I think I finally get mobile…but then I'm slow.
As a part of my never-ending quest to find more information about the pragmatics of interactions, I stumbled upon this quote on the home page of the Pragmatic Web society:
“The study of “pragmatics” is driven by an interest in action. It illuminates how it is that we manage to evolve mutual understanding and commitments in conversation. Central to this perspective is the understanding that the meaning of everything we say and do is contextual. When contexts change, meanings change in conversations, documents, and models of the world.”
This got me thinking more about mobile. Like many of you, I’m a big believer in mobile applications and am eagerly awaiting the first iPhone applications. However, I’m guessing that many the very first to appear will simply be mobile versions of web/desktop apps. The growth of mobile advertising (yuck!) has shown that most of the pioneers have simply taken the interruptive conventions of traditional advertising and treated mobile as just another channel to disseminate their messages. It’s fair to expect that the same will be true for the first mobile apps.
However, I think that the real breakthroughs will happen when apps appear that take advantage of the fact that mobile creates a completely different context and therefore enables a completely different meaning to be conveyed. The story of the Walkman is a classic. It took a behaviour that no one wanted when not-mobile and turned it into a behaviour that everyone wanted while mobile.
Given this, I think that the current belief in mobile as a channel is shortsighted. While mobile is another way to disseminate information that can also be accessed in other ways, that’s only one use. In my opinion, the far bigger opportunity is for mobile to enable something that can’t be done any other way.
I can’t wait.