The Future of Mobile
by Loke Kar Seng

Much has been written of the coming mobile revolution. Of course in the wake of the dot-com bubble, predictions become more cautious and circumspect. WAP is struggling for acceptance even though the public has largely rejected it, but perhaps may find welcome use within corporations. Telcos that has bidded for 3G are now scratching their heads while sitting on a pile of debts. In spite of this, the other type of mobile player has done well -- the Palm and its progeny. Docomo has its enthuasistic users. Apart from the usual stock information and games download, not much has been articulated on future uses for these mobile devices. This article hopes to stretch the imagination further.

The basic mobile device I will consider will have some CPU power, like the palm, and is capable of wireless communication between peers, possibly using bluetooth, and also client-server communication, possibly with a WAP or WAP-like server. All this is within the capability of production devices in the near future -- it is the applications that is not available. Much of touted use of WAP is to emulate Internet browser on the mobile device which really is a non-function as the form factor and user mobility makes the case against it. Once viewed in this way, it is difficult to remember that a mobile device is basically a transmitter and receiver with mobile computational ability that is location sensitive.

Here is a selection that are not exhaustive but just an indication what can be possible.

Monitoring

I was told that one very young Australian was made very rich this idea -- by sending pulse rate of F1 drivers via WAP during the F1 race. The idea is that users at the race not only get see the race, now they can be even closer by being able to monitor the vital signals of drivers and their machines by dialling in the WAP service. This idea can perhaps be extended to inumerable sports?

A more serious application would be for monitoring patient vital signs, possibly at home or out of the hospital. Or even offenders who are on parole. Taking this idea further on, it can also be used to monitor products, like your missing baggage, if GPS is available, or if the device is cheap enough, can be imbedded in any products for monitoring within the supply chain.

Interest Match Making

If the user base is large enough, the mobile device can be used a beacon that continously transmit the interests of the owner. For example in a trade exhibition, the device can broadcast expressions of interests and other owners with filters set to match this interest can reply. Negotiations and bargaining can even begin before the information is filtered to the owners. Groups in MIT media lab has done interesting research on automatic bargaining agents in the Kasbah project. There are also many interested agent based projects there.

Distributed Coordination

An example of distributed coordination usage would be in traffic situations. Central control of traffic is often difficult because local traffic information is not available. Mobile devices by sending location and time information (possible a PDA with GPS that is already in the market) can help by sending information to a central server or preferably computation can be done in a distributed manner among mobile devices.
The Trafficopter system assists the driver of a vehicle in selecting the fastest route to her destination and plots it on a map. Devices into the cars themselves collect and propagate traffic-related information in a decentralized, self-organizing fashion with no single point of failure. No permanent infrastructure (i.e. magnetic coils on on the road, stationary information gathering units) or centralized traffic control systems are needed for the system to operate. The tools used are a traffic simulation software and a set of PDAs / WindowsCE-based terminals equipped with GPS and wireless transceivers.

Algorithms with very simple rules has already be studied for understanding flock and swarm behaviour, i.e., how bird flock fly together without bumping into each other, or how fireflies coordinate their blinking. Simple rules like this require very little computing power and can be utilised to create cooperative behaviour that can reduce traffic problems.

Distributed Exchanges

While match-making is great, but the chances of finding somebody within the same location and time is not great usually unless at special functions like trade fairs. In order to extend match-making over greater geographic and temporal space, we can store and forward distributed exchanges. Store and forward distributed exchanges differ from normal electronic exchanges in that they are not necessary located in one electronic space, they can exists in part in different spaces and can be forwarded from devices to devices. Mobile devices participate and cooperate in spreading portions of the exchange, rather like store and forwarding e-mail.

Quorum Sensing

Quorum sensing is a general bacteria communication function. Basically quorum sensing is the ability of bacteria detecting the size of their community within a certain location. They do this by detecting the chemical concentration gradient. Once a certain quorum is detected, they may begin to act differently. The individual bacteria are asking around to see how many neighbors they have and then deciding if they themselves need to begin carrying out a particular function to contribute to the colony. A small, diffuse population of bacteria infecting a host will not be able to produce enough toxins to generate any sort of beneficial response (for the bacteria) in the targeted host. It is therefore only effective to produce toxins in a high density situation so that a result is obtained that will then benefit the entire population of bacteria.

This behaviour can be adopted for use in various ways. For example, when the size of the crowd in a store interested in a particular product, expressed electronically through their mobile device, has reached a certain number, the retailer may begin to reduce the price to ensure sale. This spontaneous sale can attract further others who has only displayed mild interest - a situation created whereby both parties profit.

Virtual Computing

Not to be intimidated by the bigger cousins, mobile devices can also be clustered to boost computing power. Moreover they can do through wireless, making it much more convenient. While gathering around your favorite watering-hole, your mobile devices can be happily churning away cpu-cycles in a virtual collaborative manner.

Interface

The form factor of mobile devices has created novel user interfaces. We are not limited to poke and scratch. The research group in the Compag Western Research Lab has created a rock and scroll inteface ( http://research.compaq.com/wrl/projects/RocknScroll/RocknS.html) . Rock 'n' Scroll is a user input method that lets users gesture to scroll, select, and command a handheld application without resorting to buttons, touchscreens, spoken commands, or other input methods. There opportunities to further improve in input methods than the usual pen input.

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