connection

The Washington Post of Sunday, February 24, 2008 has a really interesting article by Joel Garreau called Our Cells, Ourselves. It discusses the startling speed with which the number of cellphones has grown, and their impact on what we do and who we are.

The human race is crossing a line. There is now one cellphone for every two humans on Earth.

From essentially zero, we’ve passed a watershed of more than 3.3 billion active cellphones on a planet of some 6.6 billion humans in about 26 years. This is the fastest global diffusion of any technology in human history — faster even than the polio vaccine.

Garreau does explain later that the ‘one phone per 2 people’ is an average. Some people have several cellphones, using them to keep aspects of their lives separate — work and home life, for example — or to trade off the benefits of different calling plans. Still, it’s an impressive figure.

And it’s not just the rich, white West who are buying and using cellphones:

Cellphones are the first telecommunications technology in history to have more users in the developing world — almost 60 percent — than in the West. Cellphone usage in Africa has been growing close to 50 percent annually — faster than any other region. More than 30 African nations have more cellphones than land lines. In only 11 years, Grameenphone — an offshoot of the Nobel Prize-winning micro-lending outfit — now covers 98 percent of Bangladesh and serves the majority of the country’s 30 million telephone users, only about a million of whom have land lines.

When so many have a handheld communications device that operates without wires in so many places then they will use it to connect and communicate with one another. People are social and sociable beings:

“It’s the technology most adapted to the essence of the human species — sociability,” says Arthur Molella, director of the Smithsonian’s Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation. “It’s the ultimate tool to find each other. It’s wonderful technology for being human.”

Like so many technologies, cellphones are used for the deeply important, the deeply meaningful, and also the so-called trivial. Cellphones connect us because we carry them in our pockets. They are really an actual extension of us.

When I connect with friends through the Internet on a laptop computer, I still put that computer down and leave it behind when I take the dogs for a walk, or go to a cafe for a meal. The cellphone stays with me. It’s instant-on, immediate. It doesn’t have to intrude with a loud ringtone either: I often have mine set to vibrate, or to use a quiet, unobtrusive sound.

“The Internet is quite global. But the mobile phone is the way social cohesion is taking place. It tightens the bonds between us,” says Ling, an American who researches the social consequences of mobile telephony …

“Quite a bit of research shows that the tighter the group, the more they use the mobile phone. It takes place in mundane ways — work, jokes, gossip, coordinating a birthday party for your child, arranging the gang meeting at a restaurant.

“All of the other electronic mediation — television, the Internet — there’s a real question whether they’re fraying the social fabric. But all the research with mobile phones shows tightening bonds within small groups.” That’s because with cellphones, “I call an individual. In the old system, I call a place and hope somebody might be there.

[Via : Our Cells, Ourselves - washingtonpost.com.]

[Link via Shift6: Multiple SIMs in one phone: a disruptive idea from Nokia’s research.]

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I’ve spent the last two days attending Webstock all-day workshops, and will be spending the next two days at the Conference proper. Not being used to sitting in a workshop all day I needed a day off today. And anyway, I had some urgent tasks to complete.

The workshops were very enjoyable, interesting and informative. It was all quite intensive. Normally I’d tune out every now and again once my brain was full. I’d wriggle a bit, squirm maybe, look blank, daydream …. But not this time.

Webstock’s different, because we’re pro-Internet, pro-gadget, and out to have a good time. As organisers we chose a (very cool) conference bag that’s suitable for a laptop. At the workshop tables we set up multiple power strips so attendees can plug in their stuff.

We have free high-speed wi-fi. We’re using, and encouraging Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, blogging, and anything else that people can think of. Webstock is massively connected.

Those attending are equipped with laptops (Mac, Windows and, of course, Linux), tablets, eeePCs, iPhones, regular cellphones, smartphones, iPods: in brief, we’re bristling with communicators.

Before, during and after each session people are quietly tapping, typing, texting, taking photos. But as Webstock attracts savvy folks, you don’t hear gadgets ringing or beeping, and no-one talks on their phone inside a workshop. Sometimes people discreetly exit the room and presumably talk to callers outside.

I’ve had my MacBook, my iPod touch and my new Sony Ericsson K800i cellphone with me. It’s wonderful: I’ve sent or received the odd txt message, but mostly I’m able to use my computer while I participate.

I’ve found several distinct benefits from using an Internet connected laptop during the sessions:

1. When my brain’s full and I need to tune out for a while I check my email or my Twitter feed, or my RSS feeds. That provides a brief respite and after a few moments I tune in to the session again.
2. I take notes, of course, directly into DevonThink Pro, where I’ll be able to find them again.
3. When the presenter mentions a book I think I might want to read I immediately search for it in BookMooch. If it’s not available right now I Save it for later. Of course, you may choose Amazon or another source of books.
4. When the presenter mentions other things of particular interest — articles on their own site, other websites, theories and concepts, I switch to my web browser and visit, maybe bookmark for later.
5. I occasionally send snippets of interest out to the world via Twitter. Prefacing the snippets with the code ws allows them to be picked up by a Twitterbot that provides a Webstock feed.
6. We put our evaluation forms online, and made it possible to exit a form before it was completed, and to go back and forward within a form. This allows participants to add their feedback at a time that suits them, even during the workshop they’re commenting on.

All this activity, by all the participants who choose to use such gadgets, adds a texture and richness to the event that increases its value many-fold.

In April I’ll be presenting at the Webguide Mini conference, Engage Your Community. That will be a very different experience, I’m sure. It’ll be strange to go back to the old ways, the disconnected days, where it’s just us in our own little worlds, doing our own thing. Kind of like meat and potatoes without the gravy.

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How do you connect to the Internet? If you use your own computer, rather than a public connection, your choices are between dial-up and broadband. [First published July 2006.]

A dial-up connection is one where you connect a modem to your phone line. While the modem’s using the phone line you can’t make voice calls or use the phone for anything else.

Widely available and cheap.

Dial-up connections are widely available, and usually relatively cheap. For example, Xtra offer a plan that gives you two hours per month for NZ$5. Actrix offer a plan for 1 cent (NZ) per minute, plus a service fee of NZ$2 per month. (These are just examples, we’re not actually recommending any particular service.)

Large files are common.

The Internet is becoming more and more the home of large files, such as software updates (for example, crucial Microsoft Windows security updates), music, videos, photos, and even just large web pages.

Time-consuming, and error prone.

While dial-up Internet is fairly cheap, and readily available, it is also very slow, time-consuming, and error prone. Every dial-up user knows the frustration of trying to get connected when the lines are busy, the hassles of keeping others from making phonecalls for sometimes quite long periods.

Broadband is fast and reliable.

A broadband connection is always on. You don’t have to wait while you connect to the Internet — you just write an email, click Send and it’s instantly gone. Open your web browser and the page you want is right there. It doesn’t tie up the phoneline, either — one person can make phonecalls while another surfs the web. Broadband is also fast enough for several people to surf at the same time, if the computers and broadband modem are connected using a simple network.

Large files become realistic.

It’s also capable of handling very large files: software updates, videos, photos and sound files all arrive in your computer in just a few minutes, rather than possibly hours (or even days).

The video stories at Silence Speaks are about 5 minutes long. A tiny 250 by 200 pixel movie weighs in at 3.2Mb. A fast modem will download that movie in about 10 minutes. A mid-range broadband connection will download it in between 30 seconds and two minutes.

These days there are many large files you may want to download: training videos, recordings from conferences, slideshows from events, podcasts, music. A broadband connection makes it realistic to download such files.

Broadband costs more.

Broadband plans start at about NZ$30 per month. You usually have some one-off costs to buy the equipment and to get connected

Look for the cap that fits.

Many New Zealand broadband plans have a cap on the amount of data you can down- or up-load each month. This may be 1, 2, 10 Gigabytes or more. This is fine for normal web-surfing and emails. But if you download or stream (continually listen to or watch) high quality songs and videos, you can get through a month’s allowance in a few hours.

Some plans then charge by megabyte for the rest of the month — which rapidly gets very expensive — while others cut you back to that slow old modem speed, with no extra charge. Be sure to choose a plan that suits the way you work.

Check your protection.

With broadband your computer is connected to the Internet whenever it is switched on. This makes it easier for hackers to attack it. Make sure that you have up to date firewall, virus checker and security updates. This is especially important for computers running the Windows operating system.

Broadband users never go back.

Anecdotal evidence tells us that once someone has moved to broadband they would never consider going back to a dial-up connection. If your organisation is still using dial-up, then it’s time to at least consider broadband.

Handy price guides.

Consumer online have handy price comparisons for both dial-up (link now dead) and broadband. The comparisons are for New Zealand consumers.

Update February 2008 — Consumer say:

Sorry, we are no longer maintaining our database of dial-up ISP providers.

Written for and reproduced from CommunityNet Aotearoa Panui, July 2006. This article may have been modified from the original.

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