I observe these changes every day, and am beginning to see connections. Here are just a few examples of mobile phone use in everyday situations:

• Employees texting or receiving phone calls while serving customers
  
  
  Image by ASurroca

• Mail carriers making their way through neighborhoods, while chatting on the phone:
  
  
  Image by unprose

• Employees focusing on personal communications, not the environment around them:
  
  
  Image by heddas

• People on public transit occupied on mobile devices instead of reading newspapers, or even glancing at those around them:
  
  
  Image by Cocoarmani

• Friends at a cafe focused on communicating with those who aren’t at the table:
  
  
  Image by Amy Watts

• Walking and texting while crossing the street with a baby stroller:
  
  
  Image by orangecats

• Audience members at a conference can tune out the speaker and their colleagues on a whim via mobile devices:
  
  
  Image by therealjellyellie

• Business meetings are filled with people only partially there:

  
  

  Image by urbangarden

• Personal connections interrupted and reprioritized:
  
  
  Image by DragonDrop
• An all too familiar site: texting while driving:
  
  
  Image by Kevin Minnis
• Is the customer smiling at you, or reacting to the person on the phone? How can businesses make connections with customers in an environment like this?
  
  Image by artcphoto

• Even in paradise – how do we truly escape?
  
  
  Image by Catznbirdz

It is easy to see these uses of mobile devices and shrug that they are normal. But let’s consider how they affect businesses and communities:

• Customer Service
  Why worry about customers and strangers if you can be talking to your friend? Even when I go to my local foodstore, the person ringing me up may sneak text messages, and the guy collecting carts in the parking lot may be on his cell phone. As this behavior becomes more normal, workers ask themselves: why ever be disconnected? Why put yourself in an unfamiliar situation? Why talk to a stranger (eg: customer) when you can talk to a friend? Why invest yourself in your job or anything where rewards come slowly?

  This has a profound effect on customer service. Employees become less aware of needs of customers, less available and willing to help, more likely to make mistakes, and less likely to go the extra mile. A moment of downtime is no longer an opportunity to do extra work that benefits the company and their career – it becomes a moment to check in with friends and interests.

• Your Company’s Productivity
  Moving outside of the retail environment, these same effects translate to the business environment. Employees are inundated with streams of information and communication. What’s interesting is that some of them can even be considered business-related or quasi-business related.

  Meetings that are supposed to be focused and quick with clear goals, might turn into a room of people sneaking a glance at their Blackberries, and diverting their focus to keeping up with other streams of information.

  Even if a company wanted to take a hard line with this issue, banning Facebook, Twitter or Blackberries isn’t the solution. Employees might be connected to customers on Facebook, and use it as a loose customer relationship management tool. Twitter streams could be filled with information that shapes the goals and priorities of your brand. Twitter can also be a 24/7 marketing tool that becomes useless when relegated to specific times of use.

• The Attention of Your Industry, Customers, and Potential Customers
  What’s more, companies have to realize that this is not just an internal struggle – these same behaviors are occurring with business partners and customers. A fragmentation of attention that affects not just productivity, but their awareness of messages you are targeting them with. You are just another of many streams of information in their life. Your products and services that they are using might see less attention, and over time, experience less appreciation. It may become a commodity in an increasingly busy life.

• Events
  Perhaps you host events for your industry, or are an active participant in those that exist already. While little else can replace an in-person connection, I am constantly seeing this benefit be re-prioritized by attendees. People can feel social and in-touch through their mobile device, giving an excuse to avoid those awkward social moments that remind us of the first day of school.

  Why introduce yourself to the strangers sitting next to you at a lunch break, when you can reinforce your identity and comfort level by checking communication streams on your mobile device?

  Audiences watching speakers or panels are lit up like a Christmas tree, with people active on laptops and mobile devices. Absolutely, some are Twittering, taking notes, reporting and looking up associated information. But at less engaging sessions, you see people wander off to check other communication streams, do other work, and even play games.

  From a speaker’s perspective, they can be staring out at a sea of people looking down at their laptops and phones, never making eye contact, and rarely reacting. How can they clap if they are always typing?

• Interpersonal Relationships
  As companies work to develop teams and talent, it can be difficult to truly bring a group together that feels a sense of identity and a level of focus on the corporate goals exclusively. Clearly, people are focused on their jobs and the company they work for, but many companies operate in little silos, and now employees have the option to follow suit.

  Networking opportunities can be easily found on their mobile device, not exclusively through company-sponsored programs, that include company-sponsored goals.

• Creativity
  I have been fortunate enough to have spent my life around artists, writers, musicians, product designers, and many other creative people. My wife has degrees in toy design, illustration and art education, and has an art studio at home, which allows me a fascinating daily view into the creative process of an artist.

  But creativity is not relegated to these roles alone – accountants need to be creative; lawyers need to be creative; human resources executives need to be creative; information technology workers need to be creative; this is a characteristic built into most jobs at some level or another.

  There are two ways that communication streams through a mobile device can affect the creative process. First, the ability to become engrossed in the task at hand. Constant distractions brings a circular process of engaging and reengaging with the problem you are trying to find a solution for.

  Second, many employees now have the ability to express their creativity through personal avenues through their mobile device. This siphoning off of creative energy could leave work a more boring place, with less innovative ideas. As regular people find cool things to do on Facebook, Twitter and the mobile web as a whole, they feel less of a priority to judge their creative output within their career alone.

• Creation vs Consumption
  But this creative siphoning isn’t just happening with employees – it’s happening with customers and business partners. People have compelling tools at their disposal to develop their creative side. This could leave less patience with products or services that don’t immediately capture their attention, leaving a business with less engaged customers, less likely to learn the ins and outs of the products & services they provide.

• Information Overload
  In May I talked about information streams and the stress that it can have on our lives. It is now possible to go into a store and find a stressed out sales person because he just got a text from his friend, his wife called twice, he’s trying to keep up on baseball scores, and oh yeah, he has to deal with customers.

• Loyalty
  It could be argued that an employee who is connected to so many worlds never has to fully embrace a particular job or business. It’s not that people will treat their careers flippantly, but you could find that there are fewer barriers that kept people aligned to one company.

  It is easiest to see this with a group of teenage trainees at a fast food restaurant, each preferring to be doing other activities. But as these communication devices become more powerful, people’s "other" lives follow them everywhere, making it easier and easier to never fully commit.

This quote by Clay Shirky is a double-edged sword, when you consider the issues above:

"The moment we are living through is the largest increase in expressive capability in human history."

And while I paint a disruptive picture above, I feel that the opportunities far outweigh any negative effects.

When considering how you serve your industry, how you can grab the attention of prospective customers, inspire your staff, or find other ways to solve people’s problems, you need to factor in the ways mobile devices are reshaping our culture. You can’t fight these new behaviors, you can only adapt to turn them into opportunities instead of barriers.

During the announcement presentation, the Internet was sometimes described as a “cloud,” that can store information, and is universally present.

And I can’t help but feel that soon, we will all live in the clouds.

Clouds that follow us, and become the center of our lives.

Your files and documents will live in the cloud, accessible anywhere, from any device.

Your friends will live in the cloud, and you can always reach them.

Live data and information will filter to you from the cloud, anywhere, anytime.

And the cloud unchains you. From a specific desk, computer, place, and time.

It is your television, your newspaper, your radio.

It is a way to connect and stay connected.

It is a way to schedule and unschedule.

But what I mostly take from it is this: The Internet is no longer an “option.”

It is a reality.

It is being integrated into all aspects of our lives.

And sure, that can be scary.

And sure, that can be a threat to established practices and business models.

But it can also be freeing.

And this freedom is something that people are experimenting with in small ways, every day.

There is no one path forward, but many.

And a little device like the iPhone is less a gadget, than a doorway.

Whether that doorway leads somewhere postive or negative is up to you.

But the doorway is out there, for anyone to walk through.

How long will it be before our customers and readers walk through it?

Or perhaps the question should be: how can we help our readers and customers walk through it.

I am always looking around at how people are chained to their cell phones, and the many ways they are being used. Below is a visual meditation on the subject. One question we have to ask ourselves is how does this affect media distribution and publishing in the not-too-distant future? How does this affect how publishers connect to readers and customers – and how business may evolve?

And what happens when you realize that each of these mobile devices are not just delivery mechanisms, but a content creation and distribution mechanisms? They each have cameras, keyboards, wireless access – and increasingly, video capabilities. There is not just an opportunity to reach people via these devices, but also in channeling their willingness to create and share.

What is interesting about these photos is that almost all lines are crossed in terms of demographics – age, race, socio-economics, etc. This is not just for the rich, not just for the young, and not just for entertainment-related activities.

Reuters is having their reporters experiment with a “mobile journalism toolkit,” which allows reporting in text, audio, video and photos:

• The Mobile Journalism Toolkit contents, which include a Nokia N95 phone, Nokia SU-8W folding keyboard, a small tripod, Sony microphone, and solar charger.
• Background info on the mobile journalism project, and a video on how each piece of the toolkit will be used.
• A bit more on the partnership with Reuters and Nokia:
  “The idea is that using the phone will mean more agility and less use of laptops and expensive camera equipment (and fewer people to enable filming); there is also a back-end system that formats the material to be posted on Reuters’ site.”

• Clyde Bentley gives some of these tools, and others, a mobile reporting field test:
  “I’m still confident that… our computing future is pocket-sized. But journalists will need fast, Hummer-tough units accessible to 50-something eyes and fingers. There is not much of a market for that yet.”

• Mel Taylor shares his perspective on the affects of such a mobile toolkit:
  “Newspaper reporters: getting out from behind their desks and reporting from the field. (where the news is breaking) They are gathering and uploading news (in all forms: text, video, stills, etc.) within a very short turn-around time. Sometimes it’s live. This trend is also an early look at how Newspaper will be able to go after juicy Broadcast and Cable advertising budgets.”

For truly live mobile reporting, Robert Scoble has embraced the idea of streaming live video from his mobile phone via a service called Qik. You can see the videos he has shot here. He comments:

“My world has just changed. Thanks Qik!… The quality isn’t the best, but it’s watchable and that’s all we really need considering that video is coming to you over a cell phone connection.”

Howard Owens feels that mobile reporting should free journalists to spend more time with the people in their beat, as opposed to commuting or in an office. His advice for someone covering a particular town or region:

“The classic image of a MoJo is a reporter sitting in his car, filing a story. Certainly, you must spend time doing that, but the less time you spend actually driving that car, the better. You need to be out and about, on foot, with people. Your job isn’t to find scandal or hard-hitting news. Your job is to unlock the life of your town in a way that print journalism hasn’t done consistently for generations. It’s all about people.”

Howard’s point is a good one. While there is so much focus on the tools of journalism, the real change is how they allow journalists to connect with their sources and help their communities.

• Real-time traffic — See where the congestion is, and estimate delays in over 30 major US metropolitan areas.
• Detailed directions — Whether you plan to walk or drive, your route is displayed on the map itself, together with step-by-step directions.
• Integrated search results — Local business locations and contact information appear all in one place, integrated on your map.
• Easily movable maps — Interactive maps let you zoom in or out, and move in all directions so you can orient yourself visually.

And new services like Whereboutz blends services like Twitter to let your friends know where you are.

“…the Internet giant has cemented an alliance with 33 partners, the question is whether they will follow through on its attempt to change the rules of the game.”

“After months of anticipation, a group including Google and a number of mobile-handset makers, cellular carriers and other technology companies plans to make new software available — free of charge — to power mobile phones that will start hitting the market in the second half of 2008. The move paves the way for mass-market cellphones that will bring consumers’ experience on the mobile Web closer to that of personal computers. And Google is betting that its ad revenue will surge as a result.”

“Still, the move shows Google’s latest tack for breaking down barriers to expanding its advertising and services businesses. It also highlights Google’s belief that its large ad business can benefit if it broadens Web usage — in this case on mobile phones.”

• Mark Glaser feels that Cell Phones Are Killing Face-to-Face Interactions:
  “What was once something you did in private or during downtime has now become an obsession. We all need to find out what else is going on at other locations, to the detriment of the current situation happening right there in front of us.”

• The New York Times looks at the ability to track where your friends and family are via their cell phones:
  “Do you want your friends, family, or colleagues to know where you are at any given time? And do you want to know where they are?”

“Google could sit tight and count its pennies, not unlike what Microsoft did during its heyday, or it could push forward, beyond the desktop and into the mobile world, where content and information are meeting voice communication and the cell phone.”

“It’s a natural fit. Google takes what it has pioneered on the desktop and through the browser and applies it to mobile lifestyles, providing a seamless transition for people on the go.”

“On Gwen Stefani’s recent tour, as many as 20 percent of the audience at some shows agreed to pay 99 cents for text messages and the chance to win better seats, according to the mobile marketing company Impact Mobile. At festivals like Lollapalooza, thousands of fans sign up to receive continuous updates from concert organizers about promotions and special events.”