Igor asked me to come on board with his blog a couple of weeks ago, and the first thing I did was disagree with him on the potential for Mobile TV. Before I even introduced myself. The topic of this post then, is “Who am I and why do I write about mobile?”

I am a professor in the School of Communication at Simon Fraser University. I write about, teach about, and do research on the complex interactions between society and technology. I met Igor when he took a course I offered on the mobile information society, a course based on a book that Gordon Gow and I wrote a couple of years ago.

I am as fascinated by wireless gadgets as the next person, and have been doing some user experience studies sponsored by Nokia over the past three years. But that isn’t why I care about wireless/mobile technology. And, despite the billions made on handsets, monthly fees, and text messaging, even the economics of the mobile business for manufacturers operators isn’t that interesting to me.

Why do I bother, then? If you are familiar with Howard Rheingold’s “Smart Mobs” book and web site, you’ll know that mobility is an enabler of much more than on-the-fly dating arrangements, television on the bus, and checking up on your teenage children. In fact, those are trivial outcomes from a social perspective. What really matters, in the long run, is that mobile phones are (potentially) a “convivial” technology, allowing for greater economic, political, and social freedom for the users. We have already seen remarkable successes in this regard, ranging from the grameenphone to Philippine political SMS campaigns. Many other mini-revolutions are underway around the world.

Much remains to be done. The true potential of the mobile phone remains bottled up by network topology designed to enhance the power of operators, restrictive terms of use, high tariffs, and impenetrable user interface design. Peer to peer networking, open source operating systems, hardware and software, and exciting new applications all lie on the horizon, waiting to be built and discovered. That is why I am interested in mobile technologies.

Oh, and I want an iPhone.

…r

UPDATE:

Jan Chipchase, who writes about all things mobile from his perspective as Nokia’s roaming - what, anthropologist? - has spied some mobile TV watching in Tokyo, and writes about it here. For all of his writing on mobile TV, check his blog category for it.