Assignment 6 Kevin

I have an iPhone which I rarely use as a phone. Most of the time I use SMS to communicate with friends and family because I have unlimited text messaging. Also, I use the iPhone for its multitude of applications such as games like chess, checkers, Pac Man, beer pong, and touch hockey. Apart from games, I use the calendar and iPod features. I know all of these applications seem a lot of fun; however, they are too much fun. Recently, the applications have created this social disconnection from rest of the world and I due to my excessive use of gaming and texting during social events and conversations.

Consider the following scenario:
A couple days ago, a group of four friends and I are in my room having a general discussion about the making of “Plant Earth,” a documentary series of the various biomes of Earth. Although the discussion lasted for about 45 minutes, one of my friends and I rarely engaged in the conversation because we both received a signal (beep and vibration) from our iPhones. This signal was from other iPhone “Chess with Friends” users. Instead of discussing the making of “Plant Earth,” we decided to continue playing a chess game that we paused earlier in the day. We were playing with people along a server who were not in the room. In the scenario discussed, the iPhone is bothersome because it disconnected me from an interesting discussion; thereby, preventing me from learning about the making of a documentary which I was truly interested in. However, I did have the choice whether or not to respond to the signal I received. I could have ignored the signal and put the game on pause for longer.

Consider the following “smart phone” solution:
The iPhone does have a feature to disable notifications; yet, this doesn’t prevent me from constantly checking my phone and being intrigued to continue the game. An ideal phone would have built in features to prevent me from using my applications during conversations or when I am listening to a lecturer. This “smart phone” would be able to recognize when multiple people are speaking to each other and when lecturers are speaking. Thus, a voice recognition feature would need to be installed in the phone so that it could recognize differences in tone, pitch, and as well as other components of sound. Therefore, when people are having a conversation the phone could recognize that multiple people are talking. The voice recognizer will respond by locking phone applications, such as texting and gaming. A problem exists when there is a lecturer because the lecture is one person; therefore, there aren’t any conversations to be recognized. However, the phone’s voice recognition in conjunction with a time recognizer can lock phone applications. The timer will detect how long a single person is speaking, by initiating a stop watch from the time a person is speaking. If the person is speaking for more than, let’s say, 3 minutes, then the time recognizer locks phone applications.

The “smart phone” design is far from perfect; it contains social-technical gaps. For example, if there are pauses in a conversation or lecture, the phone cannot recognize time lapses. Thus, the applications will be in a constant on and off period. This unevenness is not fluid like social systems are (Ackerman). In a social system you would be able recognize these pauses doesn’t necessarily mean the conversation or lecture is over. For example, the conversation dealing the making of “Planet Earth” could have paused because we were inspired to Wikipedia a journal entry pertaining to the documentary that would allow us to continue the conversation. There is a gap in recognizing that the social conversation is still fluid regardless of the pause. Also, the proposed technical system cannot recognize your highly flexible social behavior within a conversation. Orilkowski stated “People not only adapt to their systems, they adapt their system to their needs.” During any given conversation individual may not want to converse because you are uninterested. Thus, the voice recognition system could prevent you from using applications to do more worthwhile tasks which require you to change your role. For example, you may need to email a teacher an assignment before its too late or you may need to text a friend in an emergency because you need to cancel dinner plans. The phone cannot recognize the flexibility of social situations where you might need to change roles in order to complete tasks. Perhaps, the phone should contain a task manager which stops the phone from turning off applications that deal with the completion of important tasks. For example, if you have a task for homework due at a certain time then the application for email will be turned on until you complete the task.