Mobile must change the world!!

I've always been interested in the complex relationship between humans and machines. When I was a kid I used to watch science fiction movies to see the writers' visions of technology. It always fascinated me how story writers envisioned a future where technology was so naturally a part of human life. And it always disappointed me to see how little technology was integrated into real life today.

This fascination quickly turned into an obsession: I wanted to use technology to make a difference in the world. It started in my childhood bedroom, where I built electronics and computer software that let me use hand gestures to control anything that ran on electricity.

A few years later I got my first mobile phone. A great device, that I instantly fell in love with. The Internet bubble didn't excite me nearly as much as the mobile device, even though at the time the only thing I could do with the mobile was voice calls and text messaging. But it was the potential that excited me.

Fast forward to today. Mobile devices are probably the most social and cultural changing piece of technology ever in human history. But there is a problem: The vast majority of the leaders in mobile lifestyle are graduates of the desktop Internet, and they perceive mobile as just another platform for doing the same sorts of things.

To all you web graduates: IT IS NOT! Mobile devices are not just small computers! And a software development model that applies web thinking to mobile development is destined to fail because it will not be adopted.

In order to be adopted, any new technology must align with users expectations, and must address real needs. It must provide a comprehensible and useful solution. The Web used a combination of desktop and library metaphors to become comprehensible, and became useful by solving the problem of information availability - it gave people access to information they needed and couldn't get any other way. Mobile technology cannot become accepted if it sticks to that same paradigm, because that problem has already been solved. And it isn't a problem that's well suited to mobile devices anyway.

As I keep saying: life is horizontal and technology tends to be vertical. The real, on-the-go world integrates many different aspects and sources of information and tasks and requirements. Technologies tend to focus information, tasks, and solutions on specific vertical problems. Vertical technologies aren't suited to this on-the-go environment... to be useful in the real world, technologies need to understand the horizontal world.

It used to be easy to create a service: get 5000 sign-ups with 25% repeat users while building it up and you are officially successful. But that was the web days. One of the hardest things to do is get a person on-the-go to use something new. Even harder is to get a person to become a repeat user of something new. In mobile you can't rely on building a vertical application, get 5000 sign-ups, build it out, and expect a large number of repeat users. To become a part of the mobile lifestyle, applications have to become horizontal, they have to integrate with their users' lives.

It is time for people who understand the complex relationship between humans and machines to take the lead in the mobile world. The team at GoLife is among a growing group of mobile experts working to change the thought leadership in the industry. The web days are over!