I wonder how much you can stretch the term “survival”. That would be some interesting reasearch field…

In the cultures we studied 3 objects were considered essential across all participants, cultures and genders were keys, money and mobile phone. Whilst this may seem obvious the interesting part of the study was in understanding the reasons why people considered these objects essential (largely survival, safety & security)…

There are naturally many other reasons why people carry a mobile phones - for entertainment, projecting status, a sense of belonging, or capturing and communicating an experiences using a camera phone to name a few, but the commonality was essentially their ability to help us survive.

http://www.janchipchase.com/blog/archives/2005/11/mobile_essentia.html

Concept of ‘personal space’ survives in virtual reality
Psychologists find real-world social rules mirrored in ‘Second Life’ interactions.

Jim Giles
http://www.nature.com/news/2006/060911/full/060911-3.html

Online personalities tend to behave in the same ways as real people when it comes to personal space.
Copyright 2006, Linden Research, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
(more…)

Wenn sich Mobilfunkunternehmen darauf konzentrieren würden, die Infrastruktur bereit zu stellen und die Netze und Geräte zu öffnen, wäre 3G schon lange ein Erfolg.

Auf einer Konferenz zum Thema 4G, Nachfolger von UMTS, hat ein Samsung-Manager die dritte Mobilfunkgeneration als einen “Fehler” bezeichnet. Der Markt habe nicht reagiert und bald sei die Technologie veraltet. Nicht alle Konferenzteilnehmer waren so pessimistisch.

(more…)