Thursday, February 20, 2003

What're the Odds? We've stopped in Asheville, NC, which seems to this former Coloradan to be like Boulder with prettier women. I was pleased to snag a parking spot and to find a decent eatery around the corner. Returning to the car to leave, I notice, directly in front of it, a crotch-high solid-appearing metal post with green lights labeled: Infrared Active BeamPost Active Ethernet Active Bluetooth Active Wireless Lan (802.11b) The icing(s) on the cake: a PDA holder with IR port on one side, and, on the other, an IR software download port on the other. BeamPost Front Panel PDA Holder w/ IR port Git yur IR S/W here! Sure enough, a WiFi hot spot called BeamPost shows up on the PowerBook, so we've settled into the very cute Europa Cafe adjacent. From the Mountain Express News just 3 weeks ago: Jan 29, 2003 / vol 9 no 25 The Internet unplugged Will Asheville go wireless? by Martin L. Johnson Russell Thomas, president of the Asheville-based Natural Communications, has already set up one hot spot downtown, on Battery Park Avenue. His company's Beampost [^] a roughly 3-foot-high, 6-inch-wide beige metal post that might be mistaken for a place to tie up dogs if it weren't for the blinking lights [^] provides three different kinds of wireless service: 802.11b (currently the most popular), bluetooth (a higher-speed but closer-range technology), and infrared (used by Handsprings and Palm Pilots). Among the beneficiaries are tech-savvy customers at the Old Europe Coffee House, who can now sip java while surfing the 'Net free of charge with their laptops. Thomas is hatching plans to install more Beamposts around Asheville, thereby multiplying the number of downtown hot spots. That means more opportunities for free wireless Internet. Eventually, Thomas may start charging for the service (though it would probably still be far cheaper than the current cost of a high-speed Internet connection; Starbuck's service, provided through t-Mobile, goes for $2.95 an hour, or a mere $50 a year [^] not counting the coffee, of course). For the time being, however, Thomas says he's doing this as a contribution to the downtown scene. "I love Asheville; I'm invested in Asheville. When I first arrived here [in 1986], there were tumbleweeds blowing down the street. Now it's viable."   Like the Sam Adams Light commercial says, Yeahhh. That's what I'm talkin' about!! 1:43:11 PM    comment []

Prophecy 3 · Personal GeoPositioning & Notification           I once was lost, but now I'm found An obvious feature of the Personal Flight Recorder (PFR) will be full-time geopositioning. This transforms our reality by eliminating a significant source of social frustration: showing up on time and knowing that you will. Isn't that the real cause of concern when one is "lost"? It always happens when you're on a schedule - meeting friends somewhere you've not been, arriving for the start of the game/concert/film/dinner reservation, etc., invariably a cause for social, not personal, frustration. (My purpose here is not another tiresome Popular Science-type "tech in 50 years" treatment, but rather to identify significant imminent ubiquitous  personal technologies that will affect our culture in meaningful ways.) Navigating uncertainly to a scheduled appointment carries a disproportionate anxiety level, and all of that will disappear with ubiquitous geopositioning. By knowing where we are, where we're going and when we'll be there, we can release this significant guilt/conflict over social requirements. Let's review the particularly American kind of social guilt phenomenon. We Americans hail from families of immigrants newly arrived, seeking approval from better-established immigrants deposited by the previous boat. Even the best adjusted of us have inherited a message of social inferiority from generations of moms telling generations of kids to fit in better, speak English better, display better manners, etc. I suggest that this heritage weighs on us more than we want to acknowledge at levels we don't want to address. Any mechanisms that help relieve social insecurities are meaningful. Takeaway: We'll be capturing the video stream we witness while knowing where we are, where going, how to get there and when. The third leg of this empowerment stool is the logistical equivalent of blogging. Where we are and what we're seeing will be selectively available, in real time, to anyone we care to share it with. Thereby, our social involvements will escape physical restraints, and moblogging rises to a third dimension. That is the promise of the PFR equipped with personal geopositioning. 10:10:01 AM    comment []

© Copyright 2006 Britt Blaser. Last update: 4/17/06; 11:30:53 PM.