What if the real problem with app stores is what they are selling?

William Hook photo

Rachel Hinman pressents some interesting ideas in her article, Discovering the Chiaroscuro of Mobile, which ultimately call into question the very concept of mobile applications. She looks to historical precedents in art and wonders if mobile applications will follow similar arcs of change.

Data is similar to physical form in that it has perspective. We think about it along lines of place, time, and social dimensions... yet mobile applications rarely allow us to truly experience the multi-dimensional aspects of information. Instead, similar to Medieval art, mobile applications flatten data. Users are forced to either burrow deeply into single application or pogo stick across a host of lightweight applications, often with no through lines for the data. As we begin to prism data through more and more devices - televisions, car dashboards, screens in public spaces - the application model becomes brittle. It locks us into a way of thinking about information that doesn't accurately represent the multi-dimensional ways we perceive and use it.

What if the app stores and "wild west" application development we're seeing today in the mobile space is a re-enactment of the evolution of the web? What if mobile applications we download through Apple's app store are the "brochureware" of what we will experience five years from now? What if applications are a borrowed and broken model we'll ride out until the "perspective techniques" of data representation and manipulation in a mobile context are discovered and celebrated.

If applications go away, what will replace them? Compelling data visualizations? Adaptive interfaces?

Discovering the Chiaroscuro of Mobile [June, 2009]

What if the real problem with app stores is what they are selling?

William Hook photo Rachel Hinman pressents some interesting ideas in her article, Discovering the Chiaroscuro of Mobile, which ultimately call into question the very concept of mobile applications. She looks to historical precedents in art and wonders if mobile applications will follow similar arcs of change.

Data is similar to physical form in that it has perspective. We think about it along lines of place, time, and social dimensions... yet mobile applications rarely allow us to truly experience the multi-dimensional aspects of information. Instead, similar to Medieval art, mobile applications flatten data. Users are forced to either burrow deeply into single application or pogo stick across a host of lightweight applications, often with no through lines for the data. As we begin to prism data through more and more devices - televisions, car dashboards, screens in public spaces - the application model becomes brittle. It locks us into a way of thinking about information that doesn't accurately represent the multi-dimensional ways we perceive and use it. What if the app stores and "wild west" application development we're seeing today in the mobile space is a re-enactment of the evolution of the web? What if mobile applications we download through Apple's app store are the "brochureware" of what we will experience five years from now? What if applications are a borrowed and broken model we'll ride out until the "perspective techniques" of data representation and manipulation in a mobile context are discovered and celebrated. If applications go away, what will replace them? Compelling data visualizations? Adaptive interfaces?

Discovering the Chiaroscuro of Mobile [June, 2009]