Earlier this year, the day after Halloween, my girlfriend, her dog, and I attended a pet costume dog show down in the East Village. There were hundreds of people and hundreds of dogs, almost all in costume. Many photographers, both amateur and professional, were snapping pictures. That night, when trying to remember the website of one photographer, I pondered about an idea:
If my cell phone had it's location logged via GPS (or cell towers) and there was some service (ala Friendster) that could comb though the millions of daily logs and place you on a time/location map with individuals that you appeared to have been in contact with for a few minutes, you could create a dynamic network of physical social interactions.
Now I know there have been plans in the works for cell phone based social networks for sometime. For example, you step into a bar in the middle of some little town on the southern tip of Germany and suddenly your phone starts vibrating because somebody you took a class with back in college is sitting at the end of the bar. Now this is an excellent idea, but I'm thinking of taking it a few steps further. This is where my "Share Everything" campaign comes in.
I'll outline an alternative solution to my Halloween example and show where it fails. For instance, the professional photographer could have simply handed out business cards to dog owners that he took a picture of. He could have used this to maybe attract individuals to his site and maybe even make some money off of advertising or charging for photos. Either way, he would have had to give me a
physical item, i.e. the business card. Another solution may have involved
beaming a website from his cell phone to my cell phone in order to remind me to visit his website the next time I was in front of a computer. Now this would be a pretty efficient method, but to me, it is still limited. For one thing, what if I decided at the time not to accept his cell phone
beam (It could have been
spam for all I know.) Now that transaction is lost in time, and very difficult to recover. Or maybe I was talking to another dog owner who snapped a pic of my dog, but we decided there was no need to exchange info. But let's say a month letter, the photo gets placed in some magazine and he wants to add the owner's info,
he can't, that transaction was lost.
Now we turn to my "Share Everything" campaign. Yes, as a privacy advocate, I know this is a difficult concept to swallow. But forgot that for a minute, who knows how the future will change our perceptions.
If their was a transactional log, this is where I coin the term "XOG"
pronounced "zog" Derived from "TRANSaction",
X and "log",
OG. If this XOG was able to record all of your daily transactional activities along with everyone else's transactional activities, and a good percentage of these folk allowed their activity to be shared with individuals that appeared to be in the same physical location at the same time; a new world of information sharing could be had. Maybe you're walking though Washington Square Park and somebody snaps a picture with your big head covering half of the Washington Arch. Wouldn't it be fun to have some website throw that photo in your Inbox?
Only if the photo taker agreed of course. Maybe you are hanging out at some party up in Spanish Harlem and you meet some chill cats, wouldn't it be cool to log in, check out who you were talking to, and send them a note?
We are living in a society where the amount of information being shared is enormous. Kids are walking around with library's full of information in the palm of their hands. The amount of information we carry and share will keep growing, we will always face a problem on how to organize and store it.
Why let physical transactions get in the away. Avoid the issue of physically transferring information from one individual to another. By using a service like I've mentioned above, we will not be required to physically transfer information from one individual to another. Information will be automatically recorded and shared, no work on your part, lazy boy.
