As products get smarter in terms of being aware of their behaviour – in some senses, becoming reflexive – and as their raison d’être gets increasingly close to personal, social functionality – in some senses, becoming involved in presentation of self and the behaviour of the users – there is huge potential to build devices which become increasingly, personally meaningful, which can adapt to personal context and preference like never before.
I know I love having everything I play on my iPod put into audioscrobbler – apparently you can’t do this with a shuffle. But this sort of technology is fascinating – with sites like audioscrobbler and del.icio.us and flickr being able to show you where you fit amidst a group of people with similar interests.
It strikes me that the basic condition for these products is to be essentially self-aware – in this specific case, that the iPod Shuffle should be able to keep a track of what tracks the user has played on it, and communicate that information such that that metadata can then be transferred and combined with the overall iTunes Music Library. This ecosystem of music experience software and hardware can therefore keep a track of what tracks have been played (track, album, artist etc), when, on what device, and by whom. Upon this basic usage data, we can build a panoply of useful, interesting services. Look no further than Audioscrobbler for some inspiration.
I really like how community sites are tying people together in their interests – a site like 43things showing you people who have similar goals to you, who live in your city, and eventually both together. When the application fades away and the data that is collected by the application is brought together and made sense of, I think that applications will be able to become entirely more useful.
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