Concepts and Dreaming Out Loud

I think that one of the issues that I have with this mobile media stream (which I’m a part of) is that many of the louder voices don’t seem to dream out loud often. When they do dream out loud, it sounds the response end of Henry Ford’s famous quote,

If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.

Frankly speaking, I totally agree. And hence my thoughts about mobile going in other directions from some louder opinions.

For those things mobile, we’ve got to get past faster and shiner – even when it helps from a marketing aspect – because that’s not the point. If you were to ask the point of mobile, regardless of region and need, it boils down to communication and capacity to be productive. Anything else added to a mobile is extra, and in most cases, what’s being fawned about in mobiles today is just that – the extra fluff.

When I saw the Line Phone – a concept phone out of China that’s been making its way around the web the past few days, I smiled. Here was something that not just got it, but it actually answered the question about mobile that I’m always looking for in a new device – how does the tech get out of the way so that I can enjoy the life around me more?

How could you not smile and start to dream a bit louder after seeing that? Look at what’s in your hand – or next to you – there’s nothing that acts that seamless. Nothing that you can add to your device that will be that smooth. And frankly, that’s good. This should provokes us to dream a bit further than what’s in our hands. Me? Oh, I’m more than dreaming, mobile like this has to be my next device – anything else is a failure for us to make dreams real.

Much like the Future of Screens Video that I was blessed to contribute some opinions towards, a concept should put us in a place where we aren’t just dreaming, but finding something tangable where we can talk about that dream.

I used to feel that way about some mobiles. The N95, the iPhone, the Treo even – these were mobiles that in their very existence caused us to imagine life differently. And for some of us more advantrageous, we’d actually try and get there. I try to dream and live this dream now with my N97, but its not possible for a number of reasons – the least of which being that this device wasn’t built to match a dream, it was built to match a profit number.

Sure, faster horses might make sense towards being relevant to how we speak about these dreams. But we have to be able to look past that and touch something just a bit further. Else, no matter how loud we are, the dreams will come out lived senselessly.