This article in The Times talks about technology narrowing life experiences:

"Technology has given us a universe entirely for ourselves — where the serendipity of meeting a new stranger, hearing a piece of music we would never choose for ourselves or an opinion that might force us to change our mind about something are all effectively banished."

But what's new about this? Surely we've always self-organised along these lines? Look at ways in which people have socialised in the past: by religion (where you meet other people who share your worldview and moral values), by geography (where you meet people who share at least your environment, and usually much more), by sex. None of these have gone away, they've just been augmented by technology which lets us arrange social encounters by hooking together people who share interests, now matter how dispersed they are physically. Often these people even have opposing values or beliefs - after all, the Internet is awash with disagreement and argument.

"That bloke next to you on the bus could be listening to heavy metal or a Gregorian chant. You’ll never know. And so, bit by bit, you’ll never really know him. "

Sorry - but was there ever a golden age where individuals met on the bus and bonded over shared love of classical music?

Ah great - it looks like someone has done it: produced a QuickSilver-like product for mobile phones. Qix "ugments the phone interface by automatically presenting candidates to the user based on the data he or she inputs. The information used to generate candidates is sourced from a suite of different data stores on the phone".

Where can I get a copy of this? The basic way in which I've interacted with a mobile phone - press a menu key, get options, or type in a number - hasn't changed since my first mobile back in 1998/1999 (I was a late developer in mobile terms, and held off getting one for as long as possible). Just as QuickSilver completely changed the way I use my Mac, I'm looking forward to being able to hunt through the increasing amounts of Stuff on my phone in more efficient ways.

I see LifeBlog as a prototype for this kind of thing: it does an excellent job of bringing together lots of sources of data and presenting them in a unified fashion, but it's about *reading*. Qix looks like it might go further than this, and let you not just read Stuff on your phone, but Do Things.

"In the future, music won't be made.  It will be grown."

Without sound too po-faced about it, I like this idea but I think it'll miss the humour and referential nature of mash-up music. For instance, one of the best things I've heard (that I've never manage to hunt down) was Hexstatic turning the theme from Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy into a somewhat stomping dance tune, whilst projecting elements from the end of 2001 onto a massive screen, interspersed with "Don't Panic" written in large friendly letters.

That's not just about finding two pieces of audio that fit well together: it's about meshing cultural references (that will be particularly meaningful for someone of my age or thereabouts) into something new. This reminds me of a comment from Harry Allen:

"Hip hop is massively hypertextual, which is the reason I started this journey. There is a huge dialog within the hip hop culture, in which artists strike references to other artists, other records, news events, cartoons, TV shows, advertising, imagery, words, infiections, sounds, ideas, and concepts of all kinds. "

The Feature on DRM for handset vendors: "...they would be paying an extra dollar to make their own handsets less valuable to customers"

Business users want devices without digital cameras: "We also need devices without digital cameras. You'd think it a simple request, but this is a hot enterprise topic. Most firms won't let cameras anywhere near their business."

I think you'll find that's "want", not "need". In the same way that teachers want children to not be texting each other during class, and the music industry wants you to not record CDs from your friends or use Kazaa. Genies, bottles, etc.

I also wonder if there's a disconnect here between what business *users* want, and what business *representatives* want. I've never heard any individual bemoan the fact that they were given a cameraphone for their work.

And I don't see how this can be about industrial espionage or trade secrets. If your employees want to steal valuable information from you, they can easily purchase specialist bugging equipment which is was more unobtrusive than a cameraphone.