The cellphone is a great communication tool that I often take for granted. Without it I would probably miss a lot of meetings, lose touch with my family and fall into a vast array of disorganization. However, there are times when I wish my cellphone was a little bit smarter, like when it rings and I'm in class, when I constantly have to change it from ring to vibrate and vice versa, and when I have to set up multiple features like the calendar and alarm over and over again.
My proposed solution to this is a smartphone that can dynamically predict its users behavior. First this requires that the phone have the user's schedule, which by modern tradition has to be entered. Also, the user generally has to enter their alarms independently. This could be overcome by the phone's ability to create your calendar and alarms when you register for classes. The phone would pull data from your school registrar and set up your calendar for you, already with alarms. Now, to solve the problem of receiving calls while in class, I usually just pull out my phone and text the person "I'm in class". This new smart phone would do that automatically, without even vibrating annoyingly in my pocket. This message could be dynamic too, changing too "I'm in a prelim" or "I'm in a meeting". If the phone already has your schedule and alarms built in then it should also know when to switch from vibrate to ring and vice versa. Perhaps at the end of the day the phone switches over to ring but at your average bed-time it switches to vibrate.
Even with a phone as advanced as this proposed solution, there are still social technical gaps involved. For one, people are reluctant to let technology run their lives. While it would be great to have a phone that did all these things, most people probably don't mind pulling out their phone every once in a while to write "I'm in class". We have learned so far that it is often difficult to get people to use new technology and this kind of sophistication may be considered too much. Also, the cell phone still can't predict small changes in the schedule that vary day to day. If I want to take an extra lunch hour my phone really has no way of predicting that, and if it could most people would probably deem that an invasion of privacy.
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When you said, "it is often difficult to get people to use new technology and this kind of sophistication may be considered too much," this made me think of the critical mass idea for technology acceptance. Sadly, there are too many instances of good technology that fails to permeate into society enough to become popular. I always cite Betamax as an example...
ReplyDeleteIt's better than VHS! But..wasn't really ever accepted. But...did you know that some people in the media world still use it today?
As we mentioned in class today, to address the social technical gap, we need to "make suggestions, not settings." I'm not sure how Betamax was first promoted, but perhaps it wasn't in the right way for the time. Maybe it was pushed too forcefully? Maybe it wasn't suggested enough?
I had a similar idea about automatic messaging, where your phone sends an automatic "I'm busy.." message back to the caller. It'd be like an Away message on AIM. Like you said, the rigidity of a pre-entered schedule is a social-technical gap, as in actuality, people's lives are more dynamic and spontaneous. Sometimes, you might not be in class when you're supposed to be. Another possible invasion of privacy is that you may not want every potential caller knowing what you are doing.
ReplyDeleteIt's interesting what you said about how people may be adverse to such a smart phone. It does take some of the spontaneity out of phone usage.