Telelogs

My latest interesting albeit off-topic read was a paper to do with TeleLogging - the idea is that telelogs are targeted towards those we come across on a consistent basis but rather than establishing a direct line of communication, we maintain a relationship characterized as one of 'courteous detachment' i.e. we are known as 'familiar strangers' - (!). Familiar stangers have an "informal agreement to ignore one another without any penalty of disapproval by either party" and would include for example people we regularly see at a bus stop or whatever. The first implementation for mobile devices was tested on Nokia smart phones - all info was shared through a bluetooth connection and familiar strangers were automatically discovered by the MAC addresses of the bluetooth device and could then communicate via recorded messages.

Maybe its me but the whole notion sounds daft. The idea of some familiar stranger sending me a message via bluetooth at the bus stop some morning - an audio message to add insult to injury - to tell me that I look like crap this morning or that my roots need doing doesn't appeal to me. Why not come up to me if you're standing beside me. Anyway maybe I'm getting ratty in my old age or maybe I'm just downright unsociable but I think we're all too contactable already - I'd rather leave my familiar strangers as just that. I'm sure I'm missing the point or failing to see the bigger picture.........

Brian, D. and K. Karrie (2005). Telelogs: a social communication space for urban environments. Proceedings of the 7th international conference on Human computer interaction with mobile devices \& services. Salzburg, Austria, ACM Press