Mobile Technologies are Shields That Protect us From the World

In current issue of Vodafone’s receiver Erik Holmquist (the leader of the Future Applications Lab at the Viktoria Institute in Göteborg) describes his lab’s researches in mobile media and ubiquitous displays. Erik’s interests match mine: HCI, InfoViz and Ubicomp. Nothing really new under the sun in his presentation of their work on mobile collaborative games context photography. I in fact really like his mention against the current frenzy to create interaction from scratch:

“Often, we use mobile technology to create a shield that protects us from the world.”

Mobile technologies offer bridges and shields… and all our efforts tend to multiple the bridges and destroy the shields. Of course bridges are more romantic than walls… but is it really what we want?