The new fundamentalness of mobile contact
Posted by Judy Breck on October 23, 2007
The image above is from a fast-growing part-time employment service in Japan. It is taken from a blog post by entrepreneur Joi Ito, who explains:
My sister has written about the Japanese youth behavior where less and less stuff is planned - the kids going out and using their mobile devices to meet up or deciding to do things while constantly keeping in touch with each other. These swarming bands of kids are now adults and many of them don’t want to be tied down.
These “kids” are not becoming adults. In a recent survey by Otetsudai Networks, most people surveyed cared more about freedom and flexibility than the pay when considering a part-time job.
Enter Otetsudai Networks. With Otetsudai Networks, if you are willing to work, you sign up for the service with your skills and focus, take a GPS reading on your phone and then just hang out. If you are looking for someone for say… 3 hours to man a cash register or help wash dishes, you just send the request to Otetsudai Networks and within minutes, you have a list of people available. The list shows what each person is qualified for, how others have rated their work and exactly how far away they are. Typically you will receive a list of half a dozen or more people within a few minutes.
The image and the employment service are an intriguing window on a fast-arriving future. It is not only the kids in Japan who are creating a new way of doing things with their mobile phones. It is happening to youngsters everywhere. Nowhere is the kid-mobile-phone phenomenon stirring up more change than in schools — which makes sense because that is where the mobile generation is now spending its time.
As digital transformation has rolled across the world over the past decade, schools have lagged behind in some important aspects. That must not happen with school safety. An example like the Otetsudai Networks is a reminder that for today’s kids their mobile phones have become fundamental to their world. To keep abreast of these times, Defywire puts the mobile in the center of a school’s safety initiatives and focuses on the rollout of new ways to keep our kids safe using this central emerging technology.
