I was laughing recently at myself - always a good thing to do. I’m currently starting a research project into emerging digital cultures and Tactical media, especially in places outside the traditional US / Northern European domain that has been overcovered. So I’ve been doing the background info-rounds, locating the key focal points etc. So what repeatedly pops up everywhere is the importance of mobiles phones as the fastest growing technology of the future. For instance, an article in the Washington Post recently claimed that there are now an astonishing 3.3 billion mobiles phones on the planet - one for every second person! The article says, in specific

From essentially zero, we’ve passed a watershed of more than 3.3 billion active cellphones on a planet of some 6.6 billion humans in about 26 years. This is the fastest global diffusion of any technology in human history — faster even than the polio vaccine.

“We knew this was going to happen a few years ago. And we know how it will end,” says Eric Schmidt, chairman of the board and chief executive officer of Google. “It will end with 5 billion out of the 6″ with cellphones. “A reasonable prediction is 4 billion in the next few years — the current proposal is 4 billion by 2010. And then the final billion or so within a few years thereafter.
(LINK)

Wherever you look and read, it seems mobiles are emerging as one of the key technologies that we need to reckon with. But when my friends ask me, what do you really do? I tell them that - when in my research mode - I am interested in cutting-edge technology, future media and emerging digital cultures in the broad sense of the term. And then I pull out my own mobile - an old Nokia that has no additional functions excect shock protection and the ever-so-important flashlight. So I suppose I need to soon stop being the quentessential abstract academic who only talks about things and actually now get me one of these multi-function sleek sexy phones that I always predict that will probably have the most significant impact on how people communicate in the future. Just to have a look what the future feels like.