About 10 years ago, mobile phones were fairly expensive pieces of kit. As a result, not many people could see the point in having them; they could have a phone conversation on their land lines, they could use pay phones when they were out and they needed to contact someone, and the cost of a handset, connection fee for a network and commitment to a contract outweighed the benefit of having a phone in your pocket. So they were seen as being a business tool, for city traders who needed to access market information and make big decisions at a moments notice (in the car, on the golf course etc.)

But once you’ve got one, it’s hard to turn back. The ability to call someone or send a message makes you feel connected; there’s the peace of mind that if a family emergency was going on, you’d be told about it immediately. If something happens to you, you can call for help.

Eventually, they came to be seen as a personal, rather than a business device. Handset design became more important; they became fashion accessories, with added functionality; alarm clocks, cameras, music players, address books.

There is also a change in the way that we communicate with them. SMS or text messages were supposed to be a tool for engineers to test connections- not for consumers to communicate. But now in the UK, almost one and a half billion messages are sent every week- a number that’s still rising rapidly.

As the phone has become more portable, it’s also become more personal. Instead of calling someone’s home, you might be calling them in the pub with their friends, or on the bus. If they’ve forgotten to turn it off, you could be interrupting them in the middle of a film, a date or a job interview. So text messaging provides a less interruptive way of communicating- reply when you’re ready, at your convenience rather than at my demand. The rules and etiquette of this are still being established; when is it OK to ignore a call? How quickly should you reply to a text? If you’re late to meet someone, is a quick text as you’re leaving OK, or should you call as soon as you get a chance?

Right now, there’s another similar transition going on; a recent report from Ofcom talks about mobile broadband making that same transition from business to personal use- an ‘always on’ connection to the wider internet, rather than just the telephone network. That ‘always on’ connection to the internet isn’t just about having a constant connection to the office any more; it’s also about having a constant connection to everything else; from news, sports and weather forecasts to Facebook, entertainment or shopping, and the galaxy of information that’s at your fingertips from a Google search. The email that you want to check might just as well be a personal Hotmail account as the work address. (Of course, it might be both- with a permanently online mobile connection, will you ever really be out of the office?)

This blog is about the nature of that new mobile connection; how it changes behaviour, the opportunities it offers and the problems that it can cause. To keep with the theme, everything posted here will be written, reviewed, organized and edited on my mobile phone.

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