiet corner is found and business is done.

Here is the five minute chat with A Knights Templar Priest that started me thinking about how we ultimately use small talk to feel around for those we feel we can trust. In business, in play, in life..

I am sure much of this is human nature, but there still seems to be practised rules of engagement and now, more than ever, we see a blurring of those lines of when we should and shouldn’t open up to strangers. How speaking your mind in a public place can get you noticed by many but only the few who share their thoughts, no matter how trivial, get to play the game.

We all may appear to be ‘open and transparent’ but I’ll wager many of us keep the finer details of our business transactions behind closed doors.

Attempting to stay offline.

I say attempt as as yet I am not able to succeed in any major fashion.

I have come away on holiday with family to Canada and really want to do my best for those who do not understand (or care much for) social networking and it’s incessant need to be monitored like a newborn baby.

With all the apps out there that assist me in maintaining my international links there is nothing I can (as yet) plug into my subconscious so I can monitor it without it eating into my ‘real life’ time.

The closest thing in the UK is my mobile phone but with international roaming as expensive as it is I pretty much have my phone turned off nearly all the time here in Canada. That is unheard of for me in the UK.

Wherever there is wifi.. if I am not going to be stared at like a freak by anyone who knows me, I am sure to be on Qik as soon as i can press the button.. Seesmic gets the final file after it has streamed but I have to wait till I have a decent enough window of time to get my proper Seesmic fix. I don’t like just popping on and popping off. I like to partake in a conversation. Exactly what Seesmic was intended for.

So.. in fits an spurts I close my seesmic browser, dam the twitter stream and then head out un-encumbered by any technology.. Not even my mobile phone.

Then what happens?.. I bump into and have a chat with Gene Simmons!.. Typical. Standing there talking to a rock legend without any of my documenting tools.

My social media world and my real life world exist on two very different dimensions at the moment. It’s very difficult for me to be in the two places simultaneously without causing a brief rupture in my space time continuum..

If i try to bring my real life into my social media world I feel i’m cutting away a life raft and heading into choppy uncertain seas. If i attempt to bring social media into my ‘normal’ old school, lo-fi life.. I quickly ostracize myself from those that have no intention of embracing the technological advances I have come to know and love.

It’s almost like I’ve found a TV that has over a thousand channels but all those around me would like to stick with the ones they are familiar with.

I guess this is the life of the early adopter and in many ways I do enjoy the exclusivity of it all. We all like to be part of a ‘special club’ at some pont.. Even if only for a sense of validation.

When, if ever I�experience�some kind of convergence, I think a little part of me will have to be trimmed away as I assimilate the two lives I lead.

I definitely feel a little schizophrenic right now. Perhaps this schizomedia is making me sociophrenic..? With the million and one possibilities out there for connections, contacts and opportunities there are moments when I am really thankful of even a couple of hours of downtime. Some headspace in a low tech sanctuary where nothing beeps to tell me something I may or may not be interested in knowing…

But soon enough.. somewhere in a dark room a browser opens and I am instantly connected to a thousand other people, all perhaps feeling the same way.. Perhaps not. An electric empathy, no more or less real than this other world I am a part of.�

If I switch one off.. it takes messages till I get back.. a kind of suspended animation.. If i dial the other out.. that’s when life can really get a little complicated.

I am switching off now.. I will be in New York next week at Podcamp NYC 2.0 Plenty of time to saturate the social media half of my mind..

Talk later?

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