Social Connectivity

People want to share their experiences. During a workshop for mobile technologies hosted by Intel, there were a number of issues that came up with this design challenge. It is easy to see that, with the success of facebook, people want to be connected; community is important. Yet, so is privacy. "How people interact and how can a mobile device enhance their daily lives?"

Something that my partner, Nina, and I came up with was a mobile phone application to track the level of activity of your friends, as well as their location. Being new to Portland, and not knowing anyone when I moved up here, I also experienced the need to meet new people. But how is one to meet people when you don't have an established network? So, our application also included an activity invitation option. This would allow people who, say, want to go on a bike ride to send out an anonymous invitation from their mobile network. In this way, we would be using social networking to encourage social activity.

But is this a good thing?

At the end of the day, the group had an interesting discussion that addressed the issue of privacy and relevance to social networking. But I couldn't help but wonder: is our hunger for social networking (through internet and mobile devices) the result of a dysfunctional society? Would this type of application fill the void that has been created from the massive suburban sprawl that resulted in social isolation? I see this kind of mobile technology development as a desperate cry to the poor social structure of our cities today. But maybe that's just me, being an architect. :)