If mobile phones loom large in European dreams, it’s because they’re already such an important part of our waking lives. So far no Internet dating services have gone mobile. But give them a few months. Mobile communications are already changing the ways that Europeans (and especially Scandinavians) live, think and do business. The world’s leading mobile companies are earning big profits and reinvesting them in a revolution that’s evident everywhere. Schoolkids endlessly text-message each other–and teachers plan to use metal detectors to prevent e-mailing during exams. Adults use their phones to pay bills, order movie tickets and check their car alarms. What next? Predicting the exact future is impossible, but spinning scenarios is still useful and fun. So consider some of the current trends among the world’s most devoted mobile-phone users–and the strange and wonderful possibilities they herald.
Mobile phones break down formal structures. They defeat not just geography but hierarchy, enabling people to interact less formally, whenever and wherever. If you are alone downtown at noon, you can act like a telepath and simply send a group message to all your friends’ mobile phones, asking who’s free for lunch. In business settings, this kind of dynamic interaction is becoming the norm. It’s already routine to see a boss in a meeting receiving and sending short text messages. Now, whenever anything important happens, everyone can be reached. Reaction time is fast, because all the brains in the network are fully in use.
As the competitive pace quickens, telepathy may become more than a metaphor. Mobile phones are already practically a part of many people; the next step is simply to replace the microphone with a sensor in the vocal chords. Business meetings–for example, negotiations over the acquisition of a company–would change immediately. Imagine the tension in the conference room as the buyers align their thoughts in a silent, subvocalized discussion. The boss voices the final offer, then excuses herself. Outside she relaxes her stern look, laughs aloud and promises to kill you (though you’re 3,000 kilometers away). While silently checking her messages she heard the love song you first sang for her in Kos–but this time, you used the Elvis voice in your new synthesizer, and she almost giggled just when the other side gave its profit projections.
Do we really want to merge our bodies and our machines? Apparently so. Reima-Tutta’s new arctic-survival suits feature integrated sensors, positioning devices and mobile phones. Elderly people wear wristbands that monitor their vital signs and call the health-care center when they need help. Batteries make current versions cumbersome. But genetic modifications could someday enable our skin to create electricity just as the electric eel does. Nanocrystals could be tattooed in our wrists so that we would need no other displays. Some people may wear color-changing mobile digital tattoos on their cheeks to let others know when they are mentally elsewhere, in telepathic discussions or when they want to blush or flirt.
There may be much to blush about. Some of today’s mobile phones can record phone calls, and soon the phones may remember everything said in their vicinity. Storing and indexing it all is quite feasible. What accommodations did you and your fiancee settle on for her aunt, who’s coming for your wedding? With a few keywords your phone can tell you. But be careful. Last time you searched her records you stumbled on an archived conversation with her former boyfriend. You listened to it–and she was so mad she almost canceled the wedding.
But now you are happily driving to your honeymoon resort in the Finnish borderland province of Kainuu. The road is strange, but you do not need maps because Kainuu exists fully in networked virtual reality. Your mobile phone projects directions onto the virtual windshield. At the lodge, you’re glad to be reminded that the local tourism authorities have found a way to keep you safe while you enjoy an ecotour that will be the envy of all your friends. Local wolves and bears all wear mobile positioning phone collars, and they will call you if you’re getting too close.
As for the honeymoon between Europeans and their mobile phones, that seems to be pretty blissful as well. No, the marriage won’t be without problems. Lots of nifty new applications will no doubt flop. We’re already seeing how the phones can erode our privacy and impose work upon us when we ought to be doing something else. But the relationship does look like a lasting and productive one.
