Time to set this (and myself) free

02/11/2008 by nicola.

I have previously mentioned about using a wiki to try and represent some of my thoughts etc, well here goes nothing, you can now decide how insane I am or not, if you haven’t already done so. I was - as a personal development project, hoping to translate it into some other languages but haven’t had time yet, so have stuck a Google translation gadget in for the time being.

I did actually set up this wiki, but always viewed it as currently renting a couple of folders of personal writing space on it. The mobsessed folder is out of date, in terms of an update with that - there isn’t one! I have not been able to focus enough since July, I have written and running some python scripts on my phone, but still not looked at Android Java and looked at mobile web in more detail and I still haven’t found a way to send SMS as files to a web server, but I believe more than I did in May / June that it is possible.

I used pbwiki due to ease of setup but it does mean people have to request access to edit which is a pain, however, you can easily copy from the source code, which is a step in that direction I suppose - could potentially move it to another wiki software too. Some of the pages have nothing there but an intention yet…

This is not formal research and I have not had an opportunity to complete any experiments yet. I also have not attempted to look at neurophysiology before so my understanding is less than basic, am going with gut feel then seeing (if I understand) if the research backs it up or not. I also still don’t quite understand why my own brain which must know how it functions appears to be incapable of helping me type, write, read and understand it easily.

So I am not presenting anything as conclusions, it is ideas only. This wiki does not currently have appropriately cited references, it is a mess of thoughts. It should have and I hope to get that fixed soon. I owe a thanks to Mustafa too for a conversation about - I don’t know how long ago it was - 6, maybe 8 years ago when we were talking about mobile phones and he mentioned about the importance of magnets and magnetism in future technologies which had never occurred to me at the time and really kick-started my own thinking on mobile phones and connectivity.

Thanks especially to wonderful conversations with Inge de Waard and Jo Tait over the past year about mobiles, technology, learning, with their amazing and funny insights into these areas.

Apologies to the following who should be properly cited - who have greatly influenced my thinking on any of this would be - George Siemens - just about everything he has ever published about connectivity, humans and brains in the last few years especially hci and mobile connectivity aspects, ditto Stephen Downes on networks, technologies and openness (btw in case anyone was wondering, I was hoping to join in with the 12 week coursversation and bring some of this to the table, but life got in the way…was genuinely gutted not to),

Jay Cross on how humans move and communicate informally, Yrjo Engestrom on mobility, Jan Chipchase for amazing insights into mobile use and design, Michiel de Lange’s research, Howard Rheingold for the amazing Smart Mobs, Mark Kramer on using mobile devices via Mamk.net, C.Enrique Ortiz on mobility, Ajit Jaokar on mobile networks and openness, Jurgen Scheible with his great tutorials and book who managed to explain Python and programming in a way that I could understand and Ken Banks, Nathan Eagle’s work on mobility in Africa, massive thanks to all of them. Also thanks to various magical people in my delicious network !

I still don’t know where mobile learning is going and since joining the university where I currently work, I seem to have understood less and less what learning is about. I am still undecided about how mobile learning could be designed, completed, or even if it should. I needed to answer some questions and this is a first attempt to do so - an attempt to try and find some organisation of my own thinking about mobile connectivity - what were devices all about, how they behave with other technologies in an environment, how they connect, how they are networked, the randomness of human beings and how this all links back to human physiology and the brain, I think a lot of answers lie in our understanding of magnetic - electromagnetic waves.

I still have a feeling that some of the best mobile learning will be informal mobile learning which links into all of this. In 2008 with increased attention being focused on being mobile, mobile devices and mobile web, it felt like a good year to try and write - something in some way. However I need to move on from wherever this is at - I think why mobile phones and mobility are of so much interest to me is that like many others I think I am nomadic - continually unsettled, continually moving around, maybe I’m trying to make sense of that too - but that’s a bit deep and off the point for this blog.

Oh and because I’m not sure when I will next be posting, I am still looking at wikis and visualisation (I still have it as a to do and I’m still interested in it which makes it kind of difficult not to) after whining last week, someone very kind, patient and wise who knows me, suggested very nicely that I might have different ideas to 2000 other people and should still go for it - I started to look at ajax this week and got as far as attempting to put a list of pages into a jquery to display a treemap (don’t think treemap is best visualisation for this anyway) - but seeing as I know nothing about jqueries it unsurprisingly didn’t work, but I have not given up hope.

PS if you do visit the RFID page and you get squeamish at the sight of needles……..

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