No place to hide

A recent mobility conference in Monaco showcased some of the latest mobile technologies and services that will be introduced to the European market in 2005.

Conference host Nokia was on hand to demonstrate a wide range of new handsets and technologies designed to deliver rich mobile media content to users through incipient and groundbreaking services.

The exhibition area was crammed with exciting concepts such as visual radio, which combines mobile data and interactivity with traditional FM radio broadcasts, video sharing that enables users to initiate video streaming during a mobile voice call, mobile TV services, and media charger, which enables mobile users to 'charge` their handsets overnight with multimedia content for offline consumption.

Fuelling the prevailing air of excitement, Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina told the opening session of the conference that the world could soon expect changes that would "dwarf everything that had gone before".

Fiorina said technologists were creating a world in which people, regardless of their context, could tap into any information and content they needed. She said the power of mobility had always been less about connecting technology and more about connecting people and how they worked together.

It all sounded rather good up until that point, but just as I was enjoying the prospect of a brave new connected world, Fiorina said something that roused me from my reverie.

"The lines between our professional and personal lives are blurring," she said. Moments later, alarm sirens were sounding. "We are living in a world were we are all always on," she said.

In a world where we are 'always on`, there will be no escape.

Warwick Ashford, Technology Editor, ITWeb

Fiorina concluded by saying that the technology she had been describing had the potential to enrich our lives and adapt to our "passions and ambitions", if managed properly.

It is in that last conditional clause that fear and hope reside. Properly managed, always-on technology has the power to fulfil all the hopes of a long-awaited mobile world, but in the absence of proper management, what will be the outcome?

For centuries, most people`s lives have been clearly divided into work and leisure time. In the past 30 years, those divisions have become increasingly less defined. In Fiorina`s words, the lines between our business and professional lives are blurring.

I can only speculate on what effects that will have, but I find it difficult to believe they will be exclusively positive.

Already e-mail and SMS have become for many the preferred means of communication. Will being 'always on` mean we will lose the ability or desire to talk to each other?

Taking time to be alone and enjoy some quiet time in each day is an important coping mechanism for many. In a world where we are 'always on`, there will be no escape.

What solitude will there be when we are expected to be available 24 hours a day? How much longer will we have the option of ignoring a call or simply turning off mobile devices when we do not want to be reached? Very soon, there could literally be no place to hide.

While no one really fears computers will take over the world any more, perhaps it would be wise, at the dawn of the truly mobile era, to get real about the potential threat and guard against mobile technology impacting negatively on the way we interact with our fellow human beings.

Who will ensure mobile technology is 'properly managed`, if we do not do so ourselves?