Countryside shopping with a GPS in your mobile

I was wondering when they would appear – latitudes and longitudes in advertisements for countryside shops, cafes and other attractions. This year they did. Will we see new patterns of localization of businesses and other attractions evolve, changing the relations between the centre and periphery of urban regions?

In Sweden, just like in many other countries, rural shops and factory outlets are a popular goal for trips by car, and sometimes even organized bus travel. The most popular one is Gekås in Ullared, which attracts 3.9 million visitors a year. Ullared is just a village with around 800 inhabitants but around 1 000 people work at Gekås. How did such a remote countryside store become so popular? How did people find their way to it?

My guess would be mouth-to-mouth information combined with traditional advertising. Today train and bus trips to Ullared – even from quite remote places like Stockholm – are arranged. And on Gekås home page you actually find the coordinates of the parking lot.

Johannesens close to Båstad publish not only their own geographical coordiantes but also those of neighbouring attractions.

But it was in a slightly more exclusive context I first found the signs of this new geographical practise, that a place anywhere on the Earth can be pinpointed just with a combination of figures and found using the GPS built in your phone. Johannesens, a clothing outlet not far from Båstad, in their summer leaflet not only published their own coordinates. As a service, they also listed the positions of nearby attractions like Nivå 125 and Café Killeröd. For those of you who do not know Sweden, Båstad is one of the most exclusive seaside resorts of the west coast, famous for tennis and related to the “tennis king”, Gustav V,  and infamous for the splashy champagne parties of noveau riche teenagers. So – even if the GPS in mobiles or as a separate gadget – is becoming a frequent phenomenon, Båstad would be one of the first places to find people using GPS – as a function in their phones or as part of their “car environment”.

Conclusions: New mobile technologies now offer opportunities that changes the rules of business and other localization. Distances still matter. Visibility in an attractive urban setting is still important. But remote places, off the most important routes, now benefit from a technology that makes wayfinding easier. Actually, these portable and ever-accessible technologies may lead to significant changes in the economical geography of regions.

So, open a pub in the middle of the forest, publish the coordinates on your web site and the customers will start swarming in.

Had to test it!

What?
Updating the blog from the mobile.
To read works great, with the text sqeezed into a long column.
But to enter text: anything better than QuickPress? I admit, haven’t looked properly.

Cell phone coverage and mobile broadband

Mobile broadband promises the freedom to reach the internet wherever you are. You are no longer stuck in places with fixed network access, like home, workplace and the privileged “hot spots” of the city. When driving, cycling, walking, trekking, and spending time in remote places, mobile broadband always gives you full access to your global connections, on your laptop or mobile. Work wherever you want. But wait, really… apart from the fact that you should perhaps be on holiday, avoiding work rather than cherishing it, is this a fairy tale or a true story?

This spring I made an exception from my principle of not making deals over the telephone and got my Glocalnet dongle together with an 18 months deal including free traffic at night and during weekends. 89 sek (8 €) a month. A bargain, I thought, and well adapted to my leisure habits. The mobile broadband coverage of my preferred holiday environment in the Bjäre area of north east Scania should be alright. [1] I was looking forward to some leisure time surfing on rainy Sundays in our summer house.

However,  indoors the connection speed (download) appeared to be around 5-7 kbps (kilobit per second), far from the boasted (yet formally correct) “up to 6 Mbps”. I got a connection speed even slower than with my first telephone modem in the early 90ies, which was 14.4 kbps. And the internet in those days was adapted to slow modems.

Coverage Bjäre summer 2009, inside car (or house)

Glocalnet is owned by Telenor Sverige AB, and therefore using Telenor’s network. Trying to solve the mystery, I went to the coverage map, and found an explanation: I was located in “the Bermuda triangle” of mobile communication, in a black hole covering the central part of Bjäre.

Even more funny was to discover that I could find good connections not far from our house, in places like the wildlife sanctuary or the beach. However, it would be adventurous to make generalizations from those findings.

The moral of the story is that you can probably find a lack of mobile broadband whenever you really need it – and an abundance where you have already got it through WiFi or fixed connections. Or in those places where full internet connection is exactly what you do not need.

Another moral is that these specific observations – rather than a good story –  may already  be history.  Bjäre is definitely one of those districts where mobile internet providers normally do not hesitate to make expansions. And I have not been there for several weeks. [2]

1. It should be noted that Bjäre is not a remote and sparsely populated countryside.  Located close to the Öresund region it is rather a corner of Scania where businesses (like Lindab, Peab, Nolato and others) are blooming and the prices of holiday accommodation are ever rising.

2. However, the absence of a central empty area in today’s coverage maps of Bjäre does not fully convince me!

Country Road Mobiles

Cell phones are certainly nothing new to the village where I like to spend my summers. However this is the first year that I notice them as a sound feature of the rural landscape.

Working in the garden, I hear the loud voice of a woman from afar. It is definitely not a conversation involving two people walking. I distinctly recognize it as one side of a telephone talk. The woman is cycling up the hill, so there is a certain strain in her voice. I don’t really hear the words, but it’s clear she is a local girl. Now she passes on the other side of the hedge. “I’ll be up at the house in a minute”, I hear her panting. Was this a prelude to a conversation later held at home, face to face or over the fixed phone?

Next example, a few days later (this is really a small village and one cannot expect crowds of mobile users): I am burning up old branches and twigs in the very same garden. Another voice, another woman: This one is definitely mid-Swedish, and there is a tinge of public administration and networking in it.  She may be talking to a friend, but it could also be a colleague. Our nice neighbours, the zero-eights¹, no more genuine villagers² than us. Just as she passes behind the hedge, she turns off her mobile and switches³ to F2F-mode: “Hallo, by the way”, she says a bit awkwardly behind the leaves. Talking through hedges is a little uncomfortable even among people that know each other.

“So, what is the point?”, my partner asks, reading the above. “Old village life is long gone and this is how it is now,” she says. “What do you want to prove?”

Uphill, towards the village

I consider the different motives for telling the story. One is my astonishment about this manifestation of change. Perhaps I still see the village through the glasses of my childhood, when Johan and Anna drove by in their two-horse-drawn cart on their way to milk their cows. Or when we were picking potatoes brought up by a “sprätt“⁴,  a kind of earth propeller, attached to a grey Ferguson tractor.  I know all that is gone, but obviously there are some rests lurking in my mind. “You’re a sentimental fool”, my partner says.

A second motive was to display two ways in which mobile phone usage appears on a country road. The first woman, who refers to local contexts, may then represent mobility as a parochial phenomenon, whereas the second one stands for a more global mobility. Although this may be correct in the situations described (I admit that even there the evidence is anecdotal), we have no information on how these two people relate to their respective worlds, locally or globally. Still, it is significant if overheard mobile conversations relate to a commonly know context or to the strange regions outside of it.

“What this really is about”, my resident critic continues, “is that you feel uneasy there, behind the hedge, when you do not know whether to say hello or not. There is this unwritten law from the old days that one should always greet passers by and now the use of cell phones has put an end to it.” I guess she has a point there.

1) 08 being the area code of the Stockholm region.

2) Countryside authenticity today, what is it really?

3) Is this a switch in the Harrison White sense, establishing the very spot as a public arena?

4) As a direct translation, ripper is too strong a word, but you get the idea!

The Time Before the Mobile

The public use of cell phones is no longer a matter of reflection and wonder.  Their potential of reach – any time, anywhere – has become self-evident. Does anyone still reflect upon the trans-formation of everyday connectivity that the mobiles meant?

The first time I used a mobile was on a field research trip to Eskilstuna, walking on a Fröslunda street. For some reason – not very important, as I remember it – I made a call to my workplace in Lund. It was clear that the department secretary thought the whole thing with cell phones was completely ridiculous. Only yuppies used them. But now, in 1995, the department had purchased one, “for researchers in the field”.

A few years later, I got my own. The crucial reason for buying one was the bad standard of regional trains in Skåne. Trains were often delayed and it was really a drag waiting for Pat at the station, with no or lousy information about when the train would arrive or even where it was. Sometimes she would borrow a phone from a fellow passenger. Now we bought a Nokia each. Within-family communication improved. Later I upgraded to a snobbish model in shining metal with a sliding cover.

In Lisbon 1999 (it was during the 25th anniversary of the revolution) preparing an EU project (about teleworking, actually) I found it fascinating to be able to read and send e-mail on my Psion 5 via the cell phone. Charges were directly related to time so the trick was first to write all the e-mails, then connect and send.

Texting was not part of our routine, though. It was in 2005, a very turbulent year for me personally, that I understood the benefits of SMS. In our life, texting still is the main type of remote interaction. When on the move, texting is brief and clear, whereas talking is connected to disturbing or being overheard, to background noise and lousy transmission. Texting admits a delay in answering that sometimes is convenient. But when in need for an immediate answer or a longer dialogue, making a call is the only option.

That’s it! None of the functions added to mobiles later had a significant effect on how we live and keep in touch.  Although I do enjoy being able to check the weather or playing with the GPS.

But before the mobile, how did you manage to meet?

The young woman asking this question was dead serious. I was interviewing part of the board of a housing coop in Flemingsberg when I led the conversation into the topic of interaction via cell phones. Me and the other participant, a man of my age, looked at each other. “Well, you see, in the old days…” For the first time, I realized that there is a large portion of humanity (people under let’s say 30 or 40 in the Western world) who find it hard to imagine a life without mobiles. So do I, and most people of my generation. With the exception that now and then we think about the past, and marvel when we reflect upon the changes since the time before the mobile phone.

Tell me what you remember, in English eller på svenska om du föredrar det!

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Cell Phones in the City of Glass

Vancouver not only looks like a small town, it also has the atmosphere of one. People I met, for instance walking in a park, now and then nodded or said Hi! When leaving the bus, it is common to shout a loud “thank you” to the driver. Vancouverites also like to join ongoing conversations on the bus or in in the Skytrain. Standing at a street corner reading a map is a certain way of getting helpful questions like “Excuse me, are you lost?”  (No, I did not say: Well I would be without this map!) On the Seabus, a man asked us if we were from Denmark and apologized when we told him we were Swedish. It appeared that he had even visited Malmö!

Well, there is downtown of course - but still Vancouver often feels like a small town!

Vancouver seems to have a more cordial public atmosphere than for instance the much smaller Malmö. It would be foolish to jump to the conclusion that this difference has something to do with the public use of cell phones.  However, one does not see cell phones utilized in the streets as often as in Malmö. One explanation could be that people in Vancouver are more discreet – but also more keen on public face to face engagement. A simpler reason is that the percentage of mobile phone ownership is quite low in Canada (65% – lower than Argentina, Uruguay, USA and Venezuela) compared to Sweden (110% – obviously not so few people here have more than one cell phone). The more expensive pricing of telecommunications in North America may be an additional reason.

Apart from this experience of a lower frequence of use, I did not detect any patterns of handling mobile phones that where different from those I have noticed in Malmö and elsewhere. For instance, take the man occupying the best view over the city with his loud conversation, on a beautiful night in Queen Elisabeth Park. Or the young woman, nervously checking her text messages at the bus stop. Not talking loudly, but still clearly expressing her tension.

Should not a friendly and helpful Vancouverite blend into his loud-voiced talk? Or ask what worries her? Of course not, the public use of mobiles represent something other than friendly face to face interaction among strangers.  Like everywhere else, phone users in Vancouver are untouchable, existing outside the realm of street cordiality.

As a tourist for a couple of weeks, I really enjoyed the friendly atmosphere in Vancouver. But the visit also made me more aware about the possible effects of the kind of absence from public space that comes with mobile phones.

Read:

Coupland, D (2000): City of Glass. Douglas Coupland’s Vancouver. Douglas & Macintyre.

Mobile Phones in Movies

One way of following the spread and acceptance of mobile telephony is to look for how often and in what ways cell phones appear in movies. As parts of a plot or as attributes of characters, cell phones have become so frequent in movies and television series that rather their absence is noteworthy. Still, mobile phones are often skilfully used to signify something or to construct an intricate story-line. Just as fixed telephones were employed as props in older movies, today cell phones are used to enhance the drama in one way or the other.

In fiction movies, the mobile has become a significant object defining a role – by the way it is turned on or off, held, talked on, carried, worn, placed on the table, dropped, forgotten, and by how it looks and sounds. It is a prop used for self presentation and the interaction between the character and her/his phone is sometimes skilfully framed as a drama within the drama. For instance: how does the character react when the phone rings or blips?

Mobiles have also radically changed the plots of detective stories and thrillers. The hero no longer must be contacted via the wired telephone in the favourite bar or restaurant but can be reached anywhere. Mobile phones are examined (by the police or intelligence agencies) in search of phone numbers and contacts. The phone itself is a source of evidence, circumstantial or not, in the form of text messages, numbers called and calls received, images taken and videos recorded – and also fingerprints and DNA. Thanks to roaming, the user of a cell phone can be tracked through the city. The pursuer, however, can be led astray if the hunted person for instance drops the phone on a passing lorry.

A web search that I made recently gave some interesting results. The combination of “cell phone” and “movie” produced a wide range of hits that went beyond what I was looking for. Many refer to the phenomenon of using mobiles to record video and even make films. Others address the nuisance of phone signals and even conversations in movie theatres. Textually.org, a website dedicated to texting and SMS offers a good introduction to most themes, see SMS and The Movies. A sister site, picurephoning.com, covers cell phone video, a phenomenon that has also developed into an art form. But let’s focus on cell phones portrayed in films.

A good introduction is this transcript of a National Public Radio program, covering a range of aspects. The conversation refers to an article by Zachary Pincus-Roth in Los Angeles Times, which explores the intricacies of using mobiles in movie plots. Among other things, he points out the downsides of ubiquitous communication technology. In the Guardian, with respect to such drawbacks, critic Joe Queenan discusses why (like No Country for Old Men) so many dramas and thrillers today are set in the past.

As soon as I started watching the Coen brothers’ dark shoot-’em-up about a philosophical psychopath on the loose in rural Texas, I realised why the movie was set a full quarter-century in the past. No mobile phones. No internet. No Google. No easy access to phone records, maps, personal histories, criminal records. No way to track the killer merely by pinpointing the last phone tower that handled his call. No easy way in; no easy way out.

So, it is not the way cell phones are utilized as attributes to characterise a person that is important here. In that sense, cell phones are no different from Zippos, Volvo P 1800’s and Patek Philippe’s – or worn out shoes, ill fitting suits and rusty pocket knifes. Instead, Queenan pinpoints the specific contemporaneous connectivity that the Coen brothers manage to avoid.

Current technology has fundamental effects on the ways narratives are put together, as long as they are set in the present. The cinema here provides a mirror displaying the ongoing changes in society and in the ways everyday life is enacted. When watching a movie, somehow the absence or presence of sophisticated communication devices – and their consequences for daily life – become a matter of active observation and reflection.

Long Distance Love

Cell phones appear ever so often in fiction movies these days. Still, it is hard to deny that the vast majority of fiction movies depict but a small segment of the living conditions of our world. So much more interesting, then, when the mobile phone appears in a documentary – in the hands of Alisher, a young migrant worker from Kyrgyzstan trying to make his living in Moscow.

Alisher on the train to Moscow

Long Distance Love is a beautiful, sad but not entirely pessimistic movie about having to leave ones home and family and go to the big city to look for a job, a reality shared by millions. This quiet drama has a love story in its focus but it is simultaneously about conditions that can be described as “modern slavery and global injustice”.

We estimate that there are today approximately 12–16 million guest workers in Russia who support themselves with low-paid jobs. Most of them come from the Central Asia countries, where unemployment rates are enormous. (Natalja Vlasova, Head of the Russian Department of Migration.)

Alisher is newly married but has to leave his pregnant wife to earn a living for her and the family. As there are no jobs available where he lives, he has look for work in Moscow. He is not paid well, but also tempted to spend the little he earns in bars. Very little money is sent home.

What keeps him from complete disaster, it seems, are the signs of life from Dildora, his young wife. There are several emotional episodes of reading a letter, talking on the phone or receiving text messages. Especially one text message, received on a night downtown, is a strong reminder about his responsibilities for his wife and child. Alisher feels ashamed for not answering texts from Dildora, who worries about him and their future.

I will not disclose how Long Distance Love continues. See it, not for the details of mediated interaction, but for its remarkable take on living conditions in a globalised world.

Mobile Video and Concert Experience

Goran Bregovic and his orchestra had no problem to fill the Malmö Concert Hall. We were part of an enthusiastic audience that most of the time had difficulties to stay in their chairs. During the show, however, I discovered more and more people who not only used their mobiles to take pictures but also made video recordings. I took their example, and this clip catches some of these video photographers.

done

Using my phone, I found what many people before me have found, that photographing or recording an event actually detaches you from it. I was no longer part of a great music experience but instead concentrated upon how to catch the best parts, when to start and when to stop etc.

In that way, the mobile not only can bring us intimately close to the people we love, but also distance us from vibrant emotional experiences, transforming us to cold-hearted voyeurs. This is a well known occupational hazard for professional photographers, but what happens when the phenomenon becomes omnipresent?

I am neither referring to the kind of abuse that involves bullying and shaming for instance among youths, nor to the more extreme example of teens deliberately creating “accidents” and making video clips showing mates getting hurt to spread among other buddies. I am talking about a more general tendency to record or take photographs instead of to participate. There are dangers involved with this which may affect personalities and as a worst consequence lead to taking photos or videos instead of acting when people are injured and in need of help.