Texting is so impersonal and covers 7% of interpersonal communication. To hear a voice is great right, and roses are the prettiest flowers and we should all love our neighbour blah blah blah.

But then what happens when most of the things I want to ask someone are 1 sentence?

Is communication between friends being honed down to 140 characters max. or have I just slipped up the autism scale again?

Call or Text?

Imagine that instead of the little boxes that need your eyes, fingers and mind didn’t require “more than your attention”. But instead they were much more like your senses, your ears, eyes or taste. They were “integrated attention”.

If these messages were more fed straight through to your sub-conscious. They wouldn’t wear us out. They’d be part of your body & mind. And then, my brain could deal with them on another level, a natural level. Slightly cyborg, but more natural.

So if they were important I could concentrate on them. If they were annoying or a pain, like a bad smell, I could ignore them easier.

Cyborg me up like the sixth sense, I want my concentration back!

[image from http://www.blogcdn.com/www.engadget.com/media/2009/07/iphone3gsrobochan.jpg]

My mind flashed, as I sorted out my wayward steering, what would have happened if I’d of slightly more mis-judged the turning and plummeted into the water below? Would I be screaming, ruin my car and probably die… Oh no. I, like any other man, thought triumphantly of the survival tv show I saw once.

On the programme, it told you, “when your car is submerged in water because some gangsters have chased you off the pier. Do not attempt to open the doors straight away. The outside rum-be-bum will not allow you to. No No. It is truly essential that you wait until laa-laa-laa has fully filled your car, because only then will you be able to tum-re-rum-te-dum.”

Hmmm.

Trying to remember the exact instructions proved difficult in the heat of the moment. there were some essential musical la-la-la gaps in my survival knowledge. But then in another blinding flash, I had  the solution to my survival worries! I’ll just check youtube to see what it says…

And then the second flash hit me. Aside from, don’t check youtube while driving. It got me thinking. What if we were so used to services giving us instant answers we actually relied on checking them more than remembering naturally?

Because imagine, as my car was filling up with water, I wouldn’t want to be battling with an submerged 3G signal, or trying to take off the screen-lock, let doing a Youtube search for, “what to do if your car is underwater”. I’d need my body and mind to react instantly and get my sweet ass outta’ there.

So aside from just saying, Google is making us stupid. Is it even more necessary that we train our bodies and minds up at a young age as a matter of education to deal with these situations.

Only, I don’t wanna be Googling “bear attack, what to do” 10 seconds away from the first swipe…

Google motor Skills

[image from http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2008/09/19/article-0-02B8224E00000578-628_468x352.jpg]

Last night I was lucky enough to fully enjoy ‘being off the grid’. Whilst driving back home (Bristol to East Anglia) no-one know about me driving there or where I was.

But why is that so important?

Because, I took a lot of country roads last night. The feeling of dark luscious green trees wizzing past me. The moon on my shoulder, rolling clouds obscuring it for an instant before screaming off. And then there was another car every hour or so. There was nothing but me and the radio to keep me company. An absolute pleasure!

Then, in the distance. There were street lights appearing. A few other cars around and wow. Other people. Civilisation! w00t. And… hold up, what were those? Cameras over the road. Not the paparazzi, but one across each lane? What are they doing? Picking up your number-plate? Checking how clean your car is? Did you floss this morning sir?

What were they? Anyone know? If not, why not. They take pictures of you every day…

Also, think how different the journey would have been if one of those cameras was with me all the way.

It’s not a big jump, but what if our government’s legislation said, we should all have cameras on our car all the time in-case we crash. For legal reasons. Crazy right.

But what about a GPS in your car all the time. Less crazy.

Would you still feel that same escapism when you travelled, knowing that someone somewhere knew where you were? Is that healthy? If it was the whole CCTV bath situation, would we be ever be able to chill-ax?

CCTV in the Bath

— side thoughts —
I’d really like to comment on how much do you trust a person with all that info? The shiny police officer, well bred politician, a friendly neighbourhood neighbour type-neighbour-person. Because, don’t forgot. One of those people could be me. Cool, well we all trust me right?

But you may not trust the waiter/ress with all the temptation to spit in some tw*ts coffee or sip a bit of someone else’s pint because their back was turned. [note to Dan's friends, don't leave him at the dinner table on his own].

We do things like that because that’s our area of power in that moment. We can marginally affect someone’s life, because of what’s around of us. So now imagine if infront of you is a shed load of information about anyone/everyone. Where they are now, records of where they have been, complete conversations.

How consequential is it to just delete a few files? Tell someone where someone else is?

iPhone 4 - Multitasking

Isn’t it mind bending how many things are trying to grab our attention all the time. I swear we all need to try some uni-tasking for a bit to calm us down!

In-fact that’s what we’ve learnt at Thought Den with certain web projects. If a blogging interface takes longer than an easy wordpress site, then the user will dislike and eventually stop blogging.

So the following simple payment machine struck me as a bit of a mistake on my recent visit to the PM Studio. After parking up the Thought Mobile in @Bristol’s car park I tried to pay my ticket and found this box.

Ticket Machine

Normally I wouldn’t care, and essentially it is just a ticket machine. I know. A ticket machine. Things like this normally wouldn’t rile me, however. This Blue beaoumouth was such a screw-up it was important to comment.

What an awful interface, just for paying a ticket. Firstly, they’ve put cash into designing this nice flashing LED interface to lead you to what to do next.

When you need to insert your ticket, the LED path leads to the “insert card slot”. Then it starts flashing around the different pay inputs for cash or card. Then once you’ve forked out your cash the change-drawer lights up and the ticket is returned to you.

So it had potential for being an interesting, fun and non-language led payment system… however… at some point something went wrong. The commissioner, instead of trusting that people could figure out and follow the lights, they’ve added 3 mini-screens all with text instructions to help you through the process. Each one saying something different and none follow each other’s design.

Ruined. Instead of people following the simple lights, they end up being blinded and ignoring the them only to follow what the badly-spaced text says on the top screen.

It’s a shame. I like flashing lights and simple.

But why? Sure it’s smooth and sexy and all minority report like, but nothing in real life is smooth and sexy. Unless it’s a hot chick, but how often do they come along wanting you to press their start menu?

So if interfaces are moving away from the generic keyboard & mouse and into touch-screens. Should we be thinking a bit past the iPhone? The world around us isn’t flat, so what extra would we learn from different shapes & sizes?

What about an iPad with different textures..

• rough
• abrasive
• smooth
• bumpy
• sharp!
• dusty

What about shapes jutting out of the interface? Maybe a pyramid shape rising out the middle? Dimples?

Then what about a multitude of touch screens, maybe a few spread around? Some interact with each other and some by default won’t.

That’s a whole load closer to the world around us, textured, bumpy and unknown quantities…

[insert closing joke how this is much more like the girls I know...]

[prepare for life of solitude 'cos no more girls will ever talk to you again]

Thank you for today.

Only, you’ve indirectly given me a day off for writing, something, like all budding writers, I’ve been meaning to do for a while.

This great luck all started after I hilariously shouted, “Rich is gay” as we were leaving the bar last night. I then preceded to proudly skip down the steps back to my office feeling all bubbly and warm. Spurred on with a few beers inside me, the good conversation and finally the pure genius of my clever parting quip, loudly hollared at the back of your head from a distance.

Bouncing down the wet steps I decided to cement my celebration of comedy with a final mini-jump off the final step. This was the kind of springing manouver that only an office worker would be proud of. Not too high or aggressive, clearly something which could cull an office person’s prized and un-extrovert standing.  However, just enough ‘boing’ to push the ‘1984 like induced calm’ and prove to any lady colleuges who were bored with Facebook stalking, that I’m a man who can handle mild peril down the steps.

Grrrrrr Dan, you’re an animal.

It was at that moment that my REAL luck started. Because midway there was a realisation that my life’s time and energy could be better spent in the glittzy world of cable television. Specifically an audition for the Nhs superhero advert. The one where a sozzled man climbs up 100metres of scaffolding to retrive a wench’s hen-do balloon. Because, like me, only then do we realise our biology lessons were true, and drink does make you drunk.

Wallop.

Like the man on tv, I came crashing down. Swearing for a split second as I land, to notice an indescrepency in my feet. Still upright, I can clearly see the sole of my right shoe, yet my left shoe looks like its firmly on the ground, laces up! Incredeeeeadable, surely that means my right foot is upside down….

So Rich, like I say, thank-you for today. You’ve given me some time to relax and write. Maybe I’ll should work on my ‘parting quips list’. With some better comedy to draw on, I would feel less of a fool the next time I leave the bar and ruin my ankle then end up sitting in Southmead A&E waiting for xrays on a rapidly ballooning ankle.

Thanks,

Dan.

Written from Southmead Hospital, waiting room. ‘Sitting’ in line on my iphone and waiting for some crutches.

‘Now’ is what I’m getting used too. The quick email on my phone, the instant relief of checking my Facebook as SOON as someone leaves me a wall messsage. “What time is my train to London later?”, I ask before setting off for the station. Blamo! iPhone out and I’m in my Trainline app getting the answer pronto.

‘Now!’, is what’s cool in the fashion world. If a new Milan collection isn’t reported on ‘Now!’, the minute it has nimbly breezed round the corner onto the catwalk, we won’t want to know. Because someone else has written about it already. ‘Now!’, is the new black, ‘Now!’ is leggings, ‘Now!’ is sliced bread and ‘Now!’… is getting me  a little over-excited.

So, no surprises then when I tell you about my recent spout of “all over hives” and instant-kidney stones when I found myself seething behind a lady in Bristol Sainsburys somewhere down the cheese isle. Completely disabled of my ‘Now!’ fix.

It goes like this. I’m ready to grab my yellow mature blocks of curdle. “Buy one, get one free”, the plastic red label screams. So I’d be a fool not too! Grab it now and then I can carry on checking my text messages over there by the pitta bread.

Apparently however,’Now!’, doesn’t apply to everyone, especially those without iPhones. So, ‘Now!’, is what’s left me anxious, sweaty and hanging around like an anxious pigeon behind a female who’s living in the past-tense.

For some reason, right, she’s decided that her choice requires time. Not grabbing the first thing with a red label next to it.

So even if the supermarket has picked a cheese for me, until she’s a nano-second past her choice and moving off, I can’t strike like the carnivore I am and grab the 500 grammes of yellow love.

Enter now, my Contemporary British Conundrum, or CBC for short. Being so used to getting things, ‘Now!’, all I can think of is reaching right out in front of her silly indecisive hands to yoink the cheese. However, I’m parried by my damned childhood manners and realise, “that kind of rude impatience” was genetically removed out of me, like all middle-class children at a very young age.

So, the result of my CBC. I’m left a young man, confused and baffled by my lack of ‘Now!’. All I can manage to do is shift around from foot-to-foot. Bobbing within centimetres of her shoulder and staring at the shelf like a confused puppy.

‘Now!’, roll on 2 full minutes. Interspersed only uncomfortably swivelling and walking 5 paces away followed by me walking immediately 5 paces back.

‘Now!’ is what’s left me with a cuffed ear and a near mace experience as she noticed and dresses me down with her upper class “Will you stop dribbling on my shoulder please”.

Sulk.

[Picture from http://www.geekologie.com/2007/07/16/now-watch.jpg]

The game was made by programmers, not Sports scientists or Olympic experts. So we assume the coders all had to do their respective research. Questions like, “If they’re overweight, should pound the fatty on cardio?”, “How much hula-hooping will give them a heart-attack?”. You trust that the makers found some good generic decisions and benchmarks for everybodies’ training levels.

So in the future, how are we going to feel trust for other types of training games as they get more personal? What about extremes like sexual help, drug re-habilitation, Alcoholics Anonymous? Or even more physiological training like counselling. I’m not talking brain training or mind puzzles. Imagine next, a physiologist app on the Wii or iPhone. It’s entirely possible.

I need to trust the that app about to tinker with my mind’s inner workings won’t leave me a crazy suicidal man but level me out.

So who decides what’s the right frame of mind the user should be in?

How will you deal with international markets? For example, Chinese people will think differently to those crazy presidential Alaskans. I’m different to Ben. Lee downstairs has different life experiences to the girls next to him.

Who decides what the best morals are? Nintendo, Google, MySpace?

Do we trust these personal training games will have our best interests at heart?

wii mund freud