Saturday, November 02, 2002

Research Needed in the Church p.172, smart mobs: When you break down the interesting idea of mobile, ad hoc social networks into the elements needed to make it work in practice, a rich and largely undeveloped field for research opens. This sounds like the kind of thinking that needs to be grabbed hold of by Churches and their agencies of Communications and resource developers (such as Publishers) comment [] 3:11:12 PM     Augmenting face to face with Wireless smart mob notes: 171: Using Bluetooth and other short-range wireless technologies such as very-low-power wideband radio, individual members of the community could engage in more intimate and timely information exchanges when face to face, whereas WiFi technologies could provide the infrastructure for neighborhood-wide and Internet-wide communication: Mobile ad hoc systems provide opportunities for ad hoc meetings, mobile patient monitoring, distributed command and control systems and ubiquitous computing. In particular, personal area networks enable the creation of proximity-aware applications in support of face-to-face collaboration. Mobile devices like cell phones, PDAs and wearable computers have become our constant companions' and are available wherever we go.... Personal area networks open the opportunity for these devices to take part in our everyday social interactions with people. Their ability to establish communication links among devices during face-to-face encounters can be used to facilitate, augment or even promote human social interactions. In some sense, an ad hoc mobile information system is the ultimate peerto-peer system. It is self-organizing, fully decentralized, and highly dynamic.48 Goffman ideas: The wireless instantiation of a 12-foot information bubble around wearable computer users is a physical model of what sociologist Erving Goffman calls the "Interaction Order," the part of social life where face-to-face and spoken interactions occur.51 Goffman claimed that the mundane world of everyday interactions involves complex symbolic exchanges, visible but rarely consciously noticed, which enable groups to negotiate movement through public spaces. Although people use the ways they present themselves to "give" information they want others to believe about themselves, Goffman noted that people also "give off' information, leaking true but uncontrolled information along with their more deliberate performance. One form of information that people give off, called "stigma" by Goffman, is markings or behaviors that locate individuals in a particular social status. Although many stigma can have negative connotations, stigma can also mark positive social status. The information we give off by the way we behave and dress helps us coordinate social interaction and identify likely interaction partners. comment [] 3:04:09 PM

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