"A playful mobile device need not entrap its owner within its own RAM. Rather, it can connect the owner with other people, the environment, or the temporal reality in new ways. Who is available? What is around me? What's going on right now? Instead of enter-taining, these devices might do better to inter-tain us -- that is, hold our connection to other people, places and things. The mobile intertainment device depends not on captivation, but on introduction, orientation, and interconnection. Although very few companies are conceiving of mobile fun in this way, the early interest in services from UPOC and Dodgeball prove that people are seeking a different sort of fun through their phones -- a fun that involves experiences with other subscribers rather than some company's content. Even information portals like Vindigo and Avantgo base their success less on what they provide themselves and more on how these pointers direct users to things in the real world that they want or need. A restaurant or movie recommendation is not the entertainment itself. It's intertainment to entertainment. Finally, self-publishing services like Phlog.net, which allow people to post moblogs and cell phone photos, promise a lot more than entrancement -- they allow expression and connectivity. Indeed, there are a range of ways to have fun that may not involve what is traditionally known as entertainment."
Douglas Rushkoff hits the spot in this nice article on mobile entertainment/intertainment. I agree totally. See my previous posts on mobile cameraphones, mobile social software, mobile video and TV. Mobile phones are more about communications and connecting relative to traditional entertainment, even though there will be a place for the latter in niche contexts combined with its social value/viral context.
Comments