There’s an interesting concept in Lacan’s psychoanalythic theory stating that, since the psyche is organized in terms of language, in order for something to exist, that something must have a name (actually that’s not exactly what Lacan says, it’s just one of the thousands of conclusions one may reach after trying to read his stuff – trust me, I know).
In the technology field, this is so true: take the example of AJAX. It has been around for ages, since IE4. But it took Jesse James Garrett writing an article about it for it to actually “exist”. And why has he thought of it in the first place? Because he wanted to sell the concept to a client and how can you sell something that doesn’t exist? You just can’t. Ergo, AJAX. Now it has a name. Now, because you can name it, that cool browser behavior on Google Maps seems more tangible, even though it’s been around for a while.
I am sure we can think of a thousand examples of such things in the technology world. But you don’t need to go too far – Dave Winer is pulling another AJAX on us as we speak.
Years after Howard Rheingold’s “Shibuya Epiphany”, Dave Winer has noticed mobility. That’s cool, most of Silicon Valley hasn’t noticed it yet, so in a way he is actually being a pioneer. In his early mobility endeavours, he has created the concept of Rivers, which are stripped down websites, easily accessible by mobile users[1].
Wanna see what it looks like? Fire up your browser on your S60[2] phone and go to http://bbcriver.com/ or http://nytimesriver.com/. Yep. It’s that simple – “rivers”. Rogers Cadenhead hits the nail on the head when he says:
I can’t think of another technologist who is better at singlehandedly getting people to buy into his ideas, whether they’re good ones like XML-RPC or inconsequential ones like a simple mobile RSS hack, which is being touted as something revolutionary by Jeff Jarvis, Dan Farber, Read/Write Web and Dave himself.
So now that we have rivers, and I have been reading my feeds on Bloglines Mobile for more than one year now (or reading “my collection of rivers”, should I start calling it that now?), what does that mean?
It means that mobility is being packaged differently so old-time webheads can digest it, now that they are screwing around with their first smartphones and thinking what exactly does it all mean for the industry and their businesses. Yeah, this is Shibuya Epiphany 2.0, Silicon Valley edition. For anyone who’s been working with mobility for some time it sounds kind of silly, but actually it isn’t – it means that good minds are joining the fray and seomthing good might come out of it. Stay tuned.
Update: If you don’t know what the Shibuya Epiphany is, I wrote a separated post about it.
1. If you take a look where Nokia is taking the S60 3rd edition browser (please please please do yourself a favor and take a look at that demo), you’ll see that the concept of River is kind of old in itself. Why? Because nobody can, in their right mind, expect the industry to transcode the billions of websites that are out there so we can enjoy them on our mobile phones. What we want to do (and what Nokia is doing in S60 3rd edition) is empowering mobile users with a web browsing application that enables them to view websites just as they would see them in their computers – same user experience, no need for transcoding the content.
2. Yep, S60. Dave Winer is all Blackberry this, Blackberry that. Let’s talk *real* smartphones, shall we?
© 2006 Bernardo Carvalho
10 responses so far ↓
1 Scripting News for 9/4/2006 « Scripting News Annex // Sep 5, 2006 at 12:49 am
[...] Raw Socket: “Mobility is being packaged differently so old-time webheads can digest it.” [...]
2 Pieter Overbeeke // Sep 5, 2006 at 3:35 am
I’m reading and commenting this post with a ‘real’ smartphone (nokia n91), using opera mini as a browser. I don’t know what you mean by the same userexperience but unless the next nokia comes with a 17 inch screen it’s never going to be the same as on a desktop. Websites that offer feeds do not have to be transcoded. we can build our own tools on top of them. I.e. Take a look at my own mobile startpage: http://www.opmlmanager.com/mob/overbeeke (this may be a real phone but a wish it had a real keyboard like the blackbarry ;) )
3 SCrunch // Sep 5, 2006 at 9:49 am
What about those folks who do not want to view their news on a mobile device with all the same content as seen on the laptop or PC. More data especially on a mobile device, is not necessarily a good thing.
The beauty of Dave’s concept of mobile news rivers is in the simplicity. You get text and links only. The links go to print versions. Clean, simple. No images, no ads, and ease of navigation at the top level for those times when you do not wish to carry the laptop. It is an alternative – just right for some but not for all.
4 Matt Terenzio // Sep 5, 2006 at 12:33 pm
I have a $250 dollar phone and the rivers won’t work because it doesn’t support HTML, just WAP.
This phone is less than a year old.
Including the rivers I created at:
http://ny.riverofjobs.com
http://chi.riverofjobs.com
http://la.riverofjobs.com
http://sanfran.riverofjobs.com
Oh well. I guess I should create a truly mobile version?
5 Gustaf Erikson // Sep 5, 2006 at 3:47 pm
Great piece! More or less what I think, only written much better.
Also kudos to Dave to linking to it.
6 Why Winer’s Mobile “Breakthrough” Might Be Meaningful After All at MobHappy // Sep 6, 2006 at 3:35 am
[...] Then, Tuesday, Gustaf points to a post that gives about the best summation of the Mobile Winerama, saying that the utility or value of his news rivers concept is really inconsequential; what is important is that Winer’s made a bunch more people pay attention to mobile. As Rawsocket puts it, “For anyone who’s been working with mobility for some time it sounds kind of silly, but actually it isn’t – it means that good minds are joining the fray and something good might come out of it. Stay tuned.” [...]
7 Tim // Sep 6, 2006 at 9:11 am
http://www.tiggdo.com does something similiar
8 Preoccupations // Sep 6, 2006 at 9:18 am
Empowering mobile users…
I’m awaiting delivery of a Nokia E70 (All About Symbian preview here, review here). The new Nokia browser is one of the key lures that drew me towards upgrading. (There’s a comparison of Opera Mini/Nokia S60 3rd edition browser here…
9 Shibu-what? | rawsocket dot org // Jun 5, 2008 at 1:04 am
[...] that Dave Winer linked me because of the post below on Shibuya Epiphany 2.0, I feel that maybe I should explain what is the Shibuya Epiphany to begin with. Well, maybe I [...]
10 Eternal September 2.0 | rawsocket dot org // Jun 5, 2008 at 1:21 am
[...] once told you about Shibuya Epiphany 2.0 – when old time webheads get exposed to mobility for the first time and start coming up with these [...]
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