I am constantly trying to improve the way I communicate thoughts and concepts I have, trying to have an economy of words, yet very descriptive expressions. Today, I was reading a narrative of the future of the mobile lifestyle and, sparked by a particular sentence, got my head around an issue I’ve been grappling with.
What bothers me is that when we talk about the mobile Web or mobile Internet it suggests a different Web than the fixed, broadband Web. My struggle comes in being able, on the one hand, to say that there is but One Web, there is only One Internet, and, on the other, discuss the Web one lives when mobile.
Well, starting today, I will call the distinction the ‘desktop Web experience’, or ‘desktop Web’, and the ‘mobile Web experience’, or, as before, ‘mobile Web’. It harks back to the foreground-background concepts defining experiencing the Web from the PC (now to referred to as ‘desktop’) and the mobile (which, due to my position, I might be ‘forced’ to call ‘multimedia computer’, or ‘MC’ – heh).
I know these are boring semantics, but I just don’t want to confusion to lie on the word ‘Web’, but on the place of the experience. Nobody (anymore) wants to just convert and shrink the desktop Web experience onto mobile devices. There is indeed a whole different paradigm for the mobile Web experience, an experience that is defined by the Mobile Lifestyle.
Yes, I totally agree — “There is indeed a whole different paradigm for the mobile Web experience”.
What tends to cloud the issue, too, is the diversity of handsets and the fact that they are all used differently. Not to add more semantics to the pile, but even among the space of Mobile there is wide enough breadth of devices and uses to support a wide variety of users and activities, from a cellphone with tiny black/white screen, minimal data connection…to a “smartphone” with a larger screen, but still with a keypad…to the PDA space…to laptops and wifi, etc.
Taking the desktop web and sticking into XHTML for WAP 2.0, or sticking it with a .mobi extension isn’t enough to declare that revolution has begun. It’s not just about getting the data to the mobile, but the right data at the right time to the right person for *their* right reasons. Now what the heck is the answer to that one? 🙂
micromedia ecology
very provisory note to self: i will have to work on this entry for the next time, adding links and thing this through …. my goal is to create a full and rich ecology for microcontent circulation using all the…