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Intelligence
Moblogging and beyond

Intelligence

Moblogging and beyond

Aug 24, 2003By Voltaire Santos Miran


Last week’s blackout gave moblogging its first real chance to provide grassroots coverage of a major news event. The result: Lots of digital photos appearing on weblogs taken in the blackout zone by people using digital phone/cameras. Travis Larson, spokesman for the Cellular Telecommunications and Internet Association: “This may be the first major news event in which camera phones helped deliver the story. And they’ve done so in real time.” Howard Rheingold: “This is a sign of things to come more so than a watershed event. The (moblog) coverage didn’t give me much better than what I could get on television.” But, says Rheingold, once camera phones offer better resolution and can stream video, moblogs will become much more interesting. (Full story at Wired).

I agree with Rheingold that the ability to stream video will make moblogging more interesting. It also reminds me that long before blogs became such a hot topic, early technophiles and cybergeeks were already exploring the ideas of frequent, if not constant, connectivity to the web. While blogs have added opinions and group commentary to the mix, as early as the 1970s, individuals like Steve Mann and Thad Starner were exploring wearable computers and “reality mediator” devices. While a student at the MIT Media Lab, Mann built a series of wearables that allowed him to act as a live webcam: capture stills, stream partial video, and generally document his every move with a mobile connection to the internet.

Fast forward to the present and Mann, Maurice Benyoun, and Pierre Levy are exploring what happens when you “wire the intelligence onto people within a smart enviroment.” Just last week, an event took place at the Deconism Gallery in Toronto featuring a “brainwave music performance which uses audience brainwaves to control both the music and visual environment.” All of this begs the question, what will we do and what will we say when we become networks ourselves? 


  • Voltaire Santos Miran EVP, Web Strategy I've developed and implemented communication strategies in education for more than 20 years now. I think my team at mStoner is the smartest, funniest, and coolest group of colleagues ever, and I can't imagine being anywhere else. Except Barcelona. Or Paris. Or Istanbul. To quote Isak Dinesen, "the cure for everything is salt ... tears, sweat, and the sea."