Casually vs. Occassionally Connected

filed under Instant Messaging · 1 comment in the original

actionScriptHero points out an interesting quote from Kevin Lynch (Macromedia employee) regarding the connection paradigms and Central's benefit;

Applications today are largely divided across a chasm of local desktop applications with little reliance on the network for data, and web applications that are totally dependent on a live network connection. In reality, people are not living in these connectivity extremes, and typically have occasional access to the network, particularly with mobile computers and handheld devices. The existing model for applications today doesn't represent this usage pattern well, where applications largely fall into "desktop" or "web" categories. Applications should be able to more easily live across both of these worlds, gaining the advantages of network connectivity when it's available and continuing to function on the local desktop when offline.

Source: Macromedia White Paper

I thought it important to acknowledge that I do see the value in an Occassionally Connected device as that scenario is increasingly becoming real for more and more consumers. On the other hand, though, I have to wonder how long that scenario really will make sense. The trend seems to be moving towards "Internet Everywhere" more than anything else. WiFi has been introduced for free in public spaces from San Francisco to New York City. Merchants are adding WiFi to their retail locations as an additional incentive to eat, drink, and shop there. Systems are being developed to deploy WiFi on airlines and to utilize power lines to provide network connectivity with an unprecedented ease. All of these situations seem to point to a "Casually Connected" society as opposed to an "Occassionally Connected" one, though the "Occassional" is more the paradigm we are currently living in.

Additionally, more and more of our services are collaboration-based and have a serious dependency on "instant" connectivity. There's a reason that AIM is available for cell phones, palm pilots, etc. and it's not because I want to view my list of contacts, it's because I want to interact with them in real-time. The trend over the years has been to move interaction as close as possible to the person while making it as immediate as possible. We went from hand-written messages at the front desk, to voicemail systems, to pager, to cell phones, to SMS. All of these systems seemingly intend to improve on immediacy and quality of interaction, not to create opportunities to delay interaction.

Naturally, this is not the only avenue that the "Occassional Connected" user strolls down. Macromedia does a nice job demonstrating the various uses for this technology. The main question is how valuable are those times when I am between connections and what level of interest I have in continuing to work with a potentially dwarfed version of the original, connected version. I don't know the answer, but I am curious to see how people will use Central apps in the future as compared to existing services like AvantGo, etc. Is a better interface alone enough? It could be.

Yesterday, I tried to lay out some initial definitions for the term "Casually Connected" building on examples from the real world. In that discussion, I think I hit on 2 definitions for the phrase:

Casual as Consciousness: As opposed to the "obvious" definition that casual means "sometimes", this is a reflection of mindshare. When a system (be it Instant Messaging, Blogging, whatever) offers the intuitive solution or seems to be the ideal destination or resource for a particular need,
Casual as Convenient: In this sense, the terms reflects on the technology available to end-users. As a system provides technological solutions to an end-user's NEEDS they will grow to see the device or service as an extension of their personal and professional workflows.